The Return of the Individual

Abstract

In a series of fascinating articles John McDowell has developed a radically anti-individualistic conception of the mind.1 This conception is subtle and complex and therefore cannot be properly articulated in a few words. But one of the main points may be stated with some precision: certain singular thoughts2 are 'object-dependent' (or 'reference-dependent') in that they owe their existence and identity in part to physical objects in the external world. These thoughts do not have any content or component of content the existence and nature of which is independent of the objects that they are about. Following Blackburn3 I call the thesis the 'Strong Singular Thought Theory' ('SSTT' for short).4 On SSTT singular thoughts about different objects have different contents, and there is no such thing as an empty singular thought, a thought that contains a singular component that fails to refer. SSTT thus has immediate implications for a taxonomy of thoughts. If thoughts are type-identified by their contents and singular thoughts about different objects have different contents, then such singular thoughts must be type distinct. SSTT, in rejecting reference-independent content, entails that there is no taxonomy of thoughts that identifies them by their contents, and groups together singular thoughts about different objects. In this paper I shall oppose McDowell's SSTT. Specifically, I shall