Mind Workshop: Avramides

Anita Avramides, "Knowing vs. Acting with Others: Some Background", argued that an otherwise promising approach to knowledge of others, exemplified by early knowledge externalists such as Goldman and Dretske, fail to account adequately for the relations we bear to others. This is for the reason that they attempt to account for knowledge of others against a background that leaves open as a possibility the sceptical hypothesis that we lack knowledge of others - we can have knowledge of what another is thinking without knowledge that another is thinking. Anita argued that a recent view, proposed by Quassim Cassam, that we can see that others are in mental states, does not really progress very far from this basic externalist position. Instead, she argued, we should look to Wittgenstein who conceives of the background to our knowledge of others in terms a kind of social interaction that leaves no room for the sceptical possibility to take root. In this way, we can take a more satisfactory view of what is wrong with the sceptical arguments.

Alweiss on Husserl

In her paper, "Beyond Internalism and Externalism: Husserl's Account of Intentionality", Lilian Alweiss argued against what she took to be the standard interpretation of Husserl as an internalist. She argued that whilst there are aspects of Husserl's theory of intentionality that may, without too great a distortion, be called internalist, there are also clearly externalist elements. She argued that Husserl is not a methodological solipsist, but that there is still an internalist element to his thought that comes out when we follow him in generalising his account of indexicals. This account holds that there are two kinds of meaning, one of which is context independent and internally individuated, the other of which is partly determined by context and so externally individuated. She also argued that Husserl's account of intentionality can provide a smooth account of terms (such as "phlogiston") that fail to refer.

Some of the issues that came up in discussion were these:- Even if Husserl was not a methodological solipsist in the Logical Investigations (from which most of Lilian's citations were taken), might he not have been later? For, presumably, it is the epoche that provides the strongest reason for thinking him to be such.

With regards to the internalism/externalism debate, if an internalist is one who thinks that meanings are in the head, then there is surely a strong case to be made that Husserl is indeed an externalist. But if internalism is the view that the determinants of meaning are all accessible from the first person perspective, then surely there is a strong case to be made that Husserl is not an internalist. For his 'contexts' that determine meaning are 'perceived contexts' and thus his view cannot be externalist in at least one way of understanding that claim.