Mind Group: Slow Switching And The Psychology Of Memory

Slow switching cases (Burge 1988) challenge the compatibility of content externalism with a priori

self-knowledge by depicting a subject whose concepts unwittingly shift to align with those of a new

linguistic community. The externalist answer has tended to take the form of the inclusion view.

According to this solution, self knowledge of a basic kind is guaranteed to the subject who thinks

second order thoughts. Boghossian’s (1989) memory argument leverages the slow switching thought

experiment to object to the inclusion view. However, both the memory argument and its critiques

overlook scientific insights into memory. This paper presents a novel, thoroughly naturalistic response

to the memory argument that integrates basic memory science all the while avoiding the pitfalls of

existing approaches. Two consequences are explored. Firstly, the proposed naturalistic treatment of

slow switching promises to supplant purely a priori treatments. Second, a new perspective on the

relationship between theories of memory and theories of self-knowledge is proposed.