Externalism, Self-Knowledge, and Skepticism New Essays

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this collection of thirteen new essays explores the implications of semantic externalism for self-knowledge and skepticism, bringing recent developments in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and epistemology to bear on the issue. Structured in three parts, the collection looks at self-knowledge, content transparency, and then meta-semantics and the nature of mental content. The chapters examine a wide range of topics in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, including 2D semantics, transparency views of self-knowledge, and theories of linguistic understanding, as well as epistemological debates on contextualism, contrastivism, pragmatic encroachment, anti-luminosity arguments and testimony. The scope of the volume will appeal to graduate students and researchers in epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, cognitive science, psychology and linguistics.

Introduction Sanford C. Goldberg; Part I. Foundations of Self-Knowledge: 1. Luminosity and the KK thesis Robert Stalnaker; 2. Some questions about Burge's 'self-verifying judgments' Tony Brueckner; 3. Self-knowledge: the reality of privileged access Crispin Wright; 4. Contrastive self-knowledge and the McKinsey paradox Sarah Sawyer; Part II. Content Transparency: 5. Further thoughts on the transparency of mental content Paul Boghossian; 6. Counting concepts: reply to Paul Boghossian Mark Sainsbury and Michael Tye; 7. Internalism, externalism, and accessibilism Brie Gertler; 8. The insignificance of transparency Åsa Wikforss; 9. On knowing what thoughts one's utterances express Gary Ebbs; 10. Anti-individualism, comprehension, and self-knowledge Sanford C. Goldberg; Part III. Meta-Semantics and the Nature of Mental Content: 11. Externalism, self-knowledge, and memory Jordi Fernandez; 12. Externalism, metainternalism, and self-knowledge Jussi Haukioja; 13. Externalism, metasemantic contextualism, and self-knowledge Henry Jackman; Bibliography; Index.

Sanford C. Goldberg is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University, Illinois. His publications include Anti-Individualism (Cambridge, 2007), Relying on Others: An Essay in Epistemology (2010), and Assertion: On the Philosophical Significance of Assertoric Speech (2015).