Externalism, Memory, and Self-Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaas J. Kraay
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Inclusion Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge

Externalism holds that the individuation of mental content depends on factors external to the subject. This doctrine appears to undermine both the claim that there is a priori self-knowledge, and the view that individuals have privileged access to their thoughts. Tyler Burge’s influential inclusion theory of self-knowledge purports to reconcile externalism with authoritative self-knowledge. I first consider Paul Boghossian’s claim that the inclusion theory is internally inconsistent. I reject one line of response to this charge, but I endorse another. I next suggest, however, that the inclusion theory has little explanatory value.

scholarly journals Externalism, Memory, and Self-Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaas J. Kraay
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Inclusion Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge

Externalism holds that the individuation of mental content depends on factors external to the subject. This doctrine appears to undermine both the claim that there is a priori self-knowledge, and the view that individuals have privileged access to their thoughts. Tyler Burge’s influential inclusion theory of self-knowledge purports to reconcile externalism with authoritative self-knowledge. I first consider Paul Boghossian’s claim that the inclusion theory is internally inconsistent. I reject one line of response to this charge, but I endorse another. I next suggest, however, that the inclusion theory has little explanatory value.

Expressing the selves

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Zeman
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
The Self ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Reference

By drawing parallels to neuro-philosophical approaches to self-consciousness that give up the notion of an a priori psychological self, Zeman argues that linguistic self-reference does not reflect the self as a holistic subject of consciousness, but as a set of different ‘selves’ that are commonly neutralized behind the personal pronoun ‘I’. The argument is grounded in an investigation of ‘multiple-perspective constructions’ (MPC) like the epistemic use of modal verbs, Free Indirect Discourse, and the ‘Future of Fate’ constructions where the subject is split in more than one dimension. The analysis shows that the impression of a holistic self emerges as a discourse effect based on the integration of the hierarchical relations between (i) an ‘internal’ and ‘external’ self with respect to the mental content, and (ii) ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ perspectives with respect to the communicative roles.

Reflexive Transparency, Mental Content, and Externalism

1998 ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
Paul Bernier
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
Intentional State ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Crucial Assumption

It has been disputed whether an externalist conception of the individuation of intentional states, such as beliefs and desires, is compatible with self-knowledge, that is, the claim that one's judgments about one's intentional states are non-evidential, non-inferential, and authoritative. I want to argue that these theses are indeed incompatible, notwithstanding an important objection to this incompatibility claim. The worry has been raised that if externalism is true, then for a subject to know, say, that he or she believes that p, the subject would need to know, on the basis of some evidence, the external conditions which determine the belief's content. Thus, externalism would be incompatible with self-knowledge. But many philosophers have accepted an objection suggesting that this worry is mistaken because in order to have a belief one need not know the metaphysical conditions determining its content, even if they are externalist. And thus, the subject's reflexive judgment about the belief would not need to rest on evidence about those external conditions. But this objection rests on a crucial assumption according to which mental content is reflexively transparent in the sense that a subject could not judge that she or he has an intentional state and be mistaken about the content of her or his state, even if the content is externally determined. My main purpose is not reflexively transparent on the assumption of externalism and, thus, self-knowledge and externalism are incompatible.

Ockham on the Possibility of Self-Knowledge: Knowing Acts without Knowing Subjects

Vivarium ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 220-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Schierbaum
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
Second Step ◽  
First Person ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Mental Language ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
William Ockham ◽  
Mental Acts

My aim in this paper is to show that William Ockham (ca. 1287-1347) succeeds in accounting for a particular kind of self-knowledge, although in doing so he restricts the direct cognitive access to mental acts and states as they occur, in a way similar to the restriction in contemporary debates on self-knowledge. In particular, a considerable number of Ockham-scholars have argued that Ockham’s theory of mental content bears a substantial likeness to contemporary ‘externalist’ approaches, and I will argue for the success of this theory in three steps: first, I show that, although the form of what is judged (‘I am F’) implies the ascription of an act to oneself (as the subject of the act), through ‘intuition’ it suffices to directly cognize the act but not the subject. In Ockham’s conception, intuition is a specific kind of singular cognition. In the second step I show that, according to Ockham’s thesis of mental language, Person is an aspect of mental verbs and not of acts of intuition. Lastly I argue that the correctness of first-person judgments about one’s acts is guaranteed by an ontological fact, and not an epistemological fact. It becomes apparent that this reading is compatible with an epistemological externalism.

The ‘I think’. What it is all about

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 101-139
Author(s):  
Gerhard Seel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Time Consciousness ◽  
Inner Sense ◽  
De Se ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Transcendental Apperception

Kant distinguishes two kinds of knowledge of one-self: empirical self-knowledge due to inner sense and a priori self-knowledge achieved by transcendental apperception. This conception encounters a host of problems. I try to solve these problems from the perspective of today’s phenomenology and analytical philosophy. I first introduce a new conception of inner sense and time-consciousness and argue that empirical self-knowledge must be based on the category of person, a category Kant did not list in his table of categories. I explain how the schematism of this category works. Then I introduce the a priori notion of the subject which corresponds to Kant’s ‘I think’. However, unlike Kant I hold that the notion of the subject is the notion of a being which has certain a priori capacities. Kant did not see that the term ‘I’ must be conceived of as an indexical. I argue that this indexical refers to both, the subject who does the thinking and the person who is thought. On this basis I give an answer to the question how genuine de-se knowledge is possible. I further defend—against Wittgenstein and others—the use of a private thought language. Finally, I show that what I have developed is—notwithstanding the refutation of important elements of Kant’s theory—still essentially a Kantian approach.

Tyler Burge's Self-Knowledge

2006 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Ted A. Warfield
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Ongoing Concern

The question of whether externalism about mental content is compatible with privileged access is a question of ongoing concern within philosophy of mind. Some philosophers think that Tyler Burge's early work on what he calls "basic self-knowledge" shows that externalism and privileged access are compatible. I critically assess this claim, arguing that Burge's work does not establish the compatbility thesis.

scholarly journals The epistemological moment of the search for the subject-object relationship in the formation of the religious experience of the individual

1998 ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
V. Yu. Kalmykov
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Main Criterion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Meaningful Existence ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Object Relationship

Religious experience differs from the empirical experience of the subject by psychologicality, the transcendental vitality of understanding objective phenomena. The main criterion of a person's religious experience is his belief in the truth of the existing a priori and the interrelations of things and phenomena of the objective and subjective world revealed to him in personal experience. Faith is a sense of the interconnection between the subject and the object, which has an experienced transcendental character. Human experience in this respect acts as a factor in the disclosure of depth and effectiveness: a subject-object relationship accepted on faith: the disclosure of the meaning and directions of its development relative to the object of faith; as a set of acts of self-knowledge in the context of the existence of the object and, only thanks to the object of faith, brought into a whole, meaningful existence. Thus, the self-knowledge of a person depends, first of all, on the choice of an object of faith for him, as the meaning of his development.

THE PROBLEM OF EXPRESSION NON-CATEGORICAL STATEMENTS IN LINGUISTIC TEXTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-97
Author(s):  
Nigora Mukhamedova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
Scientific Communication ◽  
Scientific Text ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Evaluative Attitude

The article deals with the issues based on the study of non-categorical statements in a linguistic text in modern English. The essence of scientific communication is a message, or the transmission by means of language of some mental content, including the expression of an intellectual-evaluative attitude to the subject of speech. The content of intellectual assessments is conditioned by knowledge and experience of intellectual and material activities of people.In a scientific text, this attitude can be the result of verifying the truth of what is expressed by the author himself or by another scientist or a team of researchers, as well as confirmation or refutation of apreviously formed assessment that served as the basis for further discussion

Educación y valores

2014 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Sabino de Juan López
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Problem Of The Criterion

RESUMEN En el artículo se ofrece una reflexión en torno a la educación y valores. Tras una referencia a los diferentes sentidos en que se puede plantear el problema en función de la forma como se puede entender la relación entre los dos sustantivos “educación” y “valores”, la reflexión se centra en algunos problemas relacionados con los valores en cuanto contenidos de la educación. Primeramente se refiere al problema del criterio en función del cual determinar los valores de la educación, concluyendo en que el criterio no podía ser ni de carácter a priori, ni empírico, sino “sintético”. A continuación, se afronta el problema del principio, de la fuente de los valores, o la concreción del criterio de los valores de la educación, entendiendo que éstos deberían ser determinados a partir del sujeto de la educación. Se concluye con la referencia a una exigencia de los valores de la educación, la configuración de una totalidad unitaria e interactiva. Palabras clave: educación, valores, fuente de valores, integración, cultura EDUCATION AND VALUES ABSTRACT The article offers a reflection on education and values. After a reference to the different senses in which one can pose the problem in terms of how you can understand the relationship between the two nouns “education” and “values”, reflection focuses on some problems related to the values in the contents of education. First, it concerns the problem of the criterion against which to determine the values of education, concluding that the criterion could be neither a priori in nature, not empirical, but “synthetic”. Herein, the problem of principle is faced, the source of values, or the realization of the criterion of the values of education, understanding that these should be determined from the subject of education. It concludes with the reference of a requirement of the values in education, setting up a unitary and interactive whole. Key Words: education, values , power values , integration, culture

Self and Selves

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph C.S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

Kant is committed to the reality of a subject self, outside time but active in forming experience. Timeless activity is problematic, but that can be dealt with. But he holds that the subject of experience is not an object of experience, so nothing can be known about it; this raises a problem about the status of his own theory. But he ought to allow that we can know of its existence and activity, as preconditions of experience: the Critique allows that synthetic a priori truths can be known in this way. However, its identity conditions remain unknowable. Kant’s unity of apperception shares much with Locke’s continuity of consciousness, but does not determine the identity of a thing. Personal identity is bodily identity. Only Kant’s moral philosophy justifies recognizing other selves; it could warrant ascribing a similar status to animals.

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