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Single Idea 16474

[filed under theme 18. Thought / C. Content / 6. Broad Content ]

Full Idea

How can we know what we ourselves are thinking if the very existence of the content of our thought may depend on facts of which we are ignorant?

Gist of Idea

How can we know what we are thinking, if content depends on something we don't know?

Source

Robert C. Stalnaker (Mere Possibilities [2012], 5)

Book Ref

Stalnaker,Robert C.: 'Mere Possibilities' [Princeton 2012], p.133

A Reaction

This has always been my main doubt about externalism. I may defer to experts about what I intend by an 'elm' (Putnam's example), but what I mean by elm is thereby a fuzzy tall tree with indeterminate leaves. I don't know the meaning of 'elm'!

The 27 ideas from 'Mere Possibilities'

16433 Given actualism, how can there be possible individuals, other than the actual ones? [Stalnaker]
16434 Some say what exists must do so, and nothing else could possible exist [Stalnaker]
16436 Modal concepts are central to the actual world, and shouldn't need extravagant metaphysics [Stalnaker]
16437 Possible worlds are properties [Stalnaker]
16439 A nominalist view says existence is having spatio-temporal location [Stalnaker]
16438 Necessity and possibility are fundamental, and there can be no reductive analysis of them [Stalnaker]
16440 I don't think Lewis's cost-benefit reflective equilibrium approach offers enough guidance [Stalnaker]
16443 Properties are modal, involving possible situations where they are exemplified [Stalnaker]
16444 Possible worlds don't reduce modality, they regiment it to reveal its structure [Stalnaker]
16445 I think of worlds as cells (rather than points) in logical space [Stalnaker]
16442 I take propositions to be truth conditions [Stalnaker]
16447 A theory of propositions at least needs primitive properties of consistency and of truth [Stalnaker]
16446 Propositions presumably don't exist if the things they refer to don't exist [Stalnaker]
16448 Possible world semantics may not reduce modality, but it can explain it [Stalnaker]
16449 In modal set theory, sets only exist in a possible world if that world contains all of its members [Stalnaker]
16450 Anti-haecceitism says there is no more to an individual than meeting some qualitative conditions [Stalnaker]
16452 Dispositions have modal properties, of which properties things would have counterfactually [Stalnaker]
16453 The bundle theory makes the identity of indiscernibles a necessity, since the thing is the properties [Stalnaker]
16454 Modal properties depend on the choice of a counterpart, which is unconstrained by metaphysics [Stalnaker]
16461 We still lack an agreed semantics for quantifiers in natural language [Stalnaker]
16464 We regiment to get semantic structure, for evaluating arguments, and understanding complexities [Stalnaker]
16465 In 'S was F or some other than S was F', the disjuncts need S, but the whole disjunction doesn't [Stalnaker]
16467 'Socrates is essentially human' seems to say nothing could be Socrates if it was not human [Stalnaker]
16466 Strong necessity is always true; weak necessity is cannot be false [Stalnaker]
16468 Non-S5 can talk of contingent or necessary necessities [Stalnaker]
16471 I accept a hierarchy of properties of properties of properties [Stalnaker]
16474 How can we know what we are thinking, if content depends on something we don't know? [Stalnaker]