Social Externalism and the Knowledge Argument

Self-knowledge and Externalism

I want to discuss the possibility of combining a so-called ‘externalist’ theory of empirical content, on which the contents of a person’s beliefs are determined in part by the nature of his extra-bodily environment, with a plausible account of self-knowledge, in particular, of a person’s knowledge of the contents of his own beliefs. A difficulty for this combination is thought to be that it pro...

Externalism and Armchair Knowledge*

1. Kylie’s Puzzle On summer afternoons in Canberra, the baking sun reflects off Lake Burley Griffin, and the water shimmers. Up behind the university, in the botanical gardens, a cascading stream of water helps to maintain the humidity of the rainforest gully. These are just a couple of Kylie’s thoughts on the subject of water, her water thoughts. Amongst Kylie’s many other thoughts that involv...

Rational and Irrational Intentions An Argument for Externalism

Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Transmission of Warrant

Externalism about some mental property, M, is the thesis that whether a person (or other physical being) has M depends, not only on conditions inside the person’s skin, but also on the person’s environment and the way that the person is embedded in that environment. The dependence here is supposed to be conceptual rather than causal; it is the kind of dependence that can be revealed by philosop...

Semantic Externalism, Self-Knowledge, and Slow Switching

Semantic externalism holds that the content of at least some of our thoughts is partly constituted by external factors. Accordingly, it leads to the unintuitive consequence that we must then often be mistaken in what we are thinking, and any kind of claim of privileged access must be given up. Those who deny that semantic externalists can retain any account of self-knowledge are ‘incompatibilis...