Methodological individualism considered as a constitutive principle of scientific inquiry

Philosophical Psychology 4 (3):343-54 (1991)
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Abstract

The issue of methodological solipsism in the philosophy of mind and psychology has received enormous attention and discussion in the decade since the appearance Jerry Fodor's "Methodological Solipsism" [Fodor 1980]. But most of this discussion has focused on the consideration of the now infamous "Twin Earth" type examples and the problems they present for Fodor's notion of "narrow content". I think there is deeper and more general moral to be found in this issue, particularly in light of Fodor's more recent defense of his view in Psychosemantics [Fodor 1987]. Underlying this discussion are questions about the nature and plausibility of the claim that scientific explanation should observe a constraint of methodological individualism . My goal in what follows is to bring out this more general problem in Fodor's "internalist" account of the mental

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Ron McClamrock
State University of New York, Albany

Citations of this work

Functional analysis and etiology.Ron McClamrock - 1993 - Erkenntnis 38 (2):249-260.
Irreducibility and subjectivity.Ron McClamrock - 1992 - Philosophical Studies 67 (2):177-92.

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