1. Henry Taylor j.h.taylor.1@bham.ac.uk
Philosophy of Language Seminar 7: Externalist theories of mental content.
Henry Taylor

2. Quick recap
We’ve looked at certain core aspects of language: names, definite descriptions, meaning, reference and so on.
We’ve seen that a lot of the disagreements are differences in the whole way that people think about what language is, and how it functions.
Russell vs Strawson: the ‘eternal’ meaning of a sentence vs how the sentence is actually used.
Descriptivism vs causal-hisorical views: the beliefs of the speaker vs the thing that the name originally applied to.
Externalism: the use of words in a natural environment.

3. Mental externalism
Today we’re going to look at a new view: externalism about mental content.
This is firmly in the tradition of externalism about meaning (people like Putnam).
But unlike Putnam, it doesn’t emphasise the natural environment (like H2O) but the social environment (the society we live in).

4. Mental externalism
Mental externalism is all about how the society we live in affects our language, and how language in turn affects our minds.
This is important for the rest of the course:

5. Mental externalism Tyler Burge Born 1946 American Philosopher
Famous works: ‘Individualism and the Mental’ (1979), ‘The Origins of Objectivity’ (2010) and many more.

6. Mental externalism Someone has a pain in her thigh.
He thinks it is arthritis.
He goes to the doctor and says ‘I have arthritis in my thigh’
The doctor says ‘no, you don’t, arthritis is a malady of the joints, you can’t have arthritis in your thigh’

7. Mental externalism
So, was the patient’s belief ‘I have arthritis in my thigh’ true or false?
What do we think?

8. Mental externalism It was false (most people would say so…)
The patient thought that ‘arthritis’ was a word that could apply to his thigh pain.
He thought the word meant something like:
‘a bad condition, that it is better to have than cancer (say) and that can appear in the joints and the muscles’.

9. Mental externalism: Notice this (this is crucial):
If we understand the word ‘arthritis’ the way the patient does, then the belief isn’t false (because ‘arthritis’ can apply to her thigh pain).

10. Mental externalism
But that’s not how we normally understand these kinds of disagreement.
It’s not that the patient was using a different meaning to the word ‘arthritis’, and his belief was true.
It’s that he was using the standard meaning, but he was wrong about what it means.
Whether he likes it or not, the word means ‘an inflammation of the joints’

11. Mental externalism
So, when the patient uses the word ‘arthritis’ it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.
The meaning of the word ‘arthritis’ isn’t entirely fixed by the person’s own beliefs and what he thinks is right. It’s also fixed by something else: by the way that experts (like doctors) use the term.
That is, the word ‘arthritis’ means whatever the doctors say it means.
That’s clearly a social phenomenon.

12. Mental externalism
That’s the first step: the meaning of the word is fixed by a community of ‘experts’: people who are allowed to dictate the meanings of certain words.
Questions/comments?

13. Mental externalism
We’re half way to the argument for mental externalism.
Step (1) is:
The patient uses the word ‘arthritis’ and the meaning of that word is fixed by the meaning it is assigned by experts in the patient’s society.
Step (2):
That word has an impact on the content of his belief ‘I have arthritis in my thigh’.

14. Mental externalism How does step (2) work?
The content of that belief is partly derived from the meaning of the individual words that feature in that belief.
This is pretty straightforward:
The meaning of the belief ‘Paris is in France’ is partly determined by the meanings of the words that make it up: France, Paris, in, is…

15. Mental externalism BUT IF
The meaning of the word ‘arthritis’ is fixed by the society she lives in…
AND
The meanings of the words in the belief contribute to the content of the entire belief…
THEN
The content of the belief is (in part) fixed by the society that she lives in.

16. Mental externalism It’s a two step process:
1) The meaning of the concepts that make up the belief is (in part) fixed by experts in the community.
2) The content of the whole belief is made up (in part) by the meaning of the concepts that make it up
(therefore) The content of the belief is fixed (in part) by the experts in the community.

17. Mental externalism
Questions/comments?

18. Mental externalism This is pretty weird.
It means that the beliefs you have are not just a matter of what’s going on in your head. It’s not ‘up to you’ what beliefs you have.
Rather, what beliefs you have is fixed (in part) by the community you live in.
This will spread to other mental states: desires, thoughts, perceptions etc.
Their content will be fixed by factors external to you.

19. Mental externalism
You can also be radically mistaken about what your beliefs mean.
Think of it like the causal-historical view of reference.
Someone could think that ‘Kim Kardashian’ means some rare species of beetle.
But they would be wrong.
Whether they like it or not, the word means something else.
Same with the beliefs case.

20. Semantic and Mental externalism
WARNING!!!!
Try to keep two claims separate:
Semantic externalism: the view that the meanings of words is fixed in part by things outside the speaker.
Mental externalism: the view that the content of our beliefs and other mental states is fixed by things outside of us.
These theses are very closely intertwined, but they’re not the same.

21. Terminology warning!!!!
I’ve been using the terms ‘internalism’ and ‘externalism’
Burge himself says ‘individualism’ and ‘anti-individualism’
They mean the same thing.

22. Semantic deference These arguments have some interesting consequences.
I want to concentrate on two: semantic deference and privileged access.

23. Semantic deference
Lots of the words we use have the meanings they do because of ‘experts’ (people designated experts by society).
Some examples:
‘brisket’: what is brisket?
Most people think it means a kind of beef.
It actually means the chest part of any animal.
The meaning of the word is fixed by what the butchers say it means.

24. Semantic deference Examples from science are easy: Planet Acid Number
Species
Gravity
Energy
Gold

25. Semantic deference Examples from ‘folk’ disciplines are good too
Cookery:
What the hell is the difference between a sauce and a jus?
Or between broth and soup?
Butchery:
Brisket
Butler’s cut
Chicken Supreme
Sweetbreads
Bakery:
The batter/dough distinction
The cake/biscuit distinction

26. Semantic deference This is the case with loads of words:
This is called semantic deference.
You don’t know the precise meaning yourself, but you just say ‘well, I mean whatever the experts mean by it’
Notice how much this emphasises the societal influence on the meanings of words.

27. Semantic deference
Notice that this is dependent on who the experts are.
A nice example is ‘planet’.
Astronomers use the word ‘planet’ so as to not count the moon.
Astrologers do count the moon as a planet.
Whom do we defer to?
Most people defer to the astromoners, but some people go the other way.
What do we say here…?

28. Mental externalism: some consequences
Questions/comments?

29. Privileged Access Another consequence: privileged access.
There’s a long tradition (going back at least to Descartes) that you are in an especially privileged position with regard to our own mental states.

30. Privileged Access
You can tell a priori (in a way that no one else can) what your thoughts are.
You can know (without empirical investigation) that you are thinking about strawberries now.

31. Privileged Access
Mental externalism implies that the content of your beliefs is fixed (in part) by the society you live in (i.e. by factors external to you).
So, finding out what beliefs you have involves a matter of empirical investigation into the society you live in.
So you can’t find out a priori what you believe, or what you’re thinking.
In fact, it might be that someone else knows better than you what the content of your thoughts is.

32. Privileged Access
Questions/comments?

33. Mental externalism: final thoughts.
Notice how this links with the other stuff we’ve been looking at.
It kind of breaks down the distinction between people who emphasise the beliefs of the subjects (descriptivists) and people who emphasise the external world (like Putnam)
Because it emphasisies how the beliefs of subjects themselves are fixed (in part) by the external world (and the society we live in).

34. Discussion What do we think of Burge’s argument?
What do we think of it as compared to Putnam’s?
What do we think of semantic deference?
What do we think of the privileged access stuff?