New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge

✍ Scribed by Susana Nuccetelli

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 330
• Series: Bradford Books
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Semantic externalism is the thesis that the contents of some words and thoughts depend in part on properties external to the person who entertains them. In a departure from the widely held doctrine of internalism, externalists maintain that not all mental content is local to the mind. That view, however, seems to some philosophers to be at odds with our ordinary intuitions about self-knowledge. This book shows that the debate over the compatibility of externalism and self-knowledge has led to the investigation of a variety of topics, including the a priori, transmission of epistemic warrant, question-begging reasoning, and the semantics of natural-kind terms, as well as other issues crucial to epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. The essays in the book make clear that externalism and self-knowledge raise many questions and that there are many paths to answering them. The best way to deal with the competing arguments, the editor claims, is to follow a principle of doxastic conservatism, which recommends that, when possible, one should favor the strategy that best accommodates all of the most accepted intuitions at stake.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 14
1 The Problem of Armchair Knowledge......Page 36
2 Some Reflections on the Acquisition of Warrant by Inference......Page 70
3 McKinsey’s Challenge, Warrant Transmission, and Skepticism......Page 92
4 Transmission of Warrant and Closure of Apriority......Page 110
5 The Reductio Argument and Transmission of Warrant......Page 130
6 Externalism and Self-Knowledge......Page 144
7 A Puzzle about Doubt......Page 156
8 Knowing That One Knows What One Is Talking About......Page 182
9 Two Transcendental Arguments Concerning Self-Knowledge......Page 198
10 Externalism, Davidson, and Knowledge of Comparative Content......Page 214
11 Memory and Knowledge of Content......Page 232
12 What Do You Know When You Know Your Own Thoughts?......Page 254
13 Introspection and Internalism......Page 270
14 Two Forms of Antiskepticism......Page 290
References......Page 308
Contributors......Page 320
B......Page 324
E......Page 325
J......Page 326
O......Page 327
S......Page 328
T......Page 329
Z......Page 330