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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Many theorists in epistemology and mind accept externalism with respect to content–namely, the claim that the conditions that individuate mental content are external to the occurrence of that content as a mental fact. Whatever it is that distinguishes a pain in the knee from a pain in the toe—or, alternatively, whatever it is that makes it possible for the subject to discriminate this pain as a pain in the knee from that pain as a pain in the toe—are factors and conditions located in the physical and external world. This much externalism seems to be required even if one is a thoroughly entrenched mentalist. This “content externalism” is captured, fairly effectively, by the more traditional distinction between concepts and percepts. What is then asserted by the mentalist is that concepts have their source or origin in the external world, but the perceptual content does not. Perceptual content can be identified in different ways which are: (1) the view that identifies the distinguishing feature of the perceptual with qualia, a position not far removed from the Lockean distinction between Primary and Secondary qualities; or, (2) the perceptual might also be characterized in terms of representationalism, where qualia are an essential part of the representational medium, but where the representational medium contains conceptual content as well. In either case, the perceptual is Type and/or Token distinct from whatever is the external physical conditions or states of affairs causally responsible for the occurrence of either the conceptual content or the perceptual content. An argument for the claim that percepts (colours, sounds, smells, touches, and so on) are essential and necessary is that, without such percepts, there can be no experience.
1 This is the view that McGinn, Colin espouses in The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).Google Scholar
2 This is from Strawson's, Galen most recent book, Mental Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 6.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., pp. 5–13.
4 Jackson's, Frank “Knowledge Argument” is in an article entitled “What Mary Didn't Know,” Journal of Philosophy, 83 (1986): 291–95.Google Scholar
5 It has been pointed out by an anonymous referee that a defender of Dretske might easily reply to this line of criticism. There is a much-too-heavy reliance on the folk-psychological concept of “consciousness”; nor does the naturalist need to grant that the “discovery” of consciousness is anything more than a contingent historical fact—it certainly cannot be a conceptual truth; and if “consciousness” is, in some manner, a primitive not open to the revision a naturalist needs, this is a purely arbitrary matter—but then, to insist on the primitiveness of “consciousness” is no doubt impossible, while at the same time obviously begging the question. No reply to these criticisms is possible in a critical notice, but perhaps one or two remarks might be permitted to suggest the lines of reply. First, it is unnecessary to construe consciousness as a folkpsychological fiction; nor is it a contingent historical discovery—on the contrary, consciousness is a state of the organism, and therefore a “fact” as much as any other physical fact. Second, naturalism is not to be described as mistaken or false (nor is it the intent of the above notice to suggest this); it is merely inadequate and incomplete. Finally, and possibly as an explanation for the incompleteness, naturalism has a defective account of subjectivity. It is not a question of accounting for the domain of the subjective in terms of the objective, but the converse.