KOOM, KOOM, KOOM

1
KOOM, KOOM, KOOM
2
Setting up the problem 1

• Self-ascriptions of belief and desire are
  authoritative
• Made without reference to the evidence
• Presumption of correctness
• N.B. it is a dogma of current (post-Freudian)
  philosophy that we can make mistakes about our
  own beliefs and desires
• For a rejection of the dogma, see Stoneham in
  Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1998
• Yet we still have special knowledge of our own
  minds

3
Setting up the problem 2

• Beliefs and desires are individuated by their
  contents
• Different content - different belief
• According to externalism, contents are
  individuated by physical and social environments
• Different environment - different content

4

• Thus
• To know your desire, you must know its content
• To know its content, you must know the relevant
  environmental factors
• But our knowledge of the environment
• Is always based on evidence
• Is not authoritative or special
• It seems that externalism is incompatible with
  privileged access

5
Mental-Physical Identity

• IF externalism showed that beliefs and desires
  were not states of people, but states of the
  mereological sum of a person and an
  environment/history
• THEN knowledge of beliefs would require knowledge
  of the environment/history
• BUT presupposing facts about the
  environment/history is not incompatible with
  being a state of the subject
• E.g. sunburn is a state of the skin which
  presupposes a causal history (pp.58-60)

6
A Simple Solution?

• Oscar wants water with his whisky and Toscar
  wants twater with his whisky
• Both know that this is what they want, so
• Oscar believes that he wants water with his
  whisky
• Toscar believes that he wants twater with his
  whisky
• Could Oscar get it wrong and falsely believe that
  he wants twater with his whisky?
• No, Oscar can no more have the second-order
  belief about twater that he wants it with his
  whisky than he can have the first-order belief
  that twater is odourless. (cf. p.57)

7
Knowledge

• So externalism does not create a new way for
  Oscar and Toscar to get it wrong about their
  beliefs and desires
• but there is more to knowledge than getting it
  right.
• Minimal requirement
• If X knows that p, then X can discriminate
  between p and not-p situations
• By stipulation, Oscar and Toscars situations
  seem the same to them
• So neither can discriminate the desire for water
  from the desire for twater.

8
Scepticism about self-knowledge

• A BIV is meant to have exactly the same beliefs
  as us, but all false
• According to the externalist, the BIV would have
  a different set of beliefs from us (and those
  beliefs would probably be true)
• But everything would seem the same to the BIV
• So we may be able to know that our beliefs are
  true, but not know what it is that we believe

9
Seems the same

• Does the Twin Earth story really stipulate that
  everything seems the same to Oscar and Toscar?
• Yes
• All the phenomenal facts are held constant
• No
• It seems to Oscar that he wants water with his
  whisky but
• It seems to Toscar that he wants twater with his
  whisky

10
Intrapersonal

• Is having a desire for water phenomenologically
  indistinguishable to the thinker from having a
  desire for twater?
• The Oscar/Toscar case cannot prove this
• Interpersonal indistinguishability makes no sense
• What we would need is for Oscar to be secretly
  transported to Twin Earth and to stay there long
  enough to pick up (unbeknownst to him) the local
  dialect

11
Slow-switching

• Paul Boghossian has tried to construct arguments
  from slow-switching to lack of self-knowledge
• But few are convinced because
• He needs Oscars memories to be unaffected by the
  switch
• And at best he only shows that Oscar lacks
  self-knowledge, since slow-switching is not a
  relevant possibility for us

12
Explicative Knowledge

• To know what architectonic means it is not
  sufficient that one can say it means
  architectonic
• Similarly, to know one desires water it is not
  sufficient that one can say I desire water
• One must also be able to give explications and
  draw appropriate inferences
• Oscar is not able to give explications or draw
  inferences which shows that he has a desire for
  water rather than twater
• So he cannot know that is what he desires

13
Externalist Response

• What the argument requires is not merely that one
  have the ability to explicate, but to do so in a
  way which uniquely identifies what is meant
• But Burge has argued that the explications a
  competent speaker gives will often be incomplete
  and inaccurate
• So two people could give the same explications
  and draw the same inferences but mean something
  different

14
Davidson vs. Burge

• Davidson argues that if someones
  explications/inferences are systematically
  incomplete or inaccurate,
• then we should reinterpret them to mean something
  different.
• Thus the two users of arthritis mean the same
  and neither means arthritis.