Chapter 7 - How We Make Our Ideas Clear: Epistemology for Empirical Concepts

Summary

THE COMPLAINT AGAINST EXTERNALISM

The view of substance concepts I am offering is an uncompromisingly externalist view. What makes a thought be about a certain substance is nothing merely in the mind, nor any mere disposition of the mind, not even a wide disposition, but the thought's origin – an external causal/historical relation between the concept and the substance (Section 4.8). But meaning externalism has recently come under heavy attack on the grounds that it leaves thinkers in no position to know themselves either what they are thinking about or whether they are genuinely thinking at all. And indeed, the best-known externalist theories all do seem to have this consequence. There is no necessity for an externalist thesis to have this consequence, however, and I propose to show how to avoid it.

What is needed to counter this entirely reasonable complaint against meaning externalism, I believe, is first an adequate account of what would constitute knowing what one is thinking of. If you are directly thinking about an external object, knowing what you are thinking of obviously cannot be done as Russell once described it, by having the object of thought literally within or before your conscious mind. Nor, a fortiori, can it be done by simultaneously holding your thought, or a thought of your thought, before your conscious mind, on the one hand, and comparing it with its object, also held before the mind, on the other. What on earth then could knowing what one was thinking about possibly be?