Sven Bernecker

Incompatibilism is the view that privileged knowledge of our own mental states cannot be reconciled with externalism regarding the content of mental states. Davidson has recently developed two arguments that are supposed to disprove incompatibilism and establish the consistency of privileged access and externalism. One argument criticizes incompatibilism for assuming that externalism conflicts with the mind‐body identity theory. Since mental states supervene on neurological events, Davidson argues, they are partly ‘in the head’ and are knowable just by reflection. Another argument rejects incompatibilism by repudiating the object perception model of introspection. Once extemalism is freed from the internalist idea that thoughts take objects which are inner epistemological intermediaries, Davidson maintains, it poses no threat to privileged self‐knowledge. It is argued that neither of these arguments is successful, since both disprove assumptions irrelevant to incompatibilism. Moreover, it is indicated how Davidson would have to go about defending his positive account of privileged self‐knowledge against the principal incompatibilist arguments.

This dissertation addresses the question whether externalism about thought content is consistent with claims about the epistemically special access that subjects have to their own present and conscious thoughts. Extemalism is the view that the contents of many of our thoughts are determined at least in part by external affairs. Given externalism, knowledge of one's thoughts seems to require information beyond what is available to introspection. This conclusion is inconsistent with the intuitive conviction that such knowledge is environmentally neutral. I argue that self-lcnowledge doesn't require the investigation of one's environment because the content of the first-order thought is automatically contained in the content of the second-order thought and the contents of both thoughts are determined by the same causal relations. But although extemalism is compatible with privileged self-knowledge of one's particular thought contents, it is consistent with us lacking privileged access to the attitudinal component of one's thoughts (viz. 'attitude skepticism') and it is incompatible with privileged access to the fact that one's so-called thought contents really are contents (viz. 'zombie skepticism'). I call this view 'refined compatibilism'. In Chapter One I discuss externalism and the privileged self-knowledge and lay out what has bothered philosophers about the combination of the two positions. In Chapter Two I consider Davidson's arguments for the compatibility of privileged self-knowledge and extemalism. All of these arguments will be found wanting, albeit for different reasons. In Chapter Three I offer a successful argument for compatibilism. While in Chapter Four I defend this compatibilist argument against three objections found in the literature, in Chapter Five I develop two objections of my own, namely 'attitude skepticism' and 'zombie skepticism'. Finally in Chapter Six I summarize 'refined compatibilism' and discuss some of its implications. Refined compatibilism demonstrates that extemalist arguments against external-world skepticism are invalid for they rely on a notion privileged access incompatible with extemalism. Moreover, refined compatibilism supports the 'higher-order thought theory' over competing models of introspection.

This book investigates central issues in the philosophy of memory. Does remembering require a causal process connecting the past representation to its subsequent recall and, if so, what is the nature of the causal process? Of what kind are the primary intentional objects of memory states? How do we know that our memory experiences portray things the way they happened in the past? Given that our memory is not only a passive device for reproducing thoughts but also an active device for processing stored thoughts, when are thoughts sufficiently similar to be memory-related? The Metaphysics of Memory defends a version of the causal theory of memory, argues for direct realism about memory, proposes an externalist response to skepticism about memory knowledge, and develops a contextualist account of the factivity constraint on memory.

This paper criticizes the widespread view whereby a second-order judgment of the form ‘I believe that p ’ qualifies as self-knowledge only if the embedded content, p, is of the same type as the content of the intentional state reflected upon and the self-ascribed attitude, belief, is of the same type as the attitude the subject takes towards p. Rather than requiring identity of contents across levels of cognition self-knowledge requires only that the embedded content of the second-order thought be an entailment of the content of the intentional state reflected upon. And rather than demanding identity of attitudes across levels of cognition self-knowledge demands only that the attitude of the intentional state reflected upon and the attitude the subject self-attributes share certain features such as direction of fit and polarity.

Triangular externalism is the view that a subject's thought content is determined by the communication the subject has with others about objects or events in the shared public environment. The process of triangulation is said to constitute thought content. Section 1 characterizes triangular externalism and sets it apart from other forms of content externalism. Section 2 is concerned with the tensions within Davidson's views: the tension between historical externalism and interpretationism, as well as the tension between triangular externalism and holism. Section 3 explicates Davidson's criticisms of two rival forms of externalism: Putnam's physical externalism and Burge's anti‐individualism. Sections 4 and 5 contain a critical discussion of Davidson's arguments for triangular externalism: the argument from content determination and the argument from objectivity.

Hilary Putnam has famously argued that “we are brains in a vat” is necessarily false. The argument assumes content externalism (also known as semantic externalism and anti-individualism), that is, the view that the individuation conditions of mental content depend, in part, on external or relational properties of the subject’s environment. Recently content externalism has given rise to the hypothesis of the extended mind, whereby mental states are not only externally individuated but also externally located states. This chapter argues that when content externalism is combined with the extended mind hypothesis it is robbed of its anti-skeptical power. Given the extended mind hypothesis, the supercomputer and the envatted brain can be regarded as aspects of the extended mind of the evil scientist. On this view, the thought contents of the coupled brain–computer–scientist system do not differ from those of a normal human. But without a difference in thought contents Putnam’s anti-skeptical argument crumbles.

This paper addresses the question whether introspection plus externalism about mental content warrant an a priori refutation of external-world skepticism and ontological solipsism. The suggestion is that if thought content is partly determined by affairs in the environment and if we can have non-empirical knowledge of our current thought contents, we can, just by reflection, know about the world around us -- we can know that our environment is populated with content-determining entities. After examining this type of transcendental argument and discussing various objections found in the literature, I argue that the notion of privileged self-knowledge underlying this argument presupposes that we can learn, via introspection, that our so-called thoughts are propositional attitudes rather than contentless states. If, however, externalism is correct and thought content consists in the systematic dependency of internal states on relational properties, we cannot know non-empirically whether or not we have propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge (apropositional attitude) is consistent with us lacking the ability to rule out, via introspection, the possibility that we don't have any propositional attitudes. Self-knowledge provides us with knowledge of what is in our minds, but not that we have minds. Hence, the combination of externalism with the doctrine of privileged self-knowledge does not allow for an a priori refutation of skepticism and is therefore unproblematic.