We Do Not Always Express What We Think

Abstract

Lynne Rudder Baker argues that two famous theses, namely Social Externalism and First-Person Authority, are not?as it might seem?contradictory but that indeed the first supports the second. Social Externalism is understood and defended as the thesis that which concepts a person has depends on the social community she lives in. The thesis of First-Person Authority states that a person typically knows a priori what she thinks. At first sight, it is hard to see how First-Person Authority is possible if all the concepts are dependent on the social community and are hence not a priori knowable. Baker analyzes two standard arguments for the incompatibility of the two theses and shows that some of their premises do not follow from the two theses. Quite on the contrary, she concludes that Social Externalism renders thoughts objective. Everything that can be thought by one person can also be thought by another one. Therefore, the content of self-knowledge can also be known by others, i.e., it is objective. This objectiveness of our thoughts is a condition for true self knowledge, because it prevents us from the Wittgensteinian conclusion that "whatever is going to seem right to me is right".1 I think, there are two problems with this argumentation: Firstly, the thesis of Social Externalism, as Baker construes it, is not about the content of concepts and thoughts but about the having of concepts and thoughts. Because Social Externalism is silent about the content of thoughts, it does not contradict First-Person Authority as knowledge about the content of one's thoughts. Rather, it gives rise to a different worry: Can we know a priori that we have thoughts at all? Secondly, the intimate connection of thoughts and language is silently presupposed throughout her argument. I will try to show that this silent presupposition is far away from being warranted. I will conclude that Social Externalism is surely true for the (linguistic)