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Dretske's Naturalistic Representationalism and Privileged Accessibility Thesis.

Manas Kumar Sahu¹

¹Humanities and Social Sciences Department, IIT Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400076 India.

Philosophia (Ramat-Gan, Israel)

|September 20, 2022

Summary

This paper analyzes Dretske's naturalistic defense of privileged accessibility, challenging its grounding in phenomenal subjectivity. It explores how externalist views offer new insights for understanding first-person knowledge of mental states.

Keywords:

Anti-Representationalism Displaced Perception Introspection Naturalised Privilege Accessibility Naturalistic Representationalism Phenomenal Realism Phenomenal concepts Systemic Indicative Function Transparency of Experience

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Area of Science:

Philosophy of Mind
Epistemology
Cognitive Science

Background:

The privileged accessibility thesis posits that individuals have special access to their own mental states.
Internalist and externalist philosophies offer differing accounts of the justification for this privileged access.
Dretske's naturalistic externalism reinterprets introspection to support privileged accessibility.

Purpose of the Study:

To critically analyze Fred Dretske's naturalistic defense of the privileged accessibility thesis.
To examine Dretske's reformulation of introspection as displaced perception.
To contrast internalist and externalist justifications for privileged accessibility.

Main Methods:

Critical analysis of philosophical arguments.
Examination of Dretske's theory of naturalistic content externalism.
Comparison of internalist and externalist perspectives on justification.

Main Results:

Dretske's view grounds justification for privileged accessibility externally, not in phenomenal subjectivity.
Awareness of the entire representational mechanism, not just states, is key.
Dretske's model, while not fully reducing phenomenal qualities, offers a framework for compatibilists.

Conclusions:

Dretske's naturalistic externalism provides a novel approach to defending privileged accessibility.
The theory impacts transparency theorists and compatibilist views on mental states.
Further research may explore the reduction of phenomenal qualities within this framework.