the mit press new essays on semantic externalism and self-knowledge jun 2003

[...]... would after all transmit from premises to conclusion in the original McKinsey argument, while failing to transmit in the extended McKinsey argument, whose conclusion states what, given externalism, is a known necessary condition for freedom from content illusion McKinsey’s original conclusion, on the other hand, merely identifies the watery stuff in the thinker’s environment as water, and this, even if... propositions containing those concepts But suppose one grants that the premises of the McKinsey argument are a priori Still more is needed to get the incompatibilist reductio off the ground For there remains the larger issue of whether the epistemic status of premises about one’s own propositional-attitude contents and their externalist entailments can transmit to the conclusion of the argument If the principle... of that conditional argument turns on the plausibility of the new theory of reference Yet, when taken to consist in a causal account of reference together with an account of meaning that incorporates modes of presentation (see Evans 1982), the new theory of reference appears plausible Besides, when broadly construed, it need not be committed to the stronger, and therefore more controversial, theses of... construed Under some construals, McLaughlin contends, the warrant for believing the premises of the (valid) McKinsey argument would rest in part on an entitlement to presuppose the truth of the conclusion In these cases warrant would fail to transmit Yet, under other construals, warrant might transmit from premises to conclusion, and the antiskeptical strategy could then get off the ground If McKinsey... full-blooded notion of self-knowledge The essays in this volume make clear that the debate about the compatibility of externalism and privileged self-knowledge has triggered interesting developments in the literature on a priori knowledge, the transmission of epistemic warrant, question-begging reasoning, the semantics of natural-kind terms, and other issues crucial to epistemology and philosophy of mind and language... proposition, i.e., a proposition that wouldn’t exist if London, one of its constituents, didn’t exist 15 One could consistently deny that there is a reductio facing the attempt to hold externalism and privileged self-knowledge, and maintain that skepticism about the latter follows from the former But one could also consistently deny that skepticism about self-knowledge follows from externalism and maintain... premises and the acceptance of warrant for the availability to one’s thought of one of the propositions expressed by a premise cannot be rationally combined with doubt about the truth of its conclusion If, as Davies maintains, these three attitudes are elicited by McKinsey’s argument, then, given the Second Limitation Principle (here revised to accommodate counterexamples to a previous version), there... argument needed to generate the paradox of externalism and self-knowledge He now holds that the warrant a thinker has to the premises of McKinsey’s argument does transmit to the conclusion A priori entitlements to such premises stem from a presumption of the integrity of concepts used to make certain self-knowledge claims and a presumption of the satisfaction of certain external conditions necessary for that... would, on this view, fail to transmit to the conclusion Given externalism, scenarios such as Dry Earth and Twin Earth provide some such conditions for premises containing certain concepts Crucial to the paradox generated by McKinsey’s argument is a further conclusion ruling out content illusion, which amounts to ruling out that the thinker belongs to a speech community that has never encountered either... person, yet supervene on factors external to that person In the context of this debate, the ‘inside/outside’ distinction is, of course, a metaphor As famously argued by Donald Davidson (1987), although a sunburn supervenes on what caused it, it is nonetheless a condition ‘‘in’’ one’s skin Given externalism, having the belief that water is wet or the fear 4 Susana Nuccetelli that one has arthritis in one’s . alt="" New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge This page intentionally left blank New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self-Knowledge edited by Susana Nuccetelli A Bradford Book The. sunburn supervenes on what caused it, it is nonetheless a condition ‘‘in’’ one’s skin. Given externalism, having the belief that water is wet or the fear Introduction 3 that one has arthritis in one’s thigh. recording, and information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in New Baskerville on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong, and was printed and bound