I know you allude to it briefly and dismiss it but it does seem like semantic externalism is maybe a better basis for a lot of the intuitions Indexical Dogmatism is getting at. It seems like you’re saying the Putnam BIV-style externalism argument is too strong because actual BIVs will use it and be wrong to do so, so if we use it to dismiss the problem there’s a chance we’re making a mistake too? But the fact that we laugh at them doesn’t mean they’re not stating something True in BIV-English right, I’m
not sure if flows from something like that that it is a possibility we have to consider.
If the point is more: “We could wake up the BIV after he (it?) said that and it’d immediately do whatever the brain version of blushing is and admit the error of its ways”
or maybe
“We could start start talking to the BIVs through their simulated environment and convince them of their situation and give them an existential crisis”
Then that’s true but not really inconsistent with their earlier utterances, since presumably whatever kind of theory you’re working with that gives you semantic externalism would also tell you that the Brain-out-of-a-Vat is now speaking a different language.
I know you allude to it briefly and dismiss it but it does seem like semantic externalism is maybe a better basis for a lot of the intuitions Indexical Dogmatism is getting at. It seems like you’re saying the Putnam BIV-style externalism argument is too strong because actual BIVs will use it and be wrong to do so, so if we use it to dismiss the problem there’s a chance we’re making a mistake too? But the fact that we laugh at them doesn’t mean they’re not stating something True in BIV-English right, I’m not sure if flows from something like that that it is a possibility we have to consider.
If the point is more: “We could wake up the BIV after he (it?) said that and it’d immediately do whatever the brain version of blushing is and admit the error of its ways”
or maybe
“We could start start talking to the BIVs through their simulated environment and convince them of their situation and give them an existential crisis”
Then that’s true but not really inconsistent with their earlier utterances, since presumably whatever kind of theory you’re working with that gives you semantic externalism would also tell you that the Brain-out-of-a-Vat is now speaking a different language.