Swamp man

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The thought experiment of the swamp man of Donald Davidson builds on the Twin Earth by Hilary Putnam and reaffirmed the concept of semantic externalism . It is presented in the essay "Knowing One's Own Mind" published in 1987 by Donald Davidson.

situation

Suppose Davidson is wandering around in a swampy area and is suddenly struck by lightning and killed. At the same time, another lightning strike strikes another, nearby point and causes the molecules at this point to spontaneously and completely randomly arrange themselves in such a way that they take on exactly the shape Davidson's body had at the time of his death.

The creature created in this way, the swamp man , has a brain that is exactly identical in structure to the one that Davidson had, and for this reason it will behave exactly like Davidson. He will return from his wandering and write the same essays Davidson would have written; he will be like Davidson towards Davidson's family, and so on.

consequences

The swamp man will behave exactly like Davidson and is indistinguishable from him. Still, Davidson said, there is a difference. Apparently, the Swamp Man will recognize Davidson's friends, colleagues, and family . However, this is impossible because he never really recognized her - he has never seen her before.

Likewise, the swamp man could be referring to an essay he read last week . Since it did not exist a week before, this is also impossible. Davidson, on the other hand, could truthfully make the same statement. The truthfulness of the statements could not be recognized from outside.

The experiment is intended to show that the meaning of the same statement can be different from two completely identical people, even though the two people have exactly the same imagination.

Counter arguments

  • Opinions differ as to whether a copy of a brain implies a copy of the mind, whether such a copy is even possible, whether a mind can be copied or is a product of a development process, and so on. (Davidson himself uses the English gender-neutral pronoun it to refer to the swamp man because it is not certain whether it is a person, because it is not certain whether it has a mind of its own.)
  • Thought experiments that are too different from reality could be misleading because they can only be intuitively understood in the context of actual reality.

literature

  • Donald Davidson: Knowing One's Own Mind. In: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 60/3, 1987, pp. 441-458