Abstract
The aim of this article is to assess Donald Davidson’s critique of epistemological explanations of self-knowledge and his linguistic account of first-person authority. The paper proceeds as follows. Sections 1 and 2 contrast the introspective and the external view of self-knowledge. Section 3 and 4 then concentrate on two arguments Davidson puts forward against the assumption of mental objects, and, in the second half of Section 4, on Davidson’s claim that externalism is compatible with fallible first-person authority. Section.5 then discusses Davidson’s linguistic account of that authority.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
With regard to a mental image Wittgenstein nicely notes the asymmetry in Philosophical Investigations § 377: “What is the criterion for the redness of an image? For me, when it is someone else’s image: what he says or does. For myself, when it is my image: nothing”. It is worth mentioning that Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949) is among the few who deny the asymmetry.
As long as they have no reason to believe that my avowal is not sincere or linguistically incompetent.
That there usually exists no basis for a self-ascription (besides the state ascribed) also shows in the fact that, for every reason I may provide, a situation can be described in which I know my mental state but do not know the relevant reason.
Following Davidson (1984, 102) I do not consider the more general problem of other minds, that is, the question of how I know that and what other people feel and think.
Wittgenstein writes (Philosophical Investigations § 246): “It cannot be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean — except perhaps that I am in pain?”. His point seems to be that it is constitutive for (having) a sensation that the subject is aware of it. A sensation is thereby necessarily linked to its owner’s judgement. Because fallibility is excluded, Wittgenstein, in contrast to the Cartesian, rejects any analysis of “I am in pain” as expressing proper knowledge.
See his papers “First-Person Authority”, in Dialectica 38(2–3), 101–111, 1984; “Knowing One’s Own Mind”, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association LX, 441–458, 1987; “Der Mythos des Subjektiven”, in M. Benedikt and R. Burger (eds.), Bewußtsein, Sprache and Kunst, pp. 45–54, Wien 1988; “What is present to the Mind?”, Grazer Philosophische Studien 36, 3–18, 1989. Henceforth, the numbers behind the year of publication refer to pages.
See for instance “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge”, in E. Lepore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation, pp. 307–319, 1986.
Davidson rejects any analysis of belief ascriptions that identifies the that-clause with a complex adverb of “believe” such as: “X believes-in-a-that-it-is-raining way”. (Cf. 1989, 7–8.)
It does not follow, from the facts that a thinker knows what he thinks and that what he thinks can be fixed by relating him to a certain object, that the thinker is acquainted with, or indeed knows anything at all about the object” (1989, 8).
I take it that Davidson argues that the assumption of content determining mental objects undermines not only infallible self-knowledge but also the weaker claim, according to which a subject usually directly knows what she thinks. Asked to identify a mental object, the subject, would be in no better position than to she is regarding ordinary objects.
In the thirties, Wittgenstein, still in the grip of the Tractarian picture theory of sense, assumes a contingent connection between intentional states and what counts as their fulfilment. He writes for instance: “It is also conceivable that no orders were ever obeyed, and they would still keep their sense.” Man. 108, p. 208, cf. Philosophical Investigations § 345 for a critique of this.
With regard to the latter, a subject usually is in no better position to know whether a self-ascription is justified than any third party.
Cf. Putnam H. “The Meaning of `Meaning’ “ in Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge, 1975 and, for using the idea for claiming dependence of content on the social context, Burge, T. “Individualism and the Mental”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4, 73–121, 1979.
Another line of argument not taken into consideration by Davidson is that my second-order thought also changes because of its partly being dependent on those conditions which fixed the content of my first order belief, that is, twater. Then the question would be how to know authoritatively one’s second-order thoughts.
It is not clear to me, whether externalism shows that only external objects can determine mental content, or whether it merely shows that if a content-determining object is external the content can be misidentified. Davidson certainly needs the former.
The possibility of error, or of failure to distinguish one’s own state of mind due solely to the external elements that help determine that state of mind, is intelligible only on the supposition that having a thought requires a special psychological relation to the object used to identify the state of mind” (1989, 12). That a false second-order belief is still made authoritatively is also stressed by Davidson in his 1984: “Even in the exceptional cases, however, first-person authority persists; even when a self-attribution is in doubt, or a challenge is proper, the person with the attitude speaks about it with special weight” (103).
Burge, for instance, stresses the importance of slow switching. See his “Individualism and Self-Knowledge” Journal of Philosophy 85, 649–665, 1988. Burge however agrees with Davidson on the compatibility of fallible first-person authority with externalism.
Burge points out that the requirement, that is presupposed in considering only quick switches, is too strong. It says that, in order to be justified claiming to know what I think, I have to know the conditions of my thoughts. Burge argues that only if a condition is a relevant possibility — as in the slow switch example the presence of twater is — I must be able to exclude that possibility in order to be said to know my first-order belief. Normally however, confronting twater instead of water is not a relevant possibility. So I need not exclude it before I can be said to know that I have a water-thought. (See Burge: “Individualism and Self-Knowledge” Journal of Philosophy 85, 1988.)
The concept of holding true applies in Davidson’s theory of interpretation to an empirical relation between a speaker and a sentence in the object-language that has to be interpreted. That a speaker holds a sentence true can be verified without knowing the meaning of that sentence.
I am grateful to the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung for support during the time of writing the paper. I am also grateful to Rudolf Haller and Johannes Brandl for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Puhl, K. (1994). Davidson on Intentional Content and Self-Knowledge. In: Preyer, G., Siebelt, F., Ulfig, A. (eds) Language, Mind and Epistemology. Synthese Library, vol 241. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2041-0_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2041-0_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4392-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2041-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive