Notes for Meeting (October 12)

Notes for 10/12

Paper: Knowing One's Own Mind by Donald Davidson

Initial Questions
How do we learn about the minds of others?
-Generally, we learn through observation: We say, “He is hungry. I know he is hungry because his stomach is growling, he is staring at my pie, he says, 'I am hungry,'' etc...
-Skepticisms?
- “She is hungry. I know she is hungry because her stomach growls, etc...”
- She could be a robot
- A demon could be deceiving us, making us believe that her stomach is growling where, in reality, it is not
How do we learn about our own minds?
- Through observation?
- “I see my stomach is growling and I have just said that, 'I am hungry.' Therefore I must be hungry.”
-Do we just “know”?
-Is there some intuition we have, prior to any action, about our own mental state?
-Who knows more about our own minds—us, or others?
-Who has better actions to our own mental states? A 1st person or a 3rd person?
-Jane has two tickets—one for a Rolling Stones concert, and one for a Beatles concert. Both concerts occur on the same night. Nick wants to go to the same concert as Jane, so he asks Susie who Jane likes more, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. Susie says, “Oh, Jane likes the Rolling Stones. Her iPod has all the Rolling Stones albums, all she does is listen to the Stones, etc...” Nick then goes to Jane herself and asks her which concert she will attend. She replies, “the Beatles concert,” but does not give any reason for her choice.
-The 3rd person seems to be able to give reasons for the information it knows, whereas the 1st person does not
-Is the 3rd person, then, more capable of knowing Jane's mind than she is?
-Should we differentiate between the “feelings” we have and our thoughts and beliefs? What are the consequences that follow if we do or do not?
What is 1st person authority?
-Can we explain it biologically? Is there a link between the brain, our language, and our mental state that only the 1st person has access to?
-How do we use 1st person authority, and does it fail under the weight of the Superman and Twin Earth Paradoxes?

Twin Earth Paradox: two identical people, on two identical planets, experiencing identical mental states, using the same exact words, nevertheless mean different things when referring to “water.” This shows that external and historical circumstances dictate the meaning of some of our words. As a result, we may not know the exact meaning of our words, and our 1st person authority, our ability to know what we mean or our mental states, dissolves.

Swampman paradox: in a freak accident, a tree transforms into the exact replica of a man. This “swampman” returns to the original man's friends and converses with them, then returns to the man's home and writes the philosophy papers the original man might have written. Yet when this “swampman” utters the word “house” he cannot mean the same thing as when the original man uttered it, because the “swampman” never had the context with which to utter that word in a meaningful way. Our words must have some kind of connection with the world to mean anything.

Davidson concludes that we may not know what we think, at least not in the way we think we do.

That is, we cannot be knowing our own mind simply by observing our actions. But what is the solution to the problem of 1st person authority? How can we use it?

At the end of the discussion, there was some disagreement as to the nature of Davidson's solution. Ultimately, it seemed as though, while we all have separate languages and separate minds, we can, through language and in language, come to a consensus about a great number of things. It is the fact that we CAN know things that outweighs the things that we might get wrong.