Anti-individualism (also known as content externalism) is an approach to

linguistic meaning Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and referenc ...

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, the philosophy of psychology, and

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

. The proponents arguing for anti-individualism in these areas have in common the view that what seems to be internal to the individual is to some degree dependent on the

social environment The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educated ...

, thus self-knowledge, intentions,

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

ing and moral value may variously be seen as being determined by factors outside the person. The position has been supported by Sanford GoldbergGoldberg, Sanford (2007). ''Anti-individualism: mind and language, knowledge and justification''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. and by other thinkers such as

Hilary Putnam Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of ...

and

Tyler Burge Tyler Burge (; born 1946) is an American philosopher who is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Burge has made contributions to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, philoso ...

Overview

Academic discussion negotiating anti-individualism as a reasonable stance started with

's 1988 ''Individualism and Self-Knowledge'' being particularly influential. In it, Burge set out to argue for a limited agreement with the Cartesian model of self-cognition as being Authoritative, but also pointed out that knowledge of self-cognition was not always absolute, allowing for the individuation of thought to originate from both the external content of our environment as well as from the internal landscape of our self-knowledge as it is still being discovered: "One can know what one's mental events are and yet not know relevant general facts about the conditions for individuating those events. It is simply not true that the cogito gives us knowledge of the individuation conditions of our thoughts which enables us to "shut off" their individuation conditions from the physical environment". Michael McKinsey builds on this in 1991 discussing Burge's view in his paper ''Anti-Individualism and Privileged Access'' arguing that there is no warrant to an epistemic narrow state of mind (i.e. privileged access) and that there is only a wide state of mind as influenced by the conditions of individuation of thought. Anthony Brueckner then questions McKinsey's take on Burge and McKinsey replies in his ''Accepting the Consequences of Anti-individualism''. Many of the essays found in Hilary Putnam's ''The Twin Earth Chronicles'' are considered early formative works for the anti-individualist model of meaning.

References

{{reflist Autonomy Collectivism Corporatism Individualism Concepts in the philosophy of language

Overview

See also

References