Internalism and Externalism about Content
The debate over content externalism asks whether the content of our thoughts depends only on what is inside the head or also on our environment and community.
Definition
Internalism holds that mental content is fixed entirely by the subject's intrinsic physical states, whereas externalism holds that content depends in part on relations to the external physical or social environment.
Scope
This topic covers internalism (individualism) and externalism about mental content, the Twin Earth and arthritis thought experiments, the distinction between physical and social externalism, and the implications of externalism for self-knowledge and for the extended-mind hypothesis.
Core questions
- Could molecule-for-molecule duplicates differ in the contents of their thoughts?
- Is content fixed by the natural environment, the linguistic community, or only the brain?
- How can we have privileged self-knowledge if content is externally determined?
- Does externalism support the idea that the mind extends beyond the head?
Key concepts
- individualism
- Twin Earth
- natural-kind externalism
- social externalism
- narrow content
- extended mind
Key theories
- Natural-kind externalism
- Twin Earth cases show that two intrinsically identical subjects can mean different things by the same word because their environments contain different substances.
- Social externalism
- A subject's thought contents depend on the meanings established by their linguistic community, so deference to experts can fix what one's concepts mean.
History
Putnam's (1975) Twin Earth argument and Burge's (1979) arthritis case established physical and social externalism, challenging the assumption that content is fixed in the head. Subsequent work probed externalism's consequences for self-knowledge and inspired the extended-mind hypothesis of Clark and Chalmers (1998).
Debates
- Externalism and self-knowledge
- Whether content externalism is compatible with our apparently privileged, non-inferential knowledge of our own thoughts.
- Boundaries of the mind
- Whether externalist considerations support locating cognitive processes partly outside the brain.
Key figures
- Hilary Putnam
- Tyler Burge
- Colin McGinn
- Andy Clark
Related topics
Seminal works
- putnam1975
- burge1979
- clark1998
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Twin Earth thought experiment?
- It imagines a planet identical to Earth except that its watery stuff is a different chemical; Putnam argued that an Earthling and a Twin Earthling mean different things by 'water' despite being internally identical.