Brewer, Bill. (2000) Self-knowledge and externalism. The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Vol.5 . pp. 39-47.

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Abstract

A person’s authoritative self-knowledge about the contents of his or her own beliefs is thought to cause problems for content externalism, for it appears to yield arguments constituting a wholly non-empirical source of empirical knowledge: knowledge that certain particular objects or kinds exist in the environment. I set out this objection to externalism, and present a new reply. Possession of an externalist concept is an epistemological skill: it depends upon the subject’s possession of demonstratively-based knowledge about the object or kind to which it refers. Thus, a person’s knowledge that he or she has an externalist belief, since this depends upon actually having that belief, and therefore upon possessing the relevant externist concept, presupposes knowledge about the object/kind in question, which provides a direct and perfectly empirical source of knowledge that this object/kind exists. Hence, the putatively problematic arguments do not constitute a non-empirical source of such empirical knowledge.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy
Journal or Publication Title:	The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy
Date:	2000
Volume:	Vol.5
Page Range:	pp. 39-47
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Type of Event:	Conference
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/45469

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