This weak global thesis is particularly important in the light of direct reference theories, and semantic externalism with regard to the content both of words and (more relevant to our concerns here) of "thoughts". Imagine two persons who are indistinguishable in their local physical properties. One has a dog in front of his eyes and the other has a dog-image artificially projected onto his retinae. It might be reasonable to say that the former is in the "mental state" of seeing a dog (and of knowing that he does so), whereas the latter is not in such a state of seeing a dog (but falsely believes that he sees one).