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Dretske on Self-Knowledge and Contrastive Focus: How to Understand Dretske’s Theory, and Why It Matters

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Abstract

Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is interesting but peculiar and can seem implausible. He denies that we can know by introspection that we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But he allows that we can know by introspection what we think, feel, and experience. We consider two puzzles. The first puzzle, PUZZLE 1, is interpretive. Is there a way of understanding Dretske’s theory on which the (potential) knowledge affirmed by its positive side is different than the (potential) knowledge denied by its negative side? The second puzzle, PUZZLE 2, is substantive. Each of the following theses has some prima facie plausibility: (a) there is introspective knowledge of thoughts, (b) knowledge requires evidence, and (c) there are no experiences of thoughts. It is unclear, though, that these claims form a consistent set. These puzzles are not unrelated. Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge is a potential solution to PUZZLE 2 in that Dretske’s theory is meant to show how (a), (b), and (c) can all be true. We provide a solution to PUZZLE 1 by appeal to Dretske’s early work in the philosophy of language on contrastive focus. We then distinguish between “Closure” and “Transmissibility”, and raise and answer a worry to the effect that Dretske’s theory of self-knowledge runs counter to Transmissibility. These results help to secure Dretske’s theory as a viable solution to PUZZLE 2.

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Notes

  1. Dretske’s writings on self-knowledge are numerous. See Dretske (1994, 1995, 1999, 2003a, b, c, 2006b, 2011, 2012a, b, c). Dretske (2012a) is representative of Dretske’s later writings on self-knowledge and, in part because of this, is our main focus in explaining his theory.

  2. Dretske allows that we can know non-introspectively that we have thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

  3. The extant literature on introspection and self-knowledge is vast. See Gertler (2014) and Schwitzgebel (2014) for helpful overviews (and for references). See also Smithies and Stoljar (2012).

  4. Dretske claims that he limits the discussion to thoughts only for expository purposes and that his arguments concerning thoughts can be generalized (with some complication) to non-thoughts. Dretske refers readers to Dretske (2003b) for details.

  5. See Dretske (2012b) for more on the distinction between o-awareness and f-awareness.

  6. Dretske (2003b) also holds that there are no o-awarenesses of experiences and refers readers to Shoemaker (1994) for details as to why.

  7. This requirement is far from trivial if certain externalist theories are correct. See Lau and Deutsch (2014) and Parent (2013) for relevant discussion.

  8. Dretske writes in terms of “displaced perception” in his early work on self-knowledge (Dretske 1994, 1995, Ch. 2). There, though, he has in mind a narrower understanding of displaced perception on which displaced perception requires “connecting beliefs”. See Aydede (2003), Kemmerling (1999), and Lycan (2003) for critical discussion. Dretske drops all reference to “displaced perception” in his subsequent work on self-knowledge. This could be because of a change in view. It could instead be because of a change in strategy. The important point, though, for our purposes, is that even in his later work he rejects o-awarenesses of thoughts and thus holds that S’s introspective knowledge of what she thinks is due, not to an o-awareness of her thought that P, but to an o-awareness of something else entirely.

  9. See Schaffer (2007, sec. 1) for helpful discussion.

  10. We are assuming, as is plausible, that RKW should be understood so that S knows by a certain way what X if and only if there is a proposition P such that (a) S knows by that way that P and (b) P is the correct answer to the indirect question referred to by the expression “what X”.

  11. See Roche and Roche (2016) for discussion.

  12. It might be thought that Dretske rejects KRE, given his endorsement of reliabilism. But while Dretske takes himself to be a reliabilist of sorts, he stresses that he is not a process reliabilist. See Dretske (2003b, pp. 11–12, n. 15, 2012a, p. 51, n. 3). His epistemology is evidence-based (though he oftentimes speaks in terms of reasons as opposed to evidence). Dretske’s writings on knowledge are extensive. See, e.g., Dretske (1969, 1970, 1971, 1975, 1981a, b, 1991, 2005a, b).

  13. Recall that, for Dretske, the source of S’s knowledge of what she thinks is S’s o-awareness of the proposition that P. Given that others can be o-aware of P, how is S’s knowledge of what she thinks introspective (in the sense defined above)? Dretske’s view is that subjects other than S cannot come to know what S thinks by coming to be o-aware of the proposition that P.

  14. The claim here is not that Dretske’s work on self-knowledge has been largely neglected in the literature. It has not (see, for example, Aydede 2003; Byrne 2012; Kemmerling 1999; Lycan 1999; Stoljar 2012). The claim, rather, is that DSK in particular—the thesis that S knows by introspection what she thinks but does not know by introspection that she thinks it—has been largely neglected in the literature. Lycan (2003, Sects. 4 and 5) discusses it but only briefly.

  15. Lycan (2003, p. 27, n. 6) notes in passing that Dretske (1972) might be helpful in understanding Dretske’s work on self-knowledge. If our solution to PUZZLE 1 is correct, then Dretske (1972) is in fact helpful to that end.

  16. Elsewhere Dretske (1975, 1977) refers to expressions such as (1a)–(1d) as “propositional allomorphs”.

  17. It might seem that (4b) would be true if the details were such that Clyde also received an offer from Herb for $20,000 and Alex knew this. It can be stipulated, though, that the details are such that Clyde received just one offer (the one from Schultz) and Alex knows this.

  18. Dretske holds not just that explanatory contexts are sensitive to differences in contrastive focus but also that causal contexts are sensitive to differences in contrastive focus. See Dretske (1977) for discussion. There is a growing literature on the issue of whether causal/explanatory contexts are sensitive to differences is contrastive focus. See Schaffer (2005b) for discussion and for further references.

  19. While contrastive focus sometimes determines the scope of an operator, it never by itself determines which alternatives are relevant. For example, while the contrastive focus in “Clyde lent Alex $300” determines that the scope of the operator “because” in (6a) is restricted to the amount of money that Clyde lent Alex, it does not determine which alternatives to (a1) are relevant. So what does? This is a difficult question. Fortunately, though, how exactly it is to be answered is not important for our purposes, and so shall be set aside. But see Dretske (1981b, pp. 373–378) for discussion.

  20. See Dretske (1972, p. 433).

  21. See Aikin (2006), Baumann (2008), Blaauw (2008a, b), Buenting (2010), Johnsen (2001), Kvanvig (2008), Morton (2013), Morton and Karjalainen (2008), Neta (2008), Pritchard (2008), Rieber (1998), Sawyer (2014, 2015), Schaffer (2005a, 2007, 2008), Sinnott-Armstrong (2004, 2008), and van Woudenberg (2008).

  22. It should be noted that Sawyer (2015), for one, has a different reading of Dretske’s theory of knowledge. She reads it as a non-contrastivist theory on which knowledge is a binary relation—between a subject and a proposition—holding against a set of alternatives. This reading is interesting. But, unfortunately, we do not have the space to give it the attention it deserves. As we see it, this is okay, given that DSK is interesting in and of itself. It would be interesting, regardless of whether Dretske’s theory of knowledge is constrastivist, if there were a way of solving PUZZLE 1 on which knowledge is contrastive.

  23. See Baumann (2006), Dretske (2005a, b, 2006a), Hawthorne (2005), Jager (2004), and Shackel (2006) for recent discussion of Dretske on C.

  24. Here it is being assumed that R is a proposition as opposed to an experience.

  25. Dretske claims this in effect in Dretske (2012a). He is more explicit in Dretske (2003a, pp. 139–140).

  26. Something similar is true with respect to C. Given Dretske’s contrastivism on knowledge, and given that there is no mention in C of any sets of relevant alternatives, his view should be not that C is false but that C is underspecified.

  27. Relevant here is the point from Sect. 2 that the difference in contrastive focus between (6a) and (6b) can be captured in terms of the expression “Given that (or on the understanding that)”.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank two reviewers for their helpful comments on a prior version of the paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Religion, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, USA

    Michael Roche

  2. Department of Philosophy, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA

    William Roche

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Roche, M., Roche, W. Dretske on Self-Knowledge and Contrastive Focus: How to Understand Dretske’s Theory, and Why It Matters. Erkenn 82, 975–992 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9854-2

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