Why does Burge think that whether a subject has the notion of arthritis fails to be determined by the subject's internal physical and phenomenal properties?
One of the objections Burge considers says that it's not really possible for a subject to have thoughts whose contents he incompletely grasps or understands. If this claim were true, how would that undermine Burge's argument? Does the claim seem to you to be true? Why does Burge reject it?
A related objection to Burge says that whenever someone seems to have attitudes involving an incompletely understood notion like ARTHRITIS or SOFA, what's really going on is that they have metalinguistic attitudes about the English words "arthritis" and "sofa." How does Burge reply to this objection?
Burge speculates on what the likely philosophical sources might be of the view that a person can never fail to understand the content of his own thoughts. Where does Burge think this view comes from?
What are the differences between Burge's conclusions and Putnam's conclusions? (see esp. footnote 2 and Burge's discussion of functionalism)
At one point, Burge considers a view which says that there's some narrow notion of "psychological state" such that the subjects in his imagined scenarios are all in the same "narrow psychological state," although they have different beliefs and thoughts of the sort we ordinarily talk about. This view will be defended by some of the later authors we look at. What is Burge's main complaint against this view?
