in defence of burge's thesis

SARAH SAWYER

IN DEFENCE OF BURGE’S THESIS

(Received 31 January 2001; received in revised version 5 April 2001)

ABSTRACT. Burge’s thesis is the thesis that certain second-order self-ascriptionsare self-verifying in virtue of their self-referential form. The thesis has recentlycome under attack on the grounds that it does not yield a theory of self-knowledgeconsistent with semantic externalism, and also on the grounds that it is false. Inthis paper I defend Burge’s thesis against both charges, in particular against thearguments of Bernecker, Gallois and Goldberg. The alleged counterexamples theyprovide are merely apparent counterexamples, and the thesis is adequate to itsproper task. To think otherwise is simply to misunderstand the thesis.

INTRODUCTION

Burge’s thesis is the thesis that instances of a certain class ofsecond-order judgement are self-verifying in virtue of their self-referential form. As such, the judgements concerned are immune toerror. This thesis was originally presented by Tyler Burge (1988)in partial response to the allegation that semantic externalism isunable to account for the authoritative nature of self-attributionsof thoughts. Since then, the thesis has been the subject of attackon three grounds. First, because it deals only with the content ofthoughts and says nothing of the attitudinal component of thosethoughts. Second, because it deals with the contents of the membersof only a small subset of second-order thoughts. Third, it has beenclaimed outright to be false. In this paper I will defend Burge’s thesisagainst all three charges. In particular I will focus on the criticismspresented by Sven Bernecker (1996), André Gallois (1996), andSanford Goldberg (2000).

The defence falls into two parts. First, I will defend Burge’sthesis against putative counterexamples. Second, I will argue thatwhile critics are right to maintain that Burge’s thesis cannot providean adequate account of the authoritative nature of self-ascriptionsin general, neither Burge nor so-called “Burgean compatibilists”

Philosophical Studies 107: 109–128, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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maintain that it can. Compatibilists do not typically derive theircompatibilism from Burge’s thesis; but the thesis is adequate to itsproper task.

1. THE PROBLEM OF INCOMPATIBILITY ANDBURGE’S THESIS IN BRIEF

The emergence of semantic externalism, according to which asubject’s set of actual and possible thoughts is dependent upon,and restricted by, relations that subject bears to her environment,has been taken to threaten the claim that a subject can be authori-tative about which thoughts she has. This can be most clearlyillustrated by considering a “travelling case” in which a hypotheticalsubject is unknowingly switched between different environments.The environments are assumed to differ in imperceptible ways,ways which nevertheless suffice to cause a change in the conceptsthat subject possesses and hence in the thoughts it is possible forher to entertain. The differences between the environments, then,are semantically relevant. The question is how a subject could beauthoritative about the contents of her thoughts given that she wouldbe ignorant of a change in her body of concepts were she to beswitched between such. It would seem that a subject is, as Galloisputs it, “subject to facsimile-based error”.1 If one’s thoughts dependessentially on one’s relations to particular environmental conditions,and knowledge of those environmental conditions is available onlythrough empirical investigation, knowledge of one’s thoughts canlikewise be available only through empirical investigation. So theargument goes.2

In his (1988), Burge draws our attention to instances of whathe terms “cogito-like judgements”. Even though the contents ofsuch judgements may be determined by relations the subject bearsto her environment, such judgements are, Burge maintains, self-referential, and self-verifying in virtue of being so. The existenceof such judgements demonstrates that semantic externalism neednot threaten authoritative self-knowledge. He offers as examplesof cogito-like judgements those such as I am now thinking thatwriting requires concentration, and I hereby judge that examplesneed elaboration. Burge writes,

IN DEFENCE OF BURGE’S THESIS 111

The content of the first-order thought is fixed by non-individualistic backgroundconditions. And by its reflexive, self-referential character, the content of thesecond-order judgement is logically locked (self-referentially) onto the first-ordercontent which it both contains and takes as its subject matter. (Burge, 1988,pp. 659–660)

The first- and second-order thoughts cannot come apart. Accord-ingly Burge claims that “[n]o errors at all are possible in strict cogitojudgements.”3

An error based on a gap between one’s thoughts and the subject matter is simplynot possible in these cases. . . . If background conditions are different enough sothat there is another object of reference in one’s self-referential thinking, they arealso different enough so that there is another thought. (Burge, 1988, p. 659)

Cogito-like judgements, instances of what Burge calls “basicself-knowledge”, are taken to be paradigms of authoritative self-knowledge. Such judgements are not subject to error, and a fortiorinot subject to facsimile-based error, even if an externalist theorycorrectly applies to the content of those judgements.

2. PUTATIVE COUNTEREXAMPLES: GALLOIS

Both Goldberg and Gallois maintain that Burge’s thesis is subjectto counterexample. I begin with a discussion of Gallois’s claims.Gallois identifies in Burge’s (1988) three distinct reasons formaintaining that second-order thoughts are not subject to facsimile-based error. The first is that the content of a second-order thoughtwill be determined by the same external conditions that determinethe content of the corresponding first-order thought. Gallois doesnot himself dispute this first claim, and the claim is prevalent in theliterature. I will return to it in Section 5 below. The second reasonhe identifies is that cogito-like judgements are infallible. This is theheart of Burge’s thesis, as indicated above, and it is this to whichGallois primarily takes exception.

Gallois writes,

the . . . thesis that thinking that one thinks that p entails thinking that p . . . seemsimplausible. Surely I can mistakenly ascribe a thought to myself. Convinced by adogmatic psychoanalyst I think that I think that my mother does not love me eventhough I have no such first-order thought. (Gallois, 1996, p. 173)

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Thus the fact that I can think that I think my mother does notlove me even when I do not think any such first-order thought, istaken by Gallois to be a counterexample to Burge’s thesis aboutthe self-verifying nature of certain self-ascriptions. However, to takeGallois’s example to be a counterexample is to fail to recognise anexplicit restriction that Burge places on his thesis.

Burge maintains that not all present-tense self-ascriptions arecogito-like judgements, and hence that not all self-ascriptions ofthought-contents will be self-verifying. He takes cogito-like judge-ments as paradigm instances of self-knowledge, but maintains that“[t]here is a range of cases of self-knowledge which extend out fromthis paradigm”, and remarks that “[d]ealing with the whole rangerequires subtlety.”4 He contrasts such cogito-like judgements with,amongst other forms of self-ascription, self-ascriptions of standingpropositional attitudes. This is far the more common case. Exampleswould be judgements such as I believe that Paris is the capital ofFrance, or I would like to live by the sea, where the judgement isin each case about a standing state, which together with a triggeringoccurrence helps cause the self-attribution. He maintains that suchself-attributions can still be authoritative even though they are notself-referential, and hence not self-verifying: an indication that hedoes not take his thesis to provide an adequate account of authorita-tive self-knowledge simpliciter (of which more later). In any case,the restriction here is crucial, and paying heed to it allows us todispose of the putative counterexample to Burge’s thesis Galloisoffers.

The problem with Gallois’s example is simply that it is notan instance of a cogito-like judgement, and hence falls outsidethe scope of Burge’s thesis. That Gallois fails to acknowledgethis restriction in scope, that he fails to distinguish between thecogito- and the non-cogito-like judgements, is further evidencedby his endorsement of the following principle, a principle that hecomplains Burge has given no reason to think correct:

(1) If any first-order thought corresponds to the second-orderthought that I think that p, it must have the content that p.

He illustrates his point by considering the following judgement:

(2) I think that writing requires concentration.


Gallois writes,

Certainly, when I entertain [(2)] I have a thought whose content is, at least inpart, that writing requires concentration. Nevertheless, for [(2)] to be true, it mustcorrespond to a thought whose content is solely that writing requires concentra-tion. What precludes [(2)] from corresponding to a thought whose content hasnothing to do with writing? What prevents [(2)] from corresponding to the thoughtthat doodling requires concentration?

Answers to this question depend on what is meant in saying that one thoughtcorresponds to another . . . suppose we take [(2)] to be about whichever thoughtcausally occasions [it] in the right way. If so, then for all Burge has said, [(2)]could correspond to a thought whose content has nothing in common with thatof [(2)]. . . . Consequently, [Burge] has failed to show that basic self-knowledgeis even self-verifying in the limited sense implied by [(1)]. (Gallois, 1996, pp.173–174, original emphasis)

This passage is indicative of Gallois’s belief that every second-order judgement, if it is to be knowledgeable, must correspondto an independent first-order thought with the appropriate content.But Burge explicitly rules out any such notion of correspondencebetween cogito-like judgements and their subject matter. He main-tains that, “[i]n the case of cogito-like judgements, the object,or subject-matter, of one’s thoughts is not contingently related tothe thoughts one thinks about.”5 In such cases neither the truthnor the warrant for the judgement depends on any causal relationbetween judgement and subject-matter, since the subject-matter andthe judgement about it occur in the same act. Such judgements areeither logically or performatively self-verifying. (A judgement suchas I am now thinking that writing requires concentration wouldbe an example of the former; one such as I hereby judge thatexamples need elaboration an example of the latter.) The warrantfor such judgements depends on understanding, which is to say thatif one understands the judgement in question the fact that it is self-verifying is evident to one, and hence one acquires a warrant for thejudgement through understanding, since this involves understandingthat it is self-verifying.

These are contrasted with non-cogito-like judgements, includingself-attributions of standing states, the truth and warrant for whichdo depend on a contingent, presumably causal, relation betweenthemselves and the thoughts they are about. Gallois’s principle (1),then, applies to non-cogito-like cases only. To think that Burge must

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offer us reason to believe (1) for all self-ascriptions is to misunder-stand the nature of the cogito-like cases to which Burge draws ourattention. It is precisely the absence of contingency, the absenceof a causal relation between judgement and subject matter, whichensures that (2) could not correspond to a thought whose contenthas nothing in common with it.

Let us now turn to the third reason Gallois attributes to Burgefor maintaining that second-order thoughts are not subject to error.Gallois cites the following two passages from Burge:

Consider the thought, ‘I hereby judge that water is a liquid’. What one needsin order to think this thought knowledgeably is to be able to think the first-order, empirical thought (that water is a liquid) and to ascribe it to oneself,simultaneously. (Burge, 1988, p. 656)

and:

One knows one’s thought to be what it is simply by thinking it while exercisingsecond-order self-ascriptive powers . . . Getting the ‘right’ one is simply a matterof thinking the thought in the relevant reflexive way . . . We ‘individuate’ ourthoughts, or discriminate them from others, by thinking those and not the othersself-ascriptively. (Burge, 1988, p. 656)

Gallois interprets these passages as suggesting that, according toBurge, second-order thoughts are “constructed upon” first-orderthoughts, in much the same way that ‘I am writing “writing requiresconcentration” ’ is constructed by writing ‘Writing requires concen-tration’, placing it in quotes, and prefixing it with ‘I am writing’. Byanalogy, then, when a subject entertains (2) above it is constructedfrom the thought that writing requires concentration by prefixing itwith the mental analogue of the expression ‘I think that’.6

Gallois admits that if this were the correct interpretation ofbasic self-knowledge, then such knowledge would be self-verifying.However, he then goes on to say that the interpretation must bemistaken on the grounds that “[i]t does seem possible to misattributea current thought to oneself on the basis of misleading evidence”,7

and we are directed to his earlier example of the thought self-attributed on the basis of evidence provided by the dogmatic psycho-analyst. Accordingly, Gallois claims that “[a]ny theorist who rulesout this possibility has to explain why, appearances to the contrary,this is not possible.”8


However, as we have seen above, the possibility that one mightmisattribute a thought to oneself is not ruled out by Burge’s thesis.It is ruled out in the case of cogito-like judgements, but these forma (rather small) subclass of self-attributions. Since Burge maintainsthat error is possible in a whole range of cases outside cases of basicself-knowledge, including, importantly, the case in question, he isnot one of the theorists of whom Gallois can legitimately demand anexplanation. In short, there is no contradiction in upholding Burge’sthesis and allowing the possibility of error in cases such as those towhich Gallois refers.

Neither does Burge intend his claims about the self-verifyingnature of cogito-like judgements to provide an adequate accountof the knowledgable and authoritative status of self-ascriptions ingeneral. Reflection on the cogito-like cases yields, Burge says, “atmost an illuminating paradigm for understanding a significant rangeof phenomena that count as self-knowledge. . . . A full discussionof authoritative self-knowledge must explicate our special authority,or epistemic right, even in numerous cases where our judgementsare not self-verifying or immune to error.”9 In subsequent writingshe goes on to offer an account of the epistemic status of self-ascriptions, maintaining that it is the role that self-ascriptions play incritical reasoning that accounts for their special authority.10 We willnot be concerned with his account of authoritative self-knowledgein any detail here, although I will briefly reconsider it in Section 5below.

For the moment, let us turn to an examination of Goldberg’sputative counterexample.

3. PUTATIVE COUNTEREXAMPLES: GOLDBERG

Goldberg asks us to consider the following dialogue.

(t1) Sam: I am thinking that Uncle Harry is awfully ugly.(t2) Nancy: You must be thinking that Uncle Henry is awfully

ugly; everyone knows that Uncle Harry is a dreamboat(and the ugly man you saw yesterday standing by the sodafountain was Uncle Henry)!

(t3) Sam: You’re right, I must have been thinking that UncleHenry was ugly. (Goldberg, 2000, p. 3)

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Sam’s agreement at t3 is taken, by Goldberg, to establish that Sam’sutterance at t1, if taken literally, is false. Hence, Goldberg maintains,if we are not to view this as a counterexample to Burge’s thesis,Sam’s utterance must be given a plausible non-literal interpreta-tion. Any plausible alternative interpretation must be consistent bothwith, minimally, the truth of the self-ascription thereby expressed,and with the general externalist position. Goldberg considers twoalternative interpretations. According to the first, Sam’s utteranceexpresses the thought that he is thinking that Uncle Henry is ugly.According to the second, Sam’s utterance expresses a descriptivethought of the form I am thinking the ϕ is F. Both interpretationsrun into difficulties. Hence, Goldberg maintains, we are forced tointerpret Sam’s utterance at t1 literally, in which case we have acounterexample to Burge’s thesis.

I do not intend to dwell on Goldberg’s discussion of the non-literal interpretations he offers of Sam’s original utterance. I agreethat each is problematic.11 Rather, I will argue that Sam’s agreementat t3 does not establish that a literal interpretation of his originalutterance renders that utterance false. Indeed, viewing Goldberg’sexample as a counterexample rests, I maintain, on a misconstrual ofBurge’s thesis.

To begin, let me offer an interpretation of Sam’s situation. Itwould seem that the most natural interpretation of his situation isone according to which he met both Uncles in a somewhat rushedand confused way, and that he simply got their names mixed up. Insuch a situation, Sam would have a de re thought of Uncle Henry(the ugly man he saw standing at the fountain), to the effect that heis ugly and an additional belief to the effect that he is called “UncleHarry”. Consequently, Sam would agree with Nancy’s correction invirtue of accepting that he got the names mixed up, and not in virtueof changing his mind about what he was thinking about the man inquestion. On this interpretation, however, Goldberg’s example is nota counterexample to Burge’s thesis. This is because Burge’s thesisis not, and was never intended to be, a thesis that concerns the res inde re thoughts.12 In a particularly apposite footnote Burge writes,

Mistakes about the res in de re judgements are not counterexamples to theclaim that basic cogito-like judgements are self-verifying. Suppose I judge: I amthinking that my aunt is charming; and suppose that the person that I am judging


to be charming is not my aunt (I have some particular person in mind). It is truethat I am making a mistake about the person thought about [to the effect that sheis my aunt]; I have no particular authority about that. . . . But I am not making amistake about what I am thinking about that person; there is no mistake about theintentional act and intentional content of the act. Authority concerns those aspectsof the thought which have intentional properties. (Burge, 1988, p. 74, fn. 8)

For Burge, the object of a de re thought, the object the thoughtconcerns, is determined by a non-conceptual causal relation betweenit and the thinker – not by the concepts the thinker employs. Theindividual thought about does not enter into the content of thethought, and hence the identity of the individual is not somethingabout which the thinker can be authoritative.13

If Goldberg’s example is to be relevant to Burge’s thesis, then, wehave to interpret Sam’s judgement as de dicto. On this interpretation,however, Goldberg and Gallois are seen to be guilty of the samemistake – that of failing to take seriously the division within theset of self-attributions between the cogito-like and the non-cogito-like cases. This leads to a conflation which can then give rise to theappearance of a counterexample.

That Goldberg fails to pay heed to this crucial division is evidentin the formulation he offers of Burge’s thesis. He states,

the Burgean strategy depends on the truth of the following claim:

(*) The class C of present-tense self-ascriptions of thought-contents issuch that (i) each of the members of C is self-verifying in virtue ofits self-referential form and (ii) each of the members of C warrantsthe attribution of the corresponding self-knowledge of content to theperson making the judgment. (Goldberg, 2000, p. 2)

where (i) here is Goldberg’s statement of Burge’s thesis. The classof present-tense self-ascriptions is simply not such that each of itsmembers is self-verifying. Nor does Burge maintain that it is. Theclass of present-tense self-ascriptions will contain both cogito-likeand non-cogito-like cases, and according to Burge it is only theformer that will be self-verifying.

We turn now to the implications of this illegitimate extension ofBurge’s thesis to cover the non-cogito-like judgements.

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4. A CONFLATION

If Sam’s utterance is to be interpreted as expressing a de dictothought (contrary to the natural interpretation provided above), thenviewing it as a counterexample to Burge’s thesis depends on aconflation; a conflation between the judgement that I am thinkingthat p and the judgement that I think that p. This conflation arisesdirectly from the illegitimate extension of Burge’s thesis mentionedabove. The former is a cogito-like judgement. It is self-reflexiveand is self-verifying in virtue of being so. The latter, on the otherhand, is, within this context, to all intents and purposes synonymouswith the judgement that I believe that p. This judgement is notself-referential. It is a judgement which refers to and attributes tothe subject an independent standing belief. As such, it is not self-verifying. It will be true just in case the subject does indeed have anindependent first-order belief that p. I am thinking that p does notentail I think that p.

(Note the analogous contrast between the judgement that I amnot thinking that p, which is self-defeating, and the quite distinctjudgement that I do not think that p, which may or may not betrue, depending on the first-order thoughts of the subject in ques-tion.)

In the context of Goldberg’s example, then, we need to distin-guish between what Sam is currently thinking and what Sam thinks,what he believes. It is clear that Sam does not think, at t1 orsubsequently, that Uncle Harry is ugly, but this does not entail thathe was not thinking at t1 that Uncle Harry is ugly. Indeed, he wasthinking that Uncle Harry is ugly at t1. (That is, he was employingthe concept Uncle Harry and the concept is ugly conjoined in theappropriate way.)

Contrast the original conversation, then, with a conversation ofthe following form (and interpret all the utterances literally).

(t4) Sam: I think Uncle Harry is awfully ugly.(t5) Nancy: You must think Uncle Henry is awfully ugly.(t6) Sam: You’re right, it’s Uncle Henry whom I think is

awfully ugly.

The judgement expressed by Sam’s utterance at t4 is not self-referential, is not self-verifying, and could well be false. However,


since it is not a cogito-like judgement, the fact that it may be falsecasts no doubt on Burge’s thesis.

Looking back at the original conversation, it is no doubt becauseSam intended to express at t1 the judgement expressed at t4 thathe is willing to accept Nancy’s correction at t3. Similarly, it isonly if we mistake the judgement expressed at t1 for the judgementexpressed at t4 that we are likely to see his agreement with Nancy att3 as worrying, and see Goldberg’s example as a counterexample toBurge’s thesis. The judgement expressed at t1 is self-verifying, butit is the judgement expressed at t4 which is the judgement that Samsees as mistaken and wishes to withdraw.

That this is the mistake that Goldberg makes is indicated by hisresponse to the first non-literal interpretation of Sam’s utterance heconsiders. The interpretation, that Sam was thinking I am thinkingUncle Henry is awfully ugly, was seen to fail because it was thoughtto be plausible for Sam at the same time to think I do not think UncleHenry is awfully ugly. Bearing in mind the distinction I am urging,these thoughts do not contradict one another.

Gallois is guilty of the same conflation. In the context of hisexample, we need to distinguish between the thought I am thinkingmy mother does not love me and the thought I think my motherdoes not love me. Once again, the former is self-referential and self-verifying in virtue of being so, whereas the latter is an attribution ofa standing state with which it can at best be contingently related. Theconflation of the two results in the appearance of a counterexampleto Burge’s thesis.

5. THE ATTITUDINAL COMPONENT OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Bernecker, unlike Gallois and Goldberg, is happy to accept Burge’sthesis concerning the self-referential nature of certain self-ascrip-tions. Nevertheless, it is evident that he too has failed to grasp thedistinction between instances of basic self-knowledge, on the onehand, and the more prevalent cases of non-cogito-like judgementson the other, and hence has failed to grasp the significance of thecogito-like cases. Thus, even while he explicitly acknowledges thatBurge restricts his discussion to the former kind of judgement, whenhe comes to give examples the distinction is ignored. He writes,

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Consider the first-order thought ‘water is wet’ and the self-referential thought ‘Ibelieve that water is wet’. The content of the that-clause (in the latter thought) isinherited from the first-order thought since the intentional content mentioned inthe that-clause is not merely an object of reference or cognition; it is part of thehigher-order cognition itself. (Bernecker, 1996, p. 264)

Again, later, he talks as if the belief that I believe that arth-ritis is painful were a cogito-like judgement, which it clearly isnot.14 Maintaining that it is makes the conflation discussed in theprevious section inevitable. Bernecker’s examples bring to mindGallois’s final interpretation of Burge, according to which second-order thoughts are constructed upon first-order thoughts. In fact,since, according to Burge, the content of a first-order thought isincluded or contained in the content of the appropriate second-order cogito-like judgement, Bernecker refers to Burge’s thesisas “the inclusion theory of self-knowledge.”15 This points to afurther confusion. If inclusion, or construction upon, were to thepoint, there could be no distinction between the cogito-like andthe non-cogito-like cases. Take any true self-ascription, includingany non-cogito-like case, and the content of the first order thoughtwill be included in the content of the second-order thought. Forexample, suppose the first-order thought is the belief that p, andthe second-order thought is the judgement that I believe that p.Despite the fact that the second-order self-ascription is a non-cogito-like judgement, it contains the content of the first-orderthought, namely the content that p. The crucial point here is thatalthough in every case of a true self-attribution there is a partialoverlap of content between the first- and second-order thought,there is not always an overlap of thought, or mental act. It is thislatter kind of overlap which is of importance for Burge’s thesis.To explain a little further, what distinguishes the cogito-like self-attributions from the non-cogito-like self-attributions is that in thelatter case there are two distinct mental states – one standing, andthe other occurrent. The cogito-like self-attributions, in contrast,are such that the first-order thought and the second-order judge-ment occur in the same mental act. The inclusion theory fails toacknowledge this crucial point, since it focuses on inclusion ofcontent, rather than on the all-important issue of inclusion of mentalact.16


It is also evident that Bernecker views Burge’s thesis as a theoryof self-knowledge. He identifies Burge’s thesis as “[t]he leadingexternalist theory of self-knowledge,”17 and claims that “Burgeancompatibilism is not only the most promising but also the mostwidely accepted externalist theory of privileged self-knowledge.”18

In this latter he agrees with Goldberg’s claim that “the vast majorityof philosophers who wish to show that semantic externalism iscompatible with authoritative knowledge of [thought] content derivesuch a conclusion from . . . Burge’s thesis.”19 Unfortunately, Gold-berg does not cite a single member of this so-called “vast majority”,and those cited by Bernecker as endorsing it do not obviously fit thebill. For instance, Harold Noonan and Anthony Brueckner are cited,and yet the fomer is an ardent advocate of internalism, and the latterhas in several places questioned the compatibility of externalism andprivileged access to thought content. Moreover, the particular paperscited (viz. Brueckner (1992) and Noonan (1993)) do not directlyconcern the issue in hand. Brueckner’s paper concerns transcen-dental arguments derived from externalist premises; and Noonan’sconcerns the explanatory necessity of object-dependent thoughts.

Nevertheless, the crucial mistake here is to suppose that Burge’sthesis constitutes a theory of authoritative self-knowledge. As wehave seen, Burge does not maintain that all self-ascriptions are self-verifying, and does not derive his compatibilism from his thesis thatcogito-like judgements are. The cogito-like cases merely serve toestablish that thoughts whose contents are externally individuatedneed not be subject to facsimile-based error. The warrant for all self-attributions, for Burge, is derived from the role such self-attributionsplay in critical reasoning. To his credit, Bernecker recognises thatBurge does not himself apply his strategy to self-ascriptions ofstanding states, although given the confusion demonstrated by hisexamples one has to wonder what Bernecker takes this claim toamount to. Moreover, he goes on to maintain that a number ofcompatibilists do extend Burge’s thesis to cover self-attributions ofstanding states. Here he cites as examples Kevin Falvey and JosephOwens (1994), Sydney Shoemaker (1994), and Crispin Wright(1991). And once again the citations are, I believe, inappropriate.As I understand it, these and other compatibilists have taken fromBurge only what we can call (following Christopher Peacocke20)

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the redeployment thesis. The redeployment thesis states that theconcepts used in second-order beliefs will be externally deter-mined and will be fixed by the same external conditions that fixthe concepts used at the first-order level. This is the first of thethree reasons that Gallois identifies in Burge’s writing to favour acompatibilist position. There is no mention of self-reference or self-verification here. The account is widely accepted amongst semanticexternalists. Thus, in addition to Peacocke, Wright, Shoemaker,John Heil, and Donald Davidson,21 to mention but a few, appealto the redeployment thesis. This, then, rather than Burge’s thesis,provides the basis for an account of authoritative self-knowledgeconsistent with semantic externalism.

And even so, the redeployment thesis is typically invoked to showthat semantic externalism has no additional problems in accom-modating authoritative self-knowledge over and above those thatinternalism faces. It is invoked to avoid the facsimile-based errorabout content to which semantic externalism is supposed specifi-cally to give rise. It is not typically thought to constitute by itselfan adequate account of authoritative self-knowledge. That is whyBurge, Davidson, Gallois, Cynthia MacDonald, and Peacocke, forexample, have all offered independent accounts of the warrantpossessed by self-attributions of externally individuated thoughts.22

The merits of these will have to await discussion on a futureoccasion.

It is now time to turn to Bernecker’s main charge against Burgeancompatibilism. Bernecker claims, quite correctly, that authoritativeself-knowledge requires the identification of both the content andthe attitudinal component of the first-order thought in question. Thusif I am to know that I believe that p, not only must I know that it isp that I believe, but I must also know that I believe it rather than,for example, desire or fear it. He then points out that while Burgeancompatibilism allows one to identify the content of one’s thoughts,it says nothing of how one is to identify the attitudinal componentof one’s thoughts, and hence is an inadequate theory of authori-tative self-knowledge. He boldly states that “most compatibilists,since unaware of the issue of attitude-identification, presume thatthe inclusion theory solves all compatibilist problems”.23 In part thischarge against Burgean compatibilism is deflected by considerations


laid out in the previous two paragraphs. Burgean compatibilism, ifwhat is meant by that is the appeal to Burge’s thesis, is not assumedby compatibilists to be a theory of authoritative self-knowledge. Inaddition, the fact that one can misidentify an attitude, mistake a stateof supposition for a state of belief, or a state of jealousy for a stateof envy, for instance, is generally conceded.

However, Bernecker goes on to offer an additional reason tobelieve that semantic externalism in particular will have difficulty inaccommodating the authority with which one can know which kindsof thought one is having. He identifies three sources of possibleerror about the attitudinal component of one’s thoughts. The firsttwo, those of self-deception and lack of attention, are left to oneside, and it is clear that they need pose no specific difficulties forcompatibilists. The third source of possible error arises, according toBernecker, from the assumption that one could possess an “incom-plete understanding of the concepts used to describe one’s mentalcondition.”24 If this is indeed a possible source of error, it is onethat perhaps arises only on the assumption of semantic externalism.Accordingly this is the focus of Bernecker’s paper.

Bernecker proceeds by arguing that attitudinal concepts suchas those of belief and desire are themselves open to externalistconsiderations. Thus he writes,

Suppose Bert has a brother, Oscar. While Bert is confused about ‘arthritis’, Oscardeviates from the language community with respect to ‘to believe’. Oscar has anunusually coarse-grained concept of belief. It is in fact so general that he takes ‘tobelieve’, ‘to suppose’, ‘to decide’ and ‘to consider’ to be synonymous terms. . . .

Now, despite Oscar’s confusion, social externalism seems committed to sayingthat the meaning of his concept [belief] doesn’t differ from what his languagecommunity means by it. (Bernecker, 1996, p. 269)

His argument against Burge’s thesis, and hence against Burgeancompatibilism, is then stated as follows.

One day Oscar entertains the self-referential thought that he expresses by ‘I ambelieving that arthritis is painful’. Given the inclusion theory, Oscar knows whathis first-order thought is about, i.e. he knows its propositional content. However,let’s suppose that, contrary to Oscar’s contention, he doesn’t believe but supposesthat arthritis is painful. . . . Hence, Oscar’s judgement ‘I am believing that arthritisis painful’ is (partly) false. (Bernecker, 1996, p. 269, original emphasis)

124 SARAH SAWYER

Let us suppose that Bernecker has identified a further possiblesource of error concerning the identification of the attitudinalcomponents of one’s thoughts. Why should the possibility of thiskind of error be a problem either for Burge’s thesis, or for Burgeancompatibilism? Consider Burge’s thesis first. We can agree withBernecker that the judgement that I am believing that arthritis ispainful is not self-verifying. As Bernecker points out, the subjectconcerned may not be believing any such content. However, itis precisely for this reason that Burge is careful not to offer asexamples of cogito-like judgements any which make reference toa specific type of mental attitude, such as that of belief or thatof supposition. In order to understand Burge’s thesis it should beunderstood that “thinks” satisfies the condition that any attitude ofthe form “S ϕ’s that p” (e.g. “S desires that p”, “S fears that p”)entails “S thinks that p”. Thus the judgement that I am thinking thatarthritis is painful is indeed self-verifying. Indeed, “is thinking” inthe context of Burge’s thesis is to be understood as “is entertainingthe content”. This is implicit when, in illustrating the nature ofself-reference involved, Burge says, “[i]f a person . . . were to ask‘Am I now thinking about water or twater?’, the answer is obvi-ously ‘both’. Both concepts are used.”25 It is only if “thinking”is construed broadly that Burge’s claims make sense here. Thatis, “thinking” is taken to be equivalent to “deploying concepts inthought”, where this is neutral on the issue of whether the conceptsthus deployed are deployed in beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and soon. Accordingly, Bernecker has not offered us a reason to doubtBurge’s thesis, since he has not offered us an example of a cogito-like judgement. In this his mistake is seen to parallel those of Galloisand Goldberg. All three find fault with Burge’s thesis because ofan illegitimate extension of that thesis to non-cogito-like cases; or,equivalently, because of a conflation between the two types of case.The difference lies only in the nature of the illegitimate extension.Thus the fact that attitudinal concepts can be grasped only partiallydoes not pose a threat, as Bernecker maintains, to Burge’s thesis.Burge’s thesis does not concern or imply anything in particularabout attitudinal concepts about the extension of which one couldbe mistaken.


What about Burgean compatibilism? As Bernecker understandsit, Burgean compatibilism is the position which extends Burge’sthesis to cover all instances of self-attributions, thereby supposedlyproviding an adequate account of authoritative self-knowledge.However, since no-one has been identified as holding such a posi-tion, we can surely have no stake in its defence. Nevertheless, itmight be thought that Bernecker has posed a general threat to thecompatibilist position. He does, after all, open up the possibilitythat a subject could be in error about the type of thought she isentertaining; a possibility which, on the face of it, would thwartthe very possibility of an account of authoritative self-knowledgeconsistent with externalism. But this is not the case. Once one movesoutside the realm of cogito-like judgements, one moves outside therealm of infallibility. That is, the externalist can happily tolerate thepossibility of certain kinds of error. Bernecker is himself quite happywith this thought. He does, however, think the kind of error whichhe has identified is unacceptable. He writes,

. . . [the subject] cannot even distinguish among different attitudes. When hethinks ‘I am believing that arthritis is painful’, for all he knows he couldsuppose, decide, or consider that P. If he actually believes that arthritis is painful,his self-referential judgement comes out true, but it doesn’t thereby qualify asknowledge. . . . When . . . [it] is true, it is accidentally so. (Bernecker, 1996, p. 271)

But it is hard to see how the kind of error to which Berneckerpoints differs in kind from the other kinds of misidentificationof attitude to which one can be subject, kinds which are takenby Bernecker himself not to undermine the possibility of authori-tative self-knowledge consistent with externalism. The conflationbetween the cogito-like and the non-cogito-like cases which wasevident in the arguments of Gallois and Goldberg may be playinga role here. In addition, as stated above, compatibilists cannotbe classified as Burgean compatibilists along Bernecker’s lines.Accordingly, accounts of authoritative self-knowledge consistentwith externalism have been offered. It is worth drawing attention inparticular to Peacocke (1996) and (1999), which provide a detailedand plausible account of how the application of the concept of belieftracks the property of belief, even on the assumption of semanticexternalism. A similar account could presumably be given for theother propositional attitudes. Suffice it to say that the appearance

126 SARAH SAWYER

of a threat to compatibilism once again rests on a mistaken inter-pretation of Burge’s thesis and the uses to which it is intended to beput.

6. CONCLUSION

We have not been given a true counterexample to Burge’s thesis. Wehave also seen that compatibilist strategies do not, as Bernecker andGoldberg maintain, derive their compatibilism from Burge’s thesis.Failure to distinguish cogito-like judgements from other types ofself-attribution, and failure to distinguish between Burge’s thesisand the redeployment thesis, will clearly lead one astray.26

NOTES

1 See Gallois (1996), Chapter 9.2 As Peacocke has shown, the model of needing to check on content-fixing rela-tions before the contents of one’s own thoughts can be known must in any case bemistaken. For even when the content of a thought is not externally individuated– as with the content of a logical or arithmetical belief – “a thinker equally doesnot have to check on the internal relations of the conceptual constituents of herbeliefs before coming to know what it is that she believes” (1999), pp. 203-204.3 Ibid., p. 70.4 Ibid., pp. 73–74.5 Ibid., p. 70.6 Gallois (1996), pp. 174–175.7 Ibid., p. 175, emphasis added.8 Ibid.9 Burge (1988), fn. 11, p. 79, emphasis added.10 See his (1996, 1999). For insightful criticisms of this view see Peacocke(1996).11 In fact, I think the focus on linguistic utterances rather than the judgementsthemselves is less than helpful, and contributes to the appearance of a counter-example. Burge never maintains that the statements which express a thinker’sjudgements regarding her own occurrent thoughts are self-verifying.12 Burge’s thesis will of course apply to the intentional contents of de re thoughtsjust as much as to those of de dicto thoughts. It is the res that the thought concernsand the relations the subject bears to the res in question, if there is one, over whichBurge’s thesis does not extend. And, once again, this will only be in the case ofcogito-like judgements.13 See Burge (1977).


14 Bernecker (1996), p. 269.15 Bernecker (1996), p. 265.16 With thanks to an anonymous referee for prompting me to clarify my objectionto the inclusion theory.17 Bernecker (1996), p. 262.18 Ibid.19 Goldberg (2000), p. 1.20 See his (1996, 1999), Chapter 5.21 See Wright (1991), p. 76; Shoemaker (1994), p. 260; Heil (1988), p. 251; andDavidson (1987).22 See Burge (1996, 1998, 1999); Davidson (1984); Gallois (1996); MacDonald(1995) and (1998); and Peacocke (1996, 1999). For a recent criticism of theaccounts offered by Burge and Gallois, see Brueckner (1999).23 Bernecker (1996), p. 267.24 Ibid., p. 268.25 Burge (1988), p. 75.26 This investigation was supported by the University of Kansas GeneralResearch Fund allocation #2301795. I would also like to thank Jack Bricke andBrad Majors, and audiences at the University of Missouri at Columbia and theUniversity of Kansas.

REFERENCES

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Brueckner, A. (1992): ‘What an Anti-Individualist Knows A Priori’, Analysis 52,111–118.

Brueckner, A. (1999): ‘Two Recent Approaches to Self-Knowledge’, Philosoph-ical Perspectives 13, 251–271.

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Burge, T. (1999): ‘A Century of Deflation and a Moment about Self-Knowledge’,Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 73, 25–46.

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Wright, B. Smith and C. MacDonald (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds (pp. 123–154). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Noonan, H.W. (1993): ‘Object-Dependent Thoughts: A Case of SuperficialNecessity but Deep Contingency?’, in J. Heil and A. Mele (eds.), MentalCausation (pp. 283–308), Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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University of KansasLawrence, KSUSAE-mail: [email protected]

in defence of burge's thesis

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