Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART I FIRST–PERSON AUTHORITY
- PART II THE BASIC AND EXTENDED ACCOUNTS
- PART III SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND CONTENT EXTERNALISM
- 8 Arguments from content externalism
- 9 Deflationary self-knowledge: Davidson and Burge
- 10 Externalism and first-person authority
- 11 Psychological properties as secondary
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Deflationary self-knowledge: Davidson and Burge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART I FIRST–PERSON AUTHORITY
- PART II THE BASIC AND EXTENDED ACCOUNTS
- PART III SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND CONTENT EXTERNALISM
- 8 Arguments from content externalism
- 9 Deflationary self-knowledge: Davidson and Burge
- 10 Externalism and first-person authority
- 11 Psychological properties as secondary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Donald Davidson is one philosopher who attempts to give an account of our first-person authority over our own propositional attitudes. Tyler Burge is another. Davidson and Burge share a common preoccupation with first-person authority. Both are externalists about the content of psychological states. Both believe that the content of a psychological state can vary independently of variations in the intrinsic features of one who is in that state. In addition, Davidson and Burge accept that we have firstperson authority over psychological states whose content is externally determined. As a result, they are both concerned to show that the apparent conflict between ETC and first-person authority is only apparent.
In the last chapter I gave three arguments from ETC against first-person authority. The first was the argument from counterfeit error. It goes like this. If the content of a thought is determined by external circumstances, we might have a false belief that we entertain a certain thought because the thought we actually entertain has a content determined by the wrong external circumstances. I believe that I think that water is wet. I may be mistaken because I am on Twin Earth, and there believe that twater is wet. Davidson and Burge only explicitly consider the argument from counterfeit error. Davidson and Burge do not simply respond to the argument from counterfeit error, but venture accounts of first-person authority. For that reason, I will set Davidson and Burge s replies to the argument from counterfeit error in the context of their overall discussion of first-person authority.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The World Without, the Mind WithinAn Essay on First-Person Authority, pp. 161 - 177Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996