This collection explores Tyler Burge’s advocacy of
anti-individualism, externalism, and basic self-knowledge.  The papers are
drawn mainly from a conference hosted by the Department of Philosophy at the University
of Granada in Spain on May 23-25, 1996.  Also included are Burge’s replies to
each paper, this clearly being one of the book’s greatest assets.

      The opening paper,
"Social Externalism and Linguistic Communication", by Christopher
Gauker attempts to show that Burge’s social externalism (characterized by
Gauker as the view that the content of a person’s thought is relative to the way
words are used in the surrounding linguistic community) when combined with ‘the
expressive theory of communication’ (according to which the primary function of
language is to enable speakers to convey the contents of their beliefs to
hearers) produces a vicious explanatory circularity: the way words are used is
explained (by the expressivist) by appeal to mental content, and mental content
is explained (by the externalist) by appeal to the way words are used.  Burge
responds that he has never subscribed to what Gauker calls ‘the expressive
theory of communication’, and that, moreover, Gauker has distorted his
(Burge’s) conception of social externalism.

      The next paper, Tobies
Grimaltós’ "Terms and Content", is a defence of the view that
"the meaning of the terms we use in thinking or in expressing a thought
does not always determine (not even partially) the content of the thought we
have" (p.36), a thesis which €“ perhaps to the surprise of Grimaltós €“
Burge notes he had accepted from early on (p.251).  The third contribution,
"On Orthodox and Heterodox Externalisms" by Jorge Rodríguez Marqueze,
deals only indirectly with Burge’s work.  Marqueze’s principal concern is to
show that the externalist theory defended by Gregory McCulloch in The Mind
and Its World (London: Routledge, 1995) is open to the criticisms voiced by
Akeel Bilgrami against ‘orthodox externalism’, i.e., forms of externalism, such
as Putnam’s and Kripke’s, that are linked to causal or direct theories of
reference.      

      In the fourth and one of the
more interesting contributions, Steven Davis’ "Arguments for
Externalism", an excellent comparative analysis is provided of the Twin
Earth thought experiments devised by Putnam and those devised by Burge.  Davis’
aim is to expose various problems underlying Donnellan’s recent interpretation
of these thought experiments, with Burge showing himself to be largely
sympathetic to Davis’ endeavours.  Thought experiments are also the focus of
Antoni Gomila Benejam’s paper, "Thought Experiments and Semantic
Competence", where Benejam addresses the interesting question: How is it
that thought experiments manage to be fruitful?  Benejam’s answer, briefly put,
is that we have, by dint of our semantic or conceptual competence, an implicit
understanding of concepts, and thought experiments help to render this
understanding explicit. 

      Another excellent
contribution, Martin Davies’ "Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Transmission
of Warrant", attempts to show that externalism raises ‘the problem of
armchair knowledge’.  Davies’ point is that externalists such as Burge tend to
argue as follows:

(1)    I am thinking
that water is wet.

(2)    If I am thinking
that water is wet, then I am (or have been) embedded in an environment that
contains samples of water.

(3)    (Therefore) I am
(or have been) embedded in an environment that contains samples of water.

The problem here, notes Davies, is that the externalist has
reached in (3) a conclusion about an empirical matter (regarding his
environment and his way of being embedded in it) without ever rising from his
armchair.  Davies’ solution to the problem is, controversially, that in
arguments such as (1)-(3) there is a failure of transmission of epistemic
warrant from the premises to the conclusion.  (Burge, interestingly, rejects (2).)

      In "Anti-Individualism
and Basic Self-Knowledge", María J. Frápolli and Esther Romero carefully
elucidate the interconnections between Burge’s externalism about meaning, his
anti-individualism about mind, and his commitment to basic self-knowledge (a
form of self-knowledge that is direct, authoritative, non-empirical, and
self-verifying).  According to the authors, however, Burge has failed to remove
the threat that externalism poses to basic self-knowledge, for given Burge’s
externalism, "we no longer have an internal, introspective, and reliable
path to all aspects of our beliefs about the world" (p.145).  This
threat is addressed in Carlos Moya’s insightful contribution,
"Externalism, Inclusion, and Knowledge of Content," where various
responses to Paul Boghossian’s case against the compatibility of externalism
and self-knowledge are discussed.  The same theme is taken up in Daniel
Quesada’s "Basic Self-Knowledge and Externalism", where it is argued
that, at least in some circumstances, externalist considerations rule out basic
self-knowledge €“ but Quesada’s reasons for thinking this are, as Burge
correctly points out, "deeply misguided" (p.283).

      Manuel Liz, in
"Intentional States: Individuation, Explanation, and Supervenience",
attempts to show that one can plausibly uphold an individualistic supervenience
thesis with respect to intentional states while at the same time upholding
anti-individualism with respect to the individuation and explanation of
intentional states.  Going by Burge’s reply, however, Liz has been attacking a
strawman, since few (if any) anti-individualists would (according to Burge)
reject the kind of individualistic supervenience discussed by Liz. 
Supervenience is again discussed in the final paper of the collection, Stuart
Silvers’ "Individualism, Internalism, and Wide Supervenience". 
Silvers challenges the claim, put forward by Rob Wilson, that lying at the
heart of the controversy over individualism and anti-individualism is a
conflation of two distinct notions of mental causation.

      In sum, the contributions
to this volume contain many interesting and insightful observations, though
they do not compare in depth and originality to the papers contained in
the recently published Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of
Tyler Burge (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), edited by Martin Hahn and
Bjørn Ramberg.

Also,
given the nature of the debates and the level of abstraction and technicality
in which they are couched, Frápolli and Romero’s collection would only be
appreciated by graduates and academic philosophers. 

     
One final point.  Unfortunately, most papers in this collection are marred by
poor proofreading or just a poor grasp of the English language (I could not
always work out which).  Some classic, but not rare, examples of this:
"€¦it is easy to directly accuse McCulloch of incurring in
bifurcation" (p.61); "This paper has been written after a Seminar on
some aspect of Tyler Burge’s philosophy€¦" (p.131); and "Now, which
the conflict exactly is depends on how we determine what I have been, to this
point, deliberately vaguely describing as the ‘unproblematic character’ of
basic self-knowledge" (p.189).

 

© 2004
Nick Trakakis

 

Nick Trakakis writes about himself:

I am in the final stages of a PhD
degree in philosophy at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), where I am
working on a dissertation in the philosophy of religion, entitled The God
Beyond Belief: In Defence of William Rowe’s Evidential Arguments from Evil. 
My email address is: trakakis@hn.ozemail.com.au

Categories: Philosophical