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Full Idea
According to externalists, Davidson's 'swampman' is your exact duplicate in brains states, but hasn't had time to become acquainted with much, so he has virtually no beliefs.
Clarification
'Swampman' is the concept of a complete human being formed by pure chance in a swamp
Gist of Idea
A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs
Source
David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], p.425)
Book Ref
'A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Guttenplan,Samuel [Blackwell 1995], p.425
A Reaction
An implausible fantasy, but it does highlight the fact that beliefs and concepts are primarily internal states.
| 3990 | The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis] |
| 3989 | I am a reductionist about mind because I am an a priori reductionist about everything [Lewis] |
| 3991 | Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis] |
| 3992 | Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis] |
| 3993 | Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe [Lewis] |
| 3994 | Human pain might be one thing; Martian pain might be something else [Lewis] |
| 3995 | A mind is an organ of representation [Lewis] |
| 3996 | Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis] |
| 3998 | If you don't share an external world with a brain-in-a-vat, then externalism says you don't share any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 3997 | Nothing shows that all content is 'wide', or that wide content has logical priority [Lewis] |
| 3999 | A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 4000 | Wide content derives from narrow content and relationships with external things [Lewis] |