Argument of Gradual Change against Compatibilism

One of the important questions in philosophy of mind concerns nature of mental intentional states and the way to determine them. Some experiences such as that of twin earth confirm externalism in contents, in the sense that at least in some cases content is determined by external, environmental, and most likely social and historical facts. On the other hand, it is intuitively accepted that we have a distinct (and free from experience) access to the contents of our own ideas. But compatibility between distinct access and externalism is controversial. After some prefatory notes concerning externalism and knowledge of the soul, one of the arguments for their incompatibility (argument of gradual change) will be introduced in the present article; then two objections against this argument will be described and discussed: in the first one and through an study of the theory, alternatives of the claim “second order content is determined based on the first order content” are considered as confirming subject’s knowledge of the contents of his own thought; and the other does not regard internalism as being based on evidence; and thus does not accept theoretical efficiency of the alternative introduced in internalism. Then, it is shown that if those who believe in these critiques manage to ascribe to the subject knowledge of the content of his own thought, that is a knowledge which requires justification. Then, having separated negative and positive independence of a justified belief from experimental facts, the author shows that argument of gradual change rejects only negative independence; and knowledge of the mind may be still regarded in the positive sense as being independent from experience.