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As long as the special method of privileged access is understood to be a kind of inner

observation, then it seems that we can only have direct knowledge of the intrinsic properties of mental states, which broad contents are not. The way forward for the content externalist, then, must be to deny that introspection is a kind of inner observation.

What is meant by this? We have been thinking of introspection as a process that detects certain features of our mental states, and then produces the relevant self-belief. Thus, the introspection of my perceptual experience as of a red cup in front of me involves the detection of certain phenomenal and representational properties instantiated in my experience, and the subsequent production of a belief about them. This is to think of introspection as roughly analogous to sensory perception20. My perception of the red cup in front of me involves the detection of certain colour, shape and size properties (among others), and the subsequent production of a

19 _{A central tenant of content externalism is that intrinsic duplicates can have thoughts with different contents.} 20 _{Such a view can be found in Nichols and Stich (2002; 2003), Armstrong (1968) and Lycan (1996).}

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perceptual state which represents them. The difficulty that we ran into is that the sorts of properties that we are able to introspect are unlike the sorts of properties that we are able to detect in a manner analogous to perception. Perceptual processes are only able to afford direct knowledge of the intrinsic properties of objects, while its seems that we are able to introspect relational and dispositional properties, such as mental contents. Thus, it looks like if we are to explain the introspection of such relational properties, we must find an alternative to the observational model.

Suppose that someone writes a series of numbered sentences on a blackboard. Unfortunately, the sentences are written in some strange language that you have never heard of before. You are given a dictionary that translates all the sentences in the strange language into English. You are then asked to write, on the blackboard, sentences about those sentences, of the form: “Sentence X means that Y”. Call this the meta-sentence. How are you to solve this problem?

The obvious solution is to look up the meanings of all the words in the numbered sentences, figure out what they mean, and then write out the meta sentence. This will take a long time, of course, but presumably it could be done. A much easier solution, however, is to simply append “Sentence 1 means that” in front of sentence 1, “Sentence 2 means that” in front of sentence 2, and so on. You have thus produced the right meta-sentences that contain the original sentences as constituents. This method is much faster, does not require the use of the translation book, and is error proof.

The first method can be understood to be roughly analogous to an observation approach to introspection. The meaning of the sentence is detected through a complex mechanism that involves consulting the translation book, and then a meta-sentence is produced that is about the interpreted meaning of the first sentence. Likewise, according to observation approaches, introspection of our thoughts consists in detecting that they have a certain content, and then producing a belief about the detected thought. The analog of the translation book would be a mapping from the intrinsic properties of the detected thought to its mental content. But according to content externalism, such a mapping depends on external factors that we do not have

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An alternative to observation approaches understands introspection to be roughly analogous to the second method of producing the right meta-sentences. The idea is that the content of our thoughts does not need to be detected; rather, it simply needs to be redeployed or embedded directly into the content of the self-belief21. Thus, the content of my self-beliefs is partially constituted by the content of the first-order state of which it is about. Call this the constitution

approach to introspection22.

Take my belief that water is wet, and my twin’s corresponding belief that twater is wet. What needs to be explained is this: how I am able to form the self-belief with content I am believing that water is wet, while my twin is able to form the self-belief with content I am believing that twater is wet, even though these beliefs are intrinsically identical? The solution, according to the constitution approach, is to simply note that while the content of my self-belief is partially constituted by the content of my first-order belief, the content of my twin’s self-belief is partially constituted by the content of his first-order belief. There is no need to detect or identify the differences between these contents, since the differences reappear in the content of the self-belief for free.

To sum up: as long as we adopt an observational approach to privileged self-knowledge of mental contents, then such knowledge is incompatible with mental contents being broad. Observation of an object can only provide direct knowledge of its intrinsic properties, not its relational properties. The solution is to reject that introspection of mental contents is

observational. The contents of first-order states do not need to be detected before producing the relevant self-belief about them. Rather, these contents can be simply embedded into the content of the self-belief. This is how to make privileged self-knowledge of mental contents compatible with content externalism.

21 _{On Burge’s (1988) proposal, self-beliefs are self-verifying because in the very act of entertaining a thought with} the content I am thinking that water is wet, one is thereby entertaining a thought with the content water is wet. 22 _{Such accounts can be found in Burge (1988), Heil (1988) and Gertler (2000).}

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