The Relevance of Discriminatory Knowledge of Content

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (1999) 136–156 0031–5621/99/0200–0000 © 1999 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Abstract: Those interested in securing the compatibility of anti-individualism and introspective knowledge of content (henceforth ‘compatibilists’) typically make a distinction between knowledge of content proper (KC) and discriminatory knowledge of content (DKC). Following Falvey and Owens (1994), most compatibilists allow that anti-individualism is not compatible with introspective DKC, but maintain that nonetheless anti-individualism is compatible with introspective KC. Though I have raised doubts about the compatibility of anti-individualism and introspective KC elsewhere (Goldberg, 1997 and forthcoming), here my aim is to suggest the philosophical relevance of DKC itself. My thesis is that there are cases in which a thinker’s failing to have DKC will affect the justification which she takes herself to have in drawing various inferences in the course of her reasoning, and so will affect that reasoning itself. After presenting illustrative examples and suggesting why anti-individualists themselves ought to acknowledge this point, I suggest that the examples indicate further work for anti-individualists: formulating what it takes to have DKC, and substantiating the view (widely held by anti-individualists) that antiindividualism’s implication that we (often) lack such knowledge is not to be taken as an important weakness of anti-individualism itself.