Knowing the nature of one's mindan externalist basis for self-knowledge

Resumen

The leading idea of my thesis is that a thinker is what she is due to her being part of a wider reality. That means that one's thoughts about the world and one's thoughts about oneself maintain a constitutive relation to the world itself. Because of this, in order to identify psychological tokens, we shall be ready to take traits of such a reality into account. This is the essence of externalism, which is one of the two big issues of my dissertation. The other half of the story concerns issues about self-knowledge. My dissertation defends a compatibilist position and also tries to understand some of the consequences externalism imposes on an approach to self-knowledge. And my ultimate quest is to identify how self-knowledge could be understood within this framework while maintaining its central traits. My dissertation begins with a large introduction providing a unified picture of the thesis as a whole, which consists of six further, largely independent, chapters and a conclusion. The perplexity of finding out that one's own thoughts in fact don't depend only on oneself is partly dissolved through making explicit other forms of externalism and alternative accounts of self-knowledge. A relevant part of the first and of the last chapter explores, respectively, the plurality of these positions. The scope of externalist positions I study includes Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Timothy Williamson and John McDowell. And one of the parallel results reached by the first chapter is the classification of such positions into a matrix articulated in terms of the distinction between global and two-factor externalisms and of the contrast between extrinsic and constitutive externalisms. This classification provides a new way of charting the externalist landscape. It permits, for example, to relocate the difference between Putnam and Burge from the physical / social disjunction to the two-factor / global distinction. Such a matrix also provides new tools for understanding some of the important contrasts among other externalist positions. However, the main result achieved in the first chapter is the defense of a specific sort of externalism. Such a position holds that the entire mind -its mental states and contents- is partly individuated by external factors to one's skin. The contrast between narrow and broad contents is consequently discarded, but this doesn't mean that the subjective realm is itself dissolved. The externalism I sustain along the dissertation holds that it is possible to make room for subjectivity under global externalism. I take the notion of subjectivity to be closely related to the notion of self-knowledge acquired from first-person perspective. For this reason, the final result of keeping subjectivity within a global externalism is completed by the last chapter. Another important element of this externalist picture is the emphasis on the explanation of the externality of the mind in terms of the presence of knowledge: the mind is only conceivable as such once it is populated by knowledge. Extrinsic and constitutive externalisms correspond to two levels of explanation about the externality of the mind that are not incompatible. However, I defend the primacy of what I called 'constitutive externalism'. Appealing exclusively to causal relations between mind and world (as the extrinsic path does) only allows us to conceive mental states as a combination of an internal and of an external aspect to the mind. This makes it hard to understand how external factors to one's skin could really be part of one's mind. I deal with the incompatibilist debate between externalism and privileged self-knowledge in the fourth chapter. I outline that incompatibilism holds in very particular situations; for a relevant variety of externalist accounts and conceptions of self-knowledge, they are compatible. Reductio ad absurdum arguments show Putnam's externalism to be incompatible with self-knowledge acquired from first-person perspective. And the old detectivist model of self-knowledge is incompatible with an externalist conception of the mind, under the conditions designed by slow-switching cases. But, in principle, one need not choose between holding externalism and believing that we have some extent of privileged self-knowledge: other models of externalism and of self-knowledge coexist pacifically. The sort of externalism that I defend is different from Putnam's in various senses, including the aspect that makes Putnam's externalism incompatible with self-knowledge. For this reason, my position overcomes the incompatibilist challenge designed in terms of reductio ad absurdum arguments. The overall position defended in the dissertation also responds to the incompatibilist challenge designed in terms of slow-switching cases. The model of self-knowledge defended in the sixth chapter differs enormously from the old detectivist model. I defend that a model of self-knowledge should account for the double aspect of knowing one's own thoughts. I argue for the necessity of making room for first and third-person perspectives in order to understand how one revises, and consequently, how one knows one's own thoughts. Therefore, one relevant result reached in the last chapter was the defense of an account of self-knowledge composed of these two perspectives. The account of self-knowledge acquired by first-person perspective I defend is a hybrid model of expressivism that incorporates transparency. Avowals -self-ascriptions of mental states that are products of first-person perspective- are relevantly similar to non-linguistic expressions insofar as they directly express one's mental state. But, unlike non-linguistic expressions, avowals have a semantic structure. I defend that avowals, such as "I believe it is going to rain soon", express one's mental state (in this case, the mental state of believing that it is going to rain soon), express one's judgment about one's own mental state ("I believe it is going to rain soon") and exhibit transparency. In stating such a sentence, one is probably thinking in terms of first-order belief, i.e., one is thinking that it is going to rain. This amounts to a non-epistemic picture of first-person perspective. However, I consider self-knowledge and the related explanation of first-person authority as remaining epistemic in its roots. The explanation of first-person authority is the central result achieved in the last chapter. I argue that first-person authority should not be explained in terms of first-person perspective, but instead in terms of the person's epistemic advantage to know her own thoughts, which is composed of first-person perspective but also of the third-person one. For this reason, I insist that first-person authority is a person's attribute instead of a derivative attribute of avowals.