Semantic Externalism

In this paper I identify some unexplored implications of content externalism. The implications can be traced to the role that metaphysical realism plays in some of the standard arguments for content externalism. I do not regard these implications as undermining the case for externalism. I identify them, rather, as part of an attempt at honest accounting: the revisionary nature of content externalism may take us even further from some received views than many have heretofore assumed.

In this essay, I develop an interpretation of Wittgenstein as an advocate of what I call “embedded externalism.” Embedded externalism differs from other forms of externalism in that it treats linguistic practice as embedded within an encompassing environmental context and emphasizes that such practice is, not only interrelated with, but indeed intimately attuned to the encompassing environmental context within which it is situated (cf. Haugeland 1995). Though externalists have been right to criticize the Cartesian conception of the mind as a self-enclosed interiority, they have all too frequently remained wed to distorting traditional philosophical presuppositions. Among these I count the following: the privilege of theoretical cognition over practical-existential involvement and the privilege of the designative over the expressive dimensions of linguistic practice (cf. Taylor 1985). Because of this, however, externalists have generally missed the ways in which linguistic practice is intimately attuned to the world. By
contrast, I will argue in this essay that Wittgenstein presents a compelling alternative to other externalist theories in which precisely the intimacy between language and world is insisted upon.

ProtoSociology occupies an important position in the European intellectual scene, bridging philosophy, economics, sociology and related disciplines. Its volumes on rationality bring together concerns in all these topics, and present an important challenge to the cognitive sciences. Donald Davidson ProtoSociology is a truly premier interdisciplinary journal that publishes articles and reviews on timely topics written by and for a wide range of international scholars.

Roger Gibson

The attack on content-externalism on the grounds that it is incompatible with content-transparency has been much debated over the decades. The first line of argumentation claims that content-externalism undermines the a priori authoritative self-knowledge or the authority of the first-person. According to content-externalism, the content of mental states is determined, in part, by the non-intentional relations that the subject has with her/his environment. Given this, the content of the subject's mental state could change without her/his knowledge under the assumption that the subject undergoes undetectable environmental changes, say, from Earth to Twin-Earth and vice-versa. Thus, if content-externalism is right, one can never authoritatively know a priori whether one is now thinking about water or twater. According to Burge, however, content-externalism is not a threat to cogito-like thoughts, that is, second-order contemporaneous thoughts about one's first-order thoughts. Without the need for any empirical enquiry or any epistemic self-justification, the introspective second-order thought "Inherits," so to speak, the content of the first-order thought by embedding it. If some Earthian's first-order thought "water quenches thirst" refers to H 2 O rather than to XYZ, his introspective second-order thought "I know that I am thinking that water quenches thirst" also refers to H 2 O (instead of XYZ) because the first-order thought is embedded in the introspective second-order thought. Abstract In this paper I take side on externalist incompatibilism. However, I intend to radicalize the position. First, based on my criticism of Burge's anaphoric proposal, I argue that there is no reasoning-transparency: the reasoner is blind to the reasoning he is performing. Second, assuming a global form of content-externalism, I argue that "in the head" are only logical and formal abilities. That is what I call "bite the bullet and swallow it too." K E Y W O R D S content-externalism, content-transparency, dangerous reasonings,

Le séminaire sera essentiellement consacré à une lecture suivie de l'ouvrage de Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (trad.fr. La logique des noms propres). Avec les travaux d'Hilary Putnam, cet ouvrage constitue un tournant dans la philosophie contemporaine auquel on a pu donné le nom de « nouvelles théories de la référence » ou celui d'« externalisme sémantique ». Non seulement Kripke y délivre une critique des plus radicales des conceptions classiques (i.e. descriptivistes) de la signification et de la référence mais il remet également en cause l'équivalence, héritée de Kant, entre nécessaire et a priori. Il nous faudra alors comprendre quels sont les rapports entre sa reconfiguration des relations entre le nécessaire et l'a priori (il existe du nécessaire a posteriori tout comme il existe du contingent a priori) et sa critique de l'image descriptiviste de la signification et de la référence et du solipsisme qui la sous-tend.

The traditional Web stores huge amount of data in the form of Relational Databases (RDB) as it is good at storing objects and relationships between them. Relational Databases are dynamic in nature which allows bringing tables together helping user to search for related material across multiple tables. RDB are scalable to expand as the data grows. The RDB uses a Structured Query Language called SQL to access the databases for several data retrieval purposes. As the world is moving today from the Syntactic form to Semantic form and the Web is also taking its new form of Semantic Web. The Structured Query of the RDB on web can be a Semantic Query on Semantic Web. The SPARQL is the Query Language recommended by W3C for the RDF(Resource Description Framework). RDF is a directed, labeled graph data format for representing information in the Web and is a very important layer of the Semantic Web Architecture. In this paper we consider the Library Management System (LMS) database, taking some tuples of the LMS Relational Schema. We discuss how the RDF code is scripted and validated using RDF Validator and how RDF Triples are generated. Later we give the graphical representation of the RDF triples and see the process of extracting ontology from the RDF Schema and application of the Semantic Query.

Factualismo versus não-factualismo do significado no Wittgenstein de Kripke Saul A. Kripke, em seu livro Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, afirma que Wittgenstein desenvolve uma nova forma de ceticismo, o ceticismo semântico. De acordo com esse ceticismo, não há fatos que constituem o significado. Contudo, isso não quer dizer que a linguagem não é significativa. Isso porque, na interpretação de Kripke, o significado deve ser explicado em termos de condições de assertibilidade e não em termos de condições de verdade. Tal afirmação teve ampla repercussão e gerou uma série de interessantes discussões entre os comentadores do texto. Uma das mais representativas e um pouco mais recente diz respeito a se a solução cética, que explica o significado apelando às condições de assertibilidade, compromete-se ou não com um não-factualismo das atribuições de significado. Durante muito tempo considerouse que seu posicionamento se comprometia sim com o não-factualismo. À grande maioria dos comentadores parecia natural considerar que se é verdadeiro que "João significa adição por '+"', então há um fato sobre o modo como João usa suas palavras. Assim, quando aceita que não há fatos que constituem o significado, a solução cética parece estar claramente comprometida com o não-factualismo. E já que o nãofactualismo caracteriza-se pela ausência de condições de verdade, como podemos determinar quais enunciados são verdadeiros? De acordo com os comentadores (P. Boghossian, C. Wright, entre outros), se é desse modo não-factualista que o Wittgenstein de Kripke concebe as atribuições de significado, então a solução cética não pode ser de fato uma solução, pois o não-factualismo é problemático e, até mesmo, incoerente. No entanto, há poucos anos surgiram alguns trabalhos (A. Byrne, G. Wilson, M. Kusch) que contestam essa interpretação da solução cética. Segundo eles, o Wittgenstein de Kripke não deixa de ser um factualista por recusar a existência de fatos. Isso porque os fatos que ele rejeita são aqueles exigidos pelos realistas clássicos (os chamados 'fatos superlativos'). Desse modo, permanecem em ordem os fatos compreendidos em um sentido mais básico e intuitivo de "fato". Entendendo de modo mais preciso o que é que Kripke está tomando por "fato" não nos conduzirá, segundo esses novos trabalhos, à interpretação equivocada de que o Wittgenstein de Kripke é um não-factualista.

The aim of the paper is to present the main conceptions in the cotemporary philosophy of mind. The debate is narrated in two ways: The first approach concerns the ontology of mind, with the questions such as: What is the nature of mind?; What is the relation between mind and body?; Is the mind reducible to its physical basis? The second approach has an epistemological character where
especially the problem of self-knowledge in the frame of the discussion between externalism and internalism is pointed out. The last part of the article gives an evaluation of the actual situation in the philosophy of mind which on the one hand tries to evolve in the direction of cognitive science but on the other hand stays in the frame of the traditional philosophy. The reason of it is the nature of the questions, which cannot be answered only by means of scientific disciplines.
It means that in contrast to the cognitive science the philosophical account of the mind-body problem is the preferred one.

Keywords
Philosophy of mind, mind-body problem, externalism, internalism, cognitive sciences

This paper re-examines how C.I. Lewis’s pragmatic realism in Mind and the World Order (1929, ‘MWO’) contrasts to logical empiricism, and to Lewis’s later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946, ‘AKV’), to highlight several important philosophical points Lewis clearly understood and argued for in MWO, which we need to recover today. MWO is expressly an ‘Outline of a Theory of Knowledge’; nevertheless, it provides several important lessons about human knowledge, action and our worldly context. These are highlighted by contrast to some key points in Carnap’s empiricist semantics (§2) and by considering a point important to scientific realism, not properly accommodated by Carnap’s semantics: Reichenbach’s (1920, 1922) ‘coördination’ (Zuordnung) principles – a very important point about scientific measurement procedures, central both to Peirce and to MWO (§3). These coördinating principles for exact scientific measurements highlight the contrast between the meta-linguistic ‘relative a priori’ admissible by empiricist semantics (Friedman 1999, 2001), and Lewis’ robustly realist ‘pragmatic a priori’ in MWO. I re-examine key features of MWO (§4), including Lewis’s rejection of mythical givenness and of a series of false dichotomies which still plague current discussions of epistemology, pragmatism and history and philosophy of science.

The aim of the paper is to present the main conceptions in the contemporary philosophy of mental (mind). The debate is narrated in two ways: The first approach concerns the ontology of mental, with the questions such as: What is the nature of mental?; What is the relation between mental and body?; Is the mental  reducible to its physical basis? The second approach has an epistemological character where especially the problem of self-knowledge in the frame of the discussion between
externalism and internalism is pointed out. The last part of the article gives an evaluation of the actual situation in the philosophy of mind which on the one hand tries to evolve in the direction of cognitive science but on the other hand stays in the frame of the traditional philosophy. The reason of it is the nature of the questions, which cannot be answered only by means of scientific disciplines.
It means that in contrast to the cognitive science the philosophical account of the mind-body problem is the preferred one.


Keywords
Philosophy of mental, (mind), mind-body problem, externalism, internalism, cognitive sciences

The Twin Earth scenario assumes reference to natural kinds is unique and never changes (rigid designation), and that we can give justice to the intuition of reference-permanence and things having a deep structure only by pushing meaning outside the brain or mind (semantic externalism). This, I'll show, doesn't follow. Besides, the intuition itself is misconstrued here. To say the term “water” expressed a thought or concept or belief denoting H2O before its actual discovery around 1750, is to make a claim without real content and be guilty of after-the-fact rationalizing. If anything, Twin Earth undercuts the theory of semantic externalism and its core-notion of rigid designation. A pluralized, descriptivist model of reference, I claim, is a better fit for our scientific data and ordinary intuitions either way.

This thesis aims at laying the groundwork for a research program in philosophy of mind by arguing for two theoretical positions, internalism and representationalism (intentionalism), which are rarely defended jointly, but which together can form the basis for a plausible theory of the mind.

The first chapter argues for internalism against the dominant externalist view. Firstly, it is discussed what the best way is to elucidate the debate between internalism and externalism rooted in the Twin Earth thought experiment. (Putnam 1975) It is argued that the issue between internalists and externalists is whether concrete items that stand in a referential relation to mental states are among the constitutive bases of mental states. The Dry Earth thought experiment (Boghossian 1998) is introduced to make a case for internalism, relying on concepts that do not refer. Externalist counter-arguments are introduced and rejected.

The second chapter argues for representationalism/intentionalism against qualia theory. It is argued that there are no mental qualities (qualia) that account for the qualitative aspects of phenomenology. What do account for the qualitative aspects of phenomenology are apparent qualities of the intentional objects of conscious experiences, the qualities the world is represented as having by the experiences. Three sets of arguments for qualia are introduced and rejected. The first set of arguments are the type of arguments that are variants of the argument from error, which are rejected by an intentionalist analysis of mentality, and an epistemology of experience is developed where experience provides an acquaintance relation between a subject and something abstract such as a possibility. This makes it unnecessary to postulate epistemic relations both to concretely instantiated items in the environment and to mental items such as qualia or sense-data. Arguments based on allegedly non-representational states such as double vision and afterimages are shown to fail by demonstrating that such states are non-endorsed representations. Arguments that rely on spectrum inversion cases where representational content allegedly differs while qualitative phenomenology stays the same are rejected by arguing against the account of representation that underlies such arguments. (The order of the two chapters is largely arbitrary, though a rejection of externalism is useful in arguing against the argument from spectrum inversion.)

The account is completed by briefly discussing and rejecting the disjunctivist theory of perception, and some other motivations for externalism such as externalism’s advantage in providing a naturalistic account of mentality is discussed. The thesis concludes by pointing at the naturalistic prospects for an account of mentality that analyses mental states as representational states while the representational content is based neither on mental qualities like qualia, nor on causal-informational relations to environmental items. I further speculate about the role of powers and dispositions of organisms that might underpin a future naturalistic analysis of mentality, and also consider the plausibility of a mysterian account of mind where the special mystery regarding the explanatory gap about consciousness is downgraded by suggesting that explanatory gaps might be widespread in nature, such as in our failure to logically link qualities like color and sound as we experience them to the lower-level physical phenomena they supervene on.

I offer an explicit account of the underdetermination thesis as well as of the many challenges it poses to scientific realism; a way to answer to these challenges is explored and outlined, by shifting attention to the content of theories. I argue that, even if we have solid grounds (as I contend we do) to support that some varieties of the underdetermination thesis are true, scientific realism can still offer an adequate picture of the aims and achievements of science.

Available via the following link: https://www.revue-klesis.org/

TABLE DES MATIÈRES

1. « Introduction. Sur l’unité de la pensée de Hilary Putnam », p. 1
    Henri Wagner
2. « Un pluralisme pragmatique positif », p. 51
    Juliet Floyd
3. « Vérité conceptuelle, nécessité et négation », p. 65
    Jean-Philippe Narboux
4. « Putnam est-il un traître ? », p. 113
    Denis Bonnay
5. « “Mind Ain’t in the Head”. Introduction à John McDowell, “Putnam,
  l’esprit et la signification” », p. 139
    Henri Wagner
6. « Putnam, l’esprit et la signification », p. 159
    John McDowell
7. « Réponse à John McDowell », p. 177
    Hilary Putnam
8. « Putnam et McDowell sur les objets de l’introspection », p. 183 
    Michaël Murez
9. « Putnam sur l’expérience consciente », p. 219 
    Pascal Ludwig
10. « Qu’est-ce qui compte comme une version du monde ? Une
      contribution de Putnam
      Quentin Kammer

La troisième section de l'introduction (p. 41-50) présente de manière détaillée les contributions du numéro et fournit quelques éléments de bibliographie introductive à la pensée de H. Putnam / The third and last section of the introduction (p. 41-50) presents in detail the several contributions to the issue and provides some bibliographical indications.

Abstract:  This article uses a semantic externalist method to inquire about the meaning of political evaluative concepts such as democracy. Semantic externalism postulates that the content of what we think and mean is determined not simply by intrinsic facts about us, but also in part by facts about our environment. To have a better understanding of the concepts we use we, therefore, need to investigate scientifically the nature of our world. Although semantic externalism was primarily applied to natural kinds and proper names, Sally Haslanger recently used this framework for social kinds like race and gender, arguing that those terms could best be understood as capturing social practices instead of biological differences. To apply semantic externalism on political concepts I propose a three-stage method. The first step aims to select the extension of the term by focusing on its common use. The second entails an empirical investigation in the nature of the objects that form the category. In addition, theories that assign a valuable aspect to democracy need to show how the nature of democracy is causally linked to why it could be seen as valuable. Third, to select between empirically equally adequate theories we can use contextual value judgment to select the understanding that is most useful for the task at hand. I argue that these steps enable us to have an epistemically more robust understanding of the concepts we use in political science.

This book defends a conception of the mind that is inspired by some of Descartes's writings. The crucial feature of the Cartesian view defended is not dualism — which is not adopted here — but internalism about the mind. Internalism is opposed to the widely accepted thesis of externalism, which states that some mental features constitutively depend on features of our physical and social environment. In contrast, this book defends the minority internalist view that the mind is autonomous with respect to its environment: although it is obviously influenced by things in the environment, this influence is merely contingent and does not delimit what is thinkable in principle. The first part of the book argues that privileged accessibility is the mark of the mental, and that this thesis is strongly tied to criteria of personhood. The second part argues that internalism is best formulated as the thesis that mental features are determined by the phenomenal properties of our conscious mental life, and that the externalist denial of this thesis is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge. Hence, externalism is in conflict with the conception of the mind and personhood defended in the first part of the book. Supporters of the externalist view often present their theory as the most thoroughgoing criticism of the Cartesian conception of the mind; this book answers these criticisms and argues for an uncompromising internalist Cartesian theory of the mind. An analytical table of contents is included here.

William of Ockham frequently mentions a distinction between two modes of cognition: in se and in alio. The aim of this chapter is to show that this distinction raises some important problems for his philosophy of mind and more broadly for his nominalism. The main issue is the possibility of an externalist theory of mental contents. For, Ockham affirms that no material substance is cognized in se. But if only accidents are cognized in se does this mean that material substances are necessarily cognized in alio? How could this “something else” lead us to the cognition of something we have never experienced? The difficulty here is how we should understand his view concerning the acquisition of simple substance concepts like “man” or “horse.” On the one hand it seems that we have no direct acquaintance with substances. On the other hand, he says that these concepts, equivalent to simple natural kind terms in the mind, directly refer to singular substances thanks to external relations of causality and likeness, on which their signification is based. This chapter suggests that the evolution of Ockham’s theory of concepts during his career is probably the key for our understanding of this crucial distinction.

The creative aspect of language use provides a set of phenomena that a science of language must explain. It is the “central fact to which any significant linguistic theory must address itself” and thus “a theory of language that neglects this ‘creative’ aspect is of only marginal interest” (Chomsky 1964: 7–8). Therefore, the form and explanatory depth of linguistic science is restricted in accordance with this aspect of language. In this paper, the implications of the creative aspect of language use for a scientific theory of language will be discussed, noting the possible further implications for a science of the mind. It will be argued that a corollary of the creative aspect of language use is that a science of language can study the mechanisms that make language use possible, but that such a science cannot explain how these mechanisms enter into human action in the form of language use.

Apesar do externalismo semântico de Putnam encontrar ampla aceitação, nem sempre se vê claramente que as contribuições de Putnam à semântica e à filosofia da mente são frutos de argumentos cuidadosos, em vez de serem frutos próximos da ficção científica de uma mente muito fértil e irriquieta. Tendo em vista esse quadro de recepção da obra de Putnam, o presente artigo reconstrói detalhadamente o principal argumento de Putnam em favor do externalismo semântico, e mostra como o mesmo tem impacto em outro argumento de Putnam sobre a intencionalidade.

Wie denken und sprechen wir eigentlich über einzelne Objekte in Raum und Zeit? Diese Frage rührt gleichermaßen an Grundprobleme der neueren sprachanalytischen Philosophie und der transzendentalen Phänomenologie Husserls. Unter dem Titel 'Konstitutionsproblem' begegnet sie uns dort in folgendem Gewand: Wie bringen wir es zuwege, ein raumzeitliches Objekt über eine Zeitspanne und über eine Reihe von kognitiven Perspektivenwechseln hinweg 'im Sinn' zu behalten? Der Autor unternimmt den Versuch, das Konstitutionsproblem in einer Art und Weise zu verfolgen, die methodisch sowohl für Sprachanalytiker als auch für Phänomenologen akzeptabel ist.

"Recently internalists have mounted a counter-attack on the attempt to redefine the bounds of cognition. The counter-attack is aimed at a radical project which I call ‘‘cognitive integration,’’ which is the view that internal and external vehicles and
processes are integrated into a whole. Cognitive integration can be defended against the internalist counter arguments of Adams and Aizawa (A&A) and Rupert. The disagreement between internalists and integrationists is whether the manipulation of external vehicles constitutes a cognitive process. Integrationists think that they do, typically for reasons to do with the close coordination and causal interplay between internal and external processes. The internalist criticisms of the manipulation thesis fail because they misconstrue the nature of manipulation, ignore the hybrid nature of cognition, and take the manipulation thesis to be dependent upon a weak parity principle."

In his post-Tractatus work on natural language use, Wittgenstein defended the notion of what he dubbed the autonomy of grammar. According to this thought, grammar -or semantics, in a more recent idiom -is essentially autonomous from metaphysical considerations, and is not answerable to the nature of things. The argument has several related incarnations in Wittgenstein's post-Tractatus writings, and has given rise to a number of important insights, both critical and constructive. In this paper I will argue for a potential connection between Wittgenstein's autonomy argument and some more recent internalist arguments for the autonomy of semantics. My main motivation for establishing this connection comes from the fact that the later Wittgenstein's comments on grammar and meaning stand in opposition to some of the core assumptions of semantic externalism.

In Our knowledge of the internal world, Robert Stalnaker presents a sophisticated new defense of a radically externalist and contextualist approach to mental content. These comments focus on Stalnaker’s claim that fine-grained representational states like concepts play no role in explaining subjects’ access to the sameness or difference of their own thought contents. Stalnaker’s interpretive principles, I argue, commit him to positing something like representational structure at the cognitive level. And once he does so, there are strong reasons to posit conceptual structure at the semantic level as well. Recognizing conceptual structure, moreover, is compatible with Stalnaker’s broader externalist agenda.

This paper proposes a relational account concepts and explains how the model fits normative terms like 'is right'. Our connectedness model builds social and historical facts into the foundations of concept identity. This aspect of the model, we argue, reshapes normative epistemology and provides new resources for a vindication of realism in ethics.

In this paper, I argue that an adequate meta-semantic framework capable of accommodating the range of projects currently identified as projects in conceptual engineering must be sensitive to the fact that concepts (and hence projects relating to them) fall into distinct kinds. Concepts can vary, I will argue, with respect to their direction of determination, their modal range, and their temporal range. Acknowledging such variations yields a preliminary taxonomy of concepts and generates a meta-semantic framework that allows us both to accommodate the full range of cases and to identify a proper subset of concepts for special ameliorative consideration. Ignoring such variations, in contrast, leads to a restricted meta-semantic framework that accommodates only a subset of the particular projects while generating implausible accounts of others.

I will explore some philosophical implications generated from Williamson's thesis that knowing is a state of mind (KSM). By using the fake barn case, I introduce a way to evaluate Williamson's KSM thesis— whether Williamsonian mental state of knowing can be plausibly distinguished from some other apparently similar but epistemologically distinctive states of mind (i.e., accidentally true beliefs). Then, some tentative externalist accounts for the supposed differences between Williamsonian mental state of knowing, and accidentally true beliefs are critically assessed, which in turn implies that the evaluated traditional versions of externalism in semantics and epistemology do not fit well with Williamson's thesis KMS. In the end, I suggest that the extended-mind or extended-knower approach may be more promising, which indicates that the active externalism would be called for by Williamson's KMS thesis.

The main aim of the conference is to present the new approaches to the problem of consciousness and rationality and to provide an effective dialog between disciplines and the different fields of philosophy, which can be fruitful for the solving of general problems of cognition. There are many reasons why the question of the conjunction between self-consciousness and rationality is important. The main and general is the problem of the compatibility between thoughts and acts. Still the following questions need to be answered: Is there a relationship between pre-reflectivity and rational thinking? Is phenomenal subjectivity non-representational? How is pre-reflectivity to implement in cognitive-architecture? Does phenomenal consciousness have a priority over other mental states and actions? The notions of consciousness and rationality have their own long philosophical history of use. That is why the conference will start with the block of presentations devoted to the question of the problem of consciousness and rationality in the light of the classic philosophical theories especially with reference to modern philosophy. In the following blocks the core of presentations will be shifted to contemporary conceptions combining philosophy and cognitive science.

The Realist that investigates questions of ontology by appeal to the quantifi cational structure of language assumes that the semantics for the privileged language of ontology is externalist. I argue that such a language cannot be (some variant of) a natural language, as some Realists propose. The fl exibility exhibited by natural language expressions noted by Chomsky and others cannot obviously be characterized by the rigid models available to the externalist. If natural languages are hostile to externalist treatments, then the meanings of natural language expressions serve as poor guides for ontological investigation, insofar as their meanings will fail to determine the referents of their constituents. This undermines the Realist's use of natural languages to settle disputes in metaphysics.

[Excerpts from the penultimate draft. Includes the front matter, the first section of the preamble, and chapter 1.] *Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind* attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. The worry is that we critical thinkers are all in “epistemic bad faith” in light of what psychology tells us. For the research shows not merely that we are bad at detecting “ego-threatening” thoughts à la Freud. It also indicates that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts—e.g., reasons for our moral judgments of others (Haidt 2001), and even mundane reasons for buying one pair of stockings over another! (Nisbett & Wilson 1977) However: Self-reflection presupposes an ability to know what one thinks in the first place. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? The activity would just show naivety about psychology. Yet while respecting all the data, this book argues that, remarkably, we are infallible in a (limited) range self-discerning judgments. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and there is no Cartesian ambition to provide a “foundation” for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible.

Available via the following link:
https://academic.oup.com/monist/article/103/4/381/5905781?guestAccessKey=20778f31-6b16-4f51-b084-0f50cb549500
This essay aims to explore the significance of Hilary Putnam’s reflections on the division of linguistic labor by putting them into contrast with those of Gareth Evans. Whereas Putnam’s reflections purport to uncover neglected aspects of the contribution of social environment to the meaning and the reference-fixing of conceptual terms, Evans’s reinterpretation of the division of linguistic labor results in obliterating its antisubjectivist and instrumentalist dimension. The crux of the disagreement between Putnam and Evans on the significance of the division of linguistic labor lies in Evans endorsing, while Putnam rejects, the principle of discrimination—a generalization of what Evans calls “Russell’s principle.”

In his 1975 paper "The Meaning of 'Meaning,'" Hilary Putnam famously argued for semantic externalism. Little attention has been paid, however, to the fact that already in 1973, Putnam had presented the idea of the linguistic division of labor and the Twin Earth thought experiment in his comment on Wilfrid Sellars's "Meaning as Functional Classification" at a conference, and Sellars had replied to Putnam from a broadly inferentialist perspective. The first half of this paper aims to trace the development of Putnam's semantic externalism, situate his debate with Sellars in it, and reconstruct the two arguments he presented against Sellars. The second half of this paper aims to reconstruct how Sellars replied to Putnam. I argue that Sellars not only accepts the social character of language but also suggests how inferentialists can accommodate the contribution of the world. Sellars's key idea is that substance terms have a "promissory note aspect" which is to be cashed out in a successor conceptual framework. I reconstruct Sellars's position as ideal successor externalism, and compare it with temporal externalism.

There is a wide-spread picture of the mental as something inner—a view whose influence on our thinking about the mind is so pervasive and tenacious that it often goes unnoticed. Even though its impact goes well beyond any explicit statement or doctrine, we shall broadly call it Cartesian internalism. Cartesian internalism can be regarded as the combination of two distinct, but closely connected individualist theses: the location claim, that any mental state is spatially located inside the boundaries of the subject that undergoes it; and the possession claim, that the possession of a mental property by a subject does not depend on any feature that is external to the boundaries of that subject. Externalist views have in common their rejection of at least one of the two central pillars of the internalist orthodoxy. But they differ importantly in terms of what theoretical role they assign to the physical and social environment in understanding mental phenomena. In this seminar, we shall discuss the nature and plausibility of three representative strains of recent externalist theorizing in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science: linguistic externalism, content externalism, and vehicle externalism.

abstract Donald Davidson's unified theory of language and action can be understood as a continuation of the traditional analytic approach within philosophy of language and action. In the following we give an outline of some of the main themes of his philosophy centered around his core theory of radical inter-pretation (RI). His theory of rationality, his thesis of the anomalousness of the mental, and the externalist approach in his model of triangulation all follow in a systematic way from RI. Yet, Davidson's philosophy can also be seen as giving a new systematic elaboration of central perspectives of W.v.O Quine´s theory of language. In order to follow Davidson´s main theses one therefore has to clarify the main differences and correspondences between both approaches.