Swampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson, in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind", perhaps inspired by Alan Moore's retcon of Swamp Thing. The experiment runs as follows:
Davidson holds that there would nevertheless be a difference, though no one would notice it. Swampman will appear to recognize Davidson's friends, but it is impossible for him to actually recognize them, as he has never seen ...
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Swampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson, in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind", perhaps inspired by Alan Moore's retcon of Swamp Thing. The experiment runs as follows:
Davidson holds that there would nevertheless be a difference, though no one would notice it. Swampman will appear to recognize Davidson's friends, but it is impossible for him to actually recognize them, as he has never seen them before. As Davidson puts it, "it can't recognize anything, because it never cognized anything in the first place."
These considerations lead Davidson to deny that the Swampman's utterances can be construed as referring to anything in particular. To take a fairly specific example: suppose that at some point the previous day Davidson had looked at a glass marble on a shelf; unbeknownst to him there was another, visually identical glass marble hidden right behind it. When he makes an assertion about 'the marble I saw yesterday' we take him...
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