9. What the Externalist Can Know A Priori

Author: Boghossian, Paul A.

Source: Knowing Our Own Minds, October 2000 , pp. 271-285(15)

Publisher: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs

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Abstract:

Compatibilism combines an externalist view of mental content with a doctrine of privileged self-knowledge. The essay presentsa reductio of compatibilism by arguing that if compatibilism were true, we would be in a position to know certain facts about the world a priori, facts that no one can reasonably believe are knowable a priori. Whether this should be taken to cast doubt on externalism or privileged self-knowledge is not discussed. Consideration is given to the ’empty case’—the case in which a thinker expresses what he takes to be a genuine thought concerning a natural kind but where there is in fact no relevant natural kind, so that the putative natural kind term fails to refer. It is argued that, in such a case, on an externalist conception of natural kind terms, the thinker is deluded in taking himself to be expressing a complete thought, and that such delusions are not compatible with privileged self-knowledge.

Keywords: a priori knowledge; earth; dry; externalism; compatiblism; privileged self-knowledge

Document Type: Research article

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