Self-Knowledge and Content Externalism

Analysis, 1997

Erkenntnis, 2007

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1999

What is introspective knowledge of one's own intentional states like? This paper aims to make plausible the view that certain cases of self-knowledge, namely the cogito-type ones, are enough like perception to count as cases of quasi-observation. To this end it considers the highly influential arguments developed by Sydney Shoemaker in his recent Royce Lectures. These present the most formidable challenge to the view that certain cases of self-knowledge are quasi-observational and so deserve detailed examination. Shoemaker's arguments are directed against two models of ordinary perception, the "object perception model" and the "broad perceptual model". I argue that the core theses that Shoemaker associated with them are either dubious in their own right or applicable to certain cases of self-knowledge. Overall the aim is to show that there is such a variety of patterns in each case that simple analogies or disanalogies are unhelpful. What is introspective knowledge of one's own intentional states like? Is it in any way like observation or perception? If so, how like? In this paper I hope to make plausible the view that certain cases of self-knowledge, ones in which subjects are authoritative with respect to knowledge of the contents of their own intentional states, are enough like perception to qualify as cases of quasi-observation, and so to justify the claim that authoritative selfknowledge is a form of inner observation. In doing this I am going against the current trend in philosophical literature, which is decidedly hostile to observational models of self-knowledge (Shoemaker 1994, McDowell 1994, Peacocke 1996, 1998, Wright 1998). However, I think that much of this hostility is voiced against the background of assumptions concerning the socalled observation model itself, and specifically, assumptions about what ordinary perception involves, which themselves are questionable. If the perceptual model upon which the analogy with self-knowledge is based is itself a faulty paradigm for ordinary perception, the fact that cases of selfknowledge do not conform to it is neither here nor there. One cannot establish that self-knowledge is not a form of inner observation or perception on the basis of a paradigm that is too crude or inaccurate to fit perception itself. SYMPOSIUM 711 My strategy for making plausible the claim that certain cases of selfknowledge are, broadly speaking, observational, is to focus on various models of ordinary perception and argue that the ones that cause trouble for an observational account of self-knowledge are either unsatisfactory paradigms for ordinary perception, or, where they are not, are applicable to certain cases of self-knowledge. I shall proceed by examining two models that Sydney Shoemaker (1994) discusses extensively, the "object perception model" and the "broad perceptual model", and the reasons he advances for thinking that introspective self-knowledge does not conform to either of these. In the case of the first, I shall argue that the core theses that Shoemaker associates with the paradigm are either dubious in their own right with regard to ordinary perception, or applicable also to certain cases of self-knowledge. In the case of the second, I shall argue that Shoemaker's claim that first-order and secondorder intentional states do not, whereas perceptual states and their objects do, meet the condition of existing, or being capable of existing, independently of one another, is false. Certain cases of self-knowledge, viz. the so-called cogito-type ones, I argue, can be construed as meeting the independence condition. My overall aim is to show that there is such a variety of patterns in each case that simple analogies or disanalogies are unhelpful. If this is right, then the contrast between perception and introspection distorts both modes of awareness. Before embarking on this enterprise, I should make clear what the point of the exercise is and why it is significant. The class of intentional states with which I am concerned is, in the first instance at least, a very restricted but important one. I am interested in what Tyler Burge (1985, 1988, 1996) has referred to as the cogito-type states; states in which one is currently consciously thinking about a thought (with a given propositional content p) while thinking that thought. Such cases of self-knowledge are thought by many to be ones where the subject is authoritative with regard to the nature and contents of the first-order thought. Suppose, for example, that it is true that I am currently, consciously thinking that I am thinking that water is transparent, and that this reflective thought constitutes knowledge. This knowledge seems to be peculiarly immediate or direct (Burge 1985, 1988, 1996, Heil 1988). Descartes (1969) thought that the special status of such knowledge that derives from this immediate relation between subject and thought, or thinker and thought reviewed, makes for a kind of transparency of thought reviewed to the reviewing subject. He thought that it is this difference between a subject's access to the contents of her own intentional states and others' access to those contents that confers an epistemic advantage on the subject in the sense of better placing her to know what the contents of those states are, and so in giving her authority over others with regard to knowledge of such contents (see Burge 1985).

Essays in Philosophy, 2006

Tyler Burge and other externalists about mental content have tried to accommodate privileged self-knowledge and to neutralize scepticism about one's ability to authoritatively know one's present thoughts. I show that, though Burgean compatibilism explains knowing it is P I believe, it doesn't explain how I can have privileged knowledge that the state I occupy is a state of believing rather than, say, a state of doubting. Moreover, given externalism, self-knowledge of attitudinal component is vulnerable to a certain kind of error and so doesn't have the same kind of privilege as self-knowledge of current content.

Synthese, 2015

Some worry that semantic externalism is incompatible with knowing via introspection what content your thoughts have. In this paper, one primary argument is examined for this incompatibilist worry, the slow-switch argument. Following Goldberg, the argument is construed as problematizing an externalist’s skeptic immune knowledge of content (where this type of knowledge persists under various skeptical hypotheses). Goldberg attempts to reclaim such knowledge for the externalist by developing a strategy from Burge. Nevertheless, it is noted that such Burge-style accounts only address a subject’s ability to know that she is thinking that “water is wet.” They do not explicitly concern the subject’s ability to know what she is thinking, which is the distinctive type of knowing at issue in the slow-switch argument. Subsequently, however, the Burge-style view is recast so that the relevant “knowing what” has a chance against the argument. For one, it is emphasized that “knowing what” is intensional (one can know what a water thought is sans familiarity with H2O-thoughts). Second, the relevant “knowing what” is construed as ontologically non-committal (so that knowing what a water-thought is does not require knowing that water exists). Third, following Boër & Lycan, “knowing what” is understood as purpose relative, in that whether one “knows what” depends on whether one knows enough to achieve some contextually salient purpose/goal. And for at least some purposes, it seems an externalist can introspectively “know what” she thinks—even in a skeptical context.

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2008

The question of content externalism's compatibility with a plausible account of self-knowledge has been the subject of much debate in recent years. If the very content of my thoughts depends on external factors beyond me, factors that can only be known a posteriori, what happens to the traditional assumption that we know our own thoughts directly, without having to rely on any empirical investigations of the environment?Two decades ago, Tyler Burge presented what has become the standard compatibilist reply to this challenge. Burge focused on a certain class of judgments, what he calls ‘basic self-knowledge,’ such as I think (with this very thought) that water is wet. Exploiting the fact that reflexive judgments of this sort reemploy the content of the first-order thought, such that no ‘content mistakes’ are possible, Burge argued that externalism is perfectly compatible with the traditional view that we know our own thoughts directly and authoritatively.

Philosophical Studies, 2007

Descartes held the view that a subject has infallible beliefs about the contents of her thoughts. Here, I first examine a popular contemporary defense of this claim, given by Burge (1988), and find it lacking. I then offer my own defense, appealing to a minimal version of the language of thought hypothesis. The argument here has the virtue of refraining from any semantic premises; thus, it is congenial to both internalists and externalists about semantics. The argument also illuminates how a subject may have an apriori and privileged access to her own thoughts.

In this chapter, we consider epistemically robust accounts of self-knowledge. We start with recent inner sense theories (§1), which have been proposed by David Armstrong and William Lycan. Their differences notwithstanding, they hold that self-knowledge is the product of a reliable cognitive mechanism that tracks first-order propositional attitudes and produces the corresponding self-ascriptions. The mechanism is physically realised in our brains and is operative at the subpersonal level. Indeed, according to Lycan, there is a real inner sense faculty, dedicated to keeping track of first-order mental states through the operation of attention. Although the model accounts for groundlessness, transparency and authority, it severs the connection between self-knowledge and rationality and concepts' possession. Hence, it is found to be problematical.