Why Privileged Self-Knowledge and Content Externalism are Compatible

Externalism and Self-Knowledge: Content, Use, and Expression

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, 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...

Content externalism and phenomenal character: a new worry about privileged access

A central question in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind is whether the thesis of content externalism threatens a common doctrine about privileged access. According to this doctrine, an individual knows the contents of her thoughts independently of empirical observation. It is argued that if the contents of a subject’s thoughts are in part individuated by environmental factors, as...