Abstract

This collection contains twenty-one selections on various issues central to the problem of externalism and privileged self-knowledge. The problem these papers address is best characterized as follows. Externalism is the doctrine that the individuation of mental content depends in part on physical or social factors. While this position is extremely plausible, it unfortunately appears to undermine the equally plausible view that individuals have some kind of privileged access to their own mental states. After all, if mental content is determined in part by social or physical factors, then self-knowledge appears to require knowledge of these very external factors, and this knowledge is presumably not privileged. Seminal attempts to reconcile externalism and self-knowledge by Donald Davidson and Tyler Burge in the 1980s led to a profusion of literature on this problem, and this volume is a useful guide to the major moves in the debate up to 1998.