Why Privileged Self-Knowledge and Content Externalism are Compatible

In the last twenty-five years, several authors have raised problems to the thesis that privileged self-knowledge is compatible with content externalism. In particular, the ‘slow-switching’ argument, which was originally put forth by Paul Boghossian (1989), aims to show that there is no satisfactory...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sergio Armando Gallegos
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2015-05-01
Series:Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology
Online Access:https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/principia/article/view/37279
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Summary:In the last twenty-five years, several authors have raised problems to the thesis that privileged self-knowledge is compatible with content externalism. In particular, the ‘slow-switching’ argument, which was originally put forth by Paul Boghossian (1989), aims to show that there is no satisfactory account of how we can have privileged knowledge about our own thoughts given content externalism. Though many philosophers have found ways to block the argument, no one has worried to address a major worry that Boghossian had when he presented the argument, which is to understand under which conditions privileged self-knowledge is possible given content externalism. In this paper, I offer a diagnosis of why the ‘slow-switching’ argument fails and I show how the diagnosis enables us to provide a partial response to Boghossian’s worry.
ISSN:1808-1711