Brian Loar has argued that the well-known arguments against individualism in the philosophy of mind are insufficient because they rely on the assumption that that-clauses uniquely capture psychological content. He tried to show that this is not the use of that-clauses in philosophical psychology. I argue that he does not succeed in his argument. That-clauses sometimes capture psychological content, if our system of mental ascription is to be workable at all. I argue further that individualism tends to be at odds (...) with a requirement of intersubjective shareability of contents and that Loar is alternative conception of psychological content is beset with difficulties. (shrink)

The article deals with the conflict between contractualist and broadly communitarian approaches to question of justice. I show that the objections that Sandel and Taylor direct against Rawlsian (and implicitly also other forms of) contractualism do not hit their target, because they misunderstand the essentially hypothetical features of contractualist justification. Hypothetical contractualism needs to rely on unembedded selves in the basic decision process for reasons of impartiality. Another objection focuses on the alleged excessive individualism behind contractualist theories. I demonstrate that (...) this objection is also misguided due to lack of attention to different versions of individualism. (shrink)