Category Archive

Here is something I’ve been thinking about, probably 29 years too late. There’s a certain sort of argument for externalism that goes roughly as follows:

We look at subject S in context C1 and ascribe to them a content clause A. We then imagine S in C2. In that case it would be inappropriate to use A, for reasons to do with the wider social world of A in C2. So, it is the status of the wider social world that controls our ascriptions of content clauses.

There is, of course, an extra step or two needed. (i) We need to hold that when we ascribe distinct content-clauses we are ipso facto attributing distinct mental states. Then we get the result that social environment controls which mental contents we will attribute. (ii) I suppose we also need to hold that it does so legitimately, i.e. that we are inclined in these cases to say that As contents differ that’s because they do differ.

The above argument is Tyler Burge’s in his ‘Individualism and the Mental’ as I read it. I’m sure that people have made the points I’ve just made in the intervening years, but I’d be interested if anybody who happens to be reading this can point me to where.

I’m very much looking forward to the first workshop for the project at the end of May. I always like to see people speak who I’ve been reading, and several of the people coming to this fit the bill.

Apparently somebody arrived here today after googling ‘philosophy about penguins’. I hope they found what they were looking for.

This is another Dinosaur Comics that I like.

I’ve now heard that St Andrews won’t be putting me forward for an AHRC award. I am, however, going to be interviewed for an Arché studentship. I suppose that’s now rather important.