Social Relations and the Individuation of Thought

Abstract

Tyler Burge has argued that a necessary condition for an individual's having many of the thoughts he has, instead of others or none at all, is that he bear certain relations to objects (events, properties, etc.) in his environment. Such objects include those in the extensions of expressions used to provide the contents of the individual's thoughts, as well as other language users. By way of thought experiment, Burge invites us first to imagine that, counterfactually, the individual lacks the relevant relations, and then to judge that he cannot correctly be attributed many of the thoughts he actually has.2 That the natures of many of one's thoughts depend on social relations one bears to language users is an idea that Burge has developed in articles since Individualism and the Mental (1979).3 However, that paper contains his main argument for that thesis, an argument resting on his thought experiments involving conceptual error (about arthritis, brisket, etc.) on the part of the thinker. Of all of Burge's thought experiments, those alone support his thesis that social relations are essential to the natures of one's thoughts, for in those alone are one's social relations all that is manipulated between the actual and counterfactual situations. My target in this essay are those very thought experiments. For Burge to derive his conclusions from them, he must make it plausible that, counterfactually, the individual in the thought experiment lacks at least one thought he actually has. I shall try to argue that that is not plausible. What will result is not an argument for Individualism-since Burge's other thought experiments will remain untouched by what I say-but an argument that one's social relations are inessential to the natures of one's thoughts.