Social externalism, self-knowledge, and memory
In [4], I argued that for an externalist, particularly a social externalist, slow-switching should be rather commonplace. Slow-switching (introduced by Burge [3]) occurs when an agent unknowingly moves between linguistic communities and thereby (unknowingly) adopts the linguistic norms of the new community. So, for example, an agent who is unaware of the individuating conditions of 'chicory' (save that it is a bitter leafy green vegetable) will defer to certain members of his linguistic community for those individuating conditions. The agent may, however, come to defer to new individuals, unaware that those new individuals have altogether different individuating conditions for 'chicory'. Paul Boghossian [1] has argued that the possibility of slow-switching can be used to show the incompatibility of externalism and selfknowledge. For example, it appears possible for an agent S to know his thoughts at time t, forget nothing, yet at some time later than t (having been informed of the possibility or prevalence of slow-switching) be unable to say what the contents of his thoughts were at t. As Boghossian argues,