New Essays On Semantic Externalism And Self Knowledge

Essays on the consequences of semantic externalism for knowledge of mind and the empirical world and for our understanding of transmission of epistemic warrant by inference.

This collection of new essays explores the implications of semantic externalism for self-knowledge and skepticism.

This collection of new essays explores the implications of semantic externalism for self-knowledge and skepticism.

One of the most provocative projects in recent analytic philosophy has been the development of the doctrine of externalism, or, as it is often called, anti-individualism. While there is no agreement as to whether externalism is true or not, a number of recent investigations have begun to explore the question of what follows if it is true. One of the most interesting of these investigations thus far has been the question of whether externalism has consequences for the doctrine that we have authoritative, a priori self-knowledge of our mental states. The papers in this volume, some previously published, some new, are representative of this debate and open up new questions and issues for philosophical investigation, including the connection between externalism, self-knowledge, epistemic warrant, and memory.

Semantic externalism is the view that the meanings of referring terms, and the contents of beliefs that are expressed by those terms, are not fully determined by factors internal to the speaker but are instead bound up with the environment. The debate about semantic externalism is one of the most important but difficult topics in philosophy of mind and language, and has consequences for our understanding of the role of social institutions and the physical environment in constituting language and the mind. In this long-needed book, Jesper Kallestrup provides an invaluable map of the problem. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the theories of descriptivism and referentialism and the work of Frege and Kripke, Kallestrup moves on to analyse Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, Burge’s arthritis argument and Davidson’s Swampman argument. He also discusses how semantic externalism is at the heart of important topics such as indexical thoughts, epistemological skepticism, self-knowledge, and mental causation. Including chapter summaries, a glossary of terms, and an annotated guide to further reading, Semantic Externalism an ideal guide for students studying philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

New essays connecting recent scientific studies with traditional issues about the self explored by Descartes, Locke and Hume. Leading philosophers offer contrasting perspectives on the relation between consciousness and self-awareness, and the notion of personhood. Essential reading for philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and psychologists.

This book explores the internalism/externalism debate inherent in ontology and semantics from the point of view of phenomenology. The debate centres around whether or not the world bears a constitutive relation with the mind. Are meanings of terms to be found inside the head (intrinsic) or in the outside world (external)? The book elegantly introduces a way of resolving such queries, attending them from a range of perspectives, including the theory of description, the causal theory of reference, mental content, self-knowledge, first person perspective, being-in-the-world, and socio-linguistic background, among others. It thus presents a critical overview on the seminal works of prominent thinkers like Frege, Putnam, Searle, Fodor, Jackson, Block, Davidson, Quine, and Bilgrami. It begins by highlighting the groundwork of the theory of meaning and mind, and explores the location of content from the perspectives of the causal theory of reference and descriptivism. It then investigates how meaning theory represents the world and the mind in the contemporary debate, before looking at this debate from the philosophy of language and metaphysics standpoints. It finishes with an investigation of how internalism and externalism can be combined from the perspectives of holism and phenomenology. The book’s approach is distinctive in the sense that it formulates a reconciliation between both sides of this ongoing debate by inventing an Internalistic-externalism view from the perspectives of analytic trends and continental philosophy. It will be of interest not only to professional philosophers, linguists, researchers and graduates in the field, but also to the reader wishing to learn more about the mind-world relationship.