In “Perceptual Entitlement, Reliabilism, and Scepticism,“ Frank Barel explores some important and under-discussed questions regarding the relation between Tyler Burge's views on perceptual entitlement, on the one hand, and the problem of skepticism, on the other. In this note, I would like to comment on a couple of aspects of Barel's article. First, I have my own take, different from Barel's, on the question of whether we can sketch an a priori anti-skeptical argument proceeding from perceptual (...) anti-individualism. Second, I discuss the question whether Barel's “Rationalistic“ anti-skeptical argument is successful. (shrink)

I discuss the nature of visual perception from an interdisciplinary perspective. The target of investigation is Tyler Burge’s theory of perceptual anti-individualism, according to which perceptual states constitutively depend on relations between perceivers and the external world. Burge argues that this theory is presupposed by vision science. My goal is to argue that perceptual anti-individualism is not the only theoretical choice. First, I consider the notion of homeostasis and suggest how it may cast (...) doubt on the perceptual norms in Burge’s theory. Second, I argue that many phenomena studied by vision science can be explained without positing Burge’s notions of veridicality and singular representation. Third, I consider some empirical theories and argue that vision science does not uniquely favor Burge’s theory. I conclude that perceptual anti-individualism is not the only framework for understanding visual perception. (shrink)

The paper addresses a prima facie tension between two popular views about concepts. The first is the doctrine that some concepts are constitutively perceptual/experiential, so that they can be possessed only by suitably experienced subjects. This is a classic empiricist theme, but its most conspicuous recent appearance is in literature on phenomenal concepts. The second view is anti-individualism: here, the view that concept possession depends not only on a thinker’s internal states and relations to the concepts’ referents, (...) but also on certain of her relations to sociolinguistic peers. In recent works, Derek Ball and Michael Tye have in effect argued that the doctrines are incompatible, and their conclusion is that no concepts depend on experience. In reply, Bénédicte Veillet endorses those authors’ incompatibilism, but argues that it is anti-individualism that we should reject. I develop an approach to reconciliation that is more promising than any considered by these theorists. Against Veillet, I defend a version of anti-individualism about phenomenal concepts, but against Ball and Tye, I argue that they can be possessed only by suitably experienced thinkers. (shrink)

Misperception is part of the human condition. Consider a classic case of coming to confirm that one has had a misperception. On a stroll through the woods you see, in the distance, what seems to be a person. As you draw near, what looked like a person now appears to be a wooden post with a hat on it. On arrival you touch the post to confirm that it is not a person. From a pre-theoretical perspective, what has happened? On (...) your approach you judged that there was a person, based on what you saw. When near, you judged that it was a post and not a person, and then by touch you confirmed that what you initially saw was a misperception.In examining cases of misperception it is important to ask: what role does concept .. (shrink)

This paper explores the bearing of Tyler Burge’s notion of perceptual entitlement on the problem of scepticism. Perceptual entitlement is an external form of warrant, connected with his perceptual anti-individualism. According to his view, an individual can be entitled to a perceptual belief without having reasons warranting the belief. On the face of it, this suggests that the view may have anti-sceptical resources. In short, the question is whether Burge’s notion of perceptual (...) entitlement allows us to outright deny that we in our philosophical theory need a reason to reject the sceptical scenario. The answer to this question is ‘no’. However, as I go on to show, Burge’s position includes further resources that allow for an anti-sceptical argument. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called "entitlement", that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti-individualism, a (...) thesis about the nature of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states–hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined. (shrink)

This essay is a long one. It is not meant to be read in a single sitting. Its structure is as follows. In section I, I explicate perceptual anti-individualism. Section II centers on the two aspects of the representational content of perceptual states. Sections III and IV concern the nature of the empirical psychology of vision, and its bearing on the individuation of perceptual states. Section V shows how what is known from empirical psychology undermines (...) disjunctivism and hence certain further views that entail it, including naive realism. In Section VI, I raise a further point against disjunctivism. Section VII indicates how general reflection on perceptual perspective and epistemic ability supports the constraints from empirical psychology. It also explains how reflection on veridicality conditions, psychological explanation, and cognitive ability conspire to force recognition of the two kinds of representation mentioned in the preceding paragraph. In the Appendix, I criticize attempts to support disjunctivism. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of epistemic warrant as applied to perceptual belief, called “entitlement”, that does not require the warranted individual to be capable of understanding the warrant. The conception is situated within an account of animal perception and unsophisticated perceptual belief. It characterizes entitlement as fulfillment of an epistemic norm that is apriori associated with a certain representational function that can be known apriori to be a function of perception. The paper connects anti‐individualism, a (...) thesis about the nature of mental states, and perceptual entitlement. It presents an argument that explains the objectivity and validity of perceptual entitlement partly in terms of the nature of perceptual states–hence the nature of perceptual beliefs, which are constitutively associated with perceptual states. The paper discusses ways that an individual can be entitled to perceptual belief through its connection to perception, and ways that entitlement to perceptual belief can be undermined. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing “anti-individualism” about the contents of perceptual states to give an account of the epistemology of perception, making special reference to Tyler Burge’s ( 2003 ) paper, “Perceptual Entitlement”. I start by clarifying what kind of warrant is provided by perceptual experience, and I go on to survey different ways one might explain the warrant provided by perceptual experience in terms of anti-individualist views about the individuation of (...) perceptual states. I close by motivating accounts which instead give a more prominent role to consciousness. (shrink)

Sanford C. Goldberg argues that a proper account of the communication of knowledge through speech has anti-individualistic implications for both epistemology and the philosophy of mind and language. In Part I he offers a novel argument for anti-individualism about mind and language, the view that the contents of one's thoughts and the meanings of one's words depend for their individuation on one's social and natural environment. In Part II he discusses the epistemic dimension of knowledge communication, arguing (...) that the epistemic characteristics of communication-based beliefs depend on features of the cognitive and linguistic acts of the subject's social peers. In acknowledging an ineliminable social dimension to mind, language, and the epistemic categories of knowledge, justification, and rationality, his book develops fundamental links between externalism in the philosophy of mind and language, on the one hand, and externalism is epistemology, on the other. (shrink)

A persuasive monograph that answers the keyepistemological arguments against anti-individualism in thephilosophy of mind.

We are social primates, for whom language-mediated co-operative thinking (‘co-cognition’) is a central element of our shared life. Psychological concepts may be illuminated by appreciating their role in enriching and improving such co-cognition — a role which is importantly different from that of enabling detailed prediction and control of thoughts and behaviour. This account of the nature of psychological concepts (‘co-cognitivism’) has social anti-individualism about thought content as a natural corollary. The combination of co-cognitivism and anti-individualism (...) further suggests that, in addition to the familiar first person authority with which we ascribe thoughts to ourselves, there may also be something deserving the name ‘second person authority’. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the nascent field of ethics of collegiality may considerably benefit from a symbiosis with virtue and vice epistemology. We start by bringing the epistemic virtue and vice perspective to the table by showing that competence, deemed as an essential characteristic of a good colleague (Betzler & Löschke 2021), should be construed broadly to encompass epistemic competence. By endorsing the anti-individualistic stance in epistemology as well as context-specificity of epistemic traits, we (...) show how the individual vice of a colleague can have a positive epistemic outcome for the team while individual virtue can be damaging if all team members share it, thereby contributing to the negative epistemic outcome. We argue that the evaluation and analysis of collegial relationships should be done through one’s contribution to the team dynamics: without this collectivist perspective, the ethics of collegiality cannot aspire to become encompassing normative theory. (shrink)

Given anti-individualism, a subject might have a priori (non-empirical)knowledge that she herself is thinking that p, have complete and exhaustive explicational knowledge of all of the concepts composing the content that p, and yet still need empirical information (e.g. regarding her embedding conditions and history) prior to being in a position to apply her exhaustive conceptual knowledge in a knowledgeable way to the thought that p. This result should be welcomed by anti-individualists: it squares with everything that (...) compatibilist-minded anti-individualists have said regarding e.g. the compatibility of anti-individualism and basic self-knowledge; and more importantly it contains the crux of a response to McKinsey-style arguments against anti-individualism. (shrink)

Several authors (Boghossian 1998; Segal 2000) allege that 'empty' would-be natural kind terms are a problem for anti-individualistic semantics. In this paper I rebut the charge by providing an anti-individualistic semantics for such terms.

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since (...) class='Hi'>anti-individualism is an implicit part of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts. (shrink)

Most explorations of the epistemic implications of Semantic Anti- Individualism (SAI) focus on issues of self-knowledge (first-person au- thority) and/or external-world skepticism. Less explored has been SAIs implications forthe epistemology of reasoning. In this paperI argue that SAI has some nontrivial implications on this score. I bring these out by reflecting on a problem first raised by Boghossian (1992). Whereas Boghos- sians main interest was in establishing the incompatibility of SAI and the a priority of logical abilities (Boghossian (...) 1992: 22), I argue that Boghossians argument is better interpreted as pointing to SAIs implications for the na- ture of discursive justification. (shrink)

McKinsey-style reductio arguments aim to show that anti-individualism is incompatible with privileged access, the claim that a subject can have a priori knowledge of her thought contents. I defend my version of the reductio against the objections of Falvey, and McLaughlin and Tye. However, I raise and discuss a more serious objection--that it may be difficult for a subject to know a priori that she is agnostic about a concept, given that agnosticism involves being unsure whether a concept (...) applies to things of a certain type when there is a determinate fact whether or not the concept so applies. (shrink)

The attempt to hold both anti-individualism and privileged self-knowledge may have the absurd consequence that someone could know a priori propositions that are knowable only empirically. This would be so if such an attempt entailed that one could know a priori both the contents of one’s own thoughts and the anti-individualistic entailments from those thought-contents to the world. For then one could also come to know a priori the empirical conditions entailed by one’s thoughts. But I argue (...) that there is no construal of a priori knowledge that could be used to raise an incompatibility problem of this sort. First, I suggest that the incompatibilist a priori must be a stipulative one, since in none of the main philosophical traditions does knowledge of the contents of one’s thoughts count as a priori. Then, I show that under various possible construals of a priori, the incompatibilist argument would be invalid: either a fallacy of equivocation or an argument without a plausible closure principle guaranteeing transmission of epistemic status from premises to conclusion. Finally, I maintain that the only possible construal of the property of being knowable a priori that avoids invalidity is one that fails to generate the intended reductio. (shrink)

According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, externalism (...) seems unable to account for the strong intuition that these subjects’ beliefs are nonetheless justified. I think these considerations do not at all help the internalist cause. I argue that by appealing to the anti-individualistic nature of perception, it can be shown that skeptical scenarios provide no reason to prefer internalism to externalism. (shrink)

Note first that knowledge of one's own thought-contents would not count as a priori according to the usual criteria for knowledge of this kind. Surely, then, incompatibilists are using this term to refer to some other, stipulatively defined, epistemic property. But could this be, as suggested by McKinsey { 1 99 1: 9), the property of being knowable 'just by thinking' or 'from the armchair'? Certainly not if these were metaphors for knowledge attainable on the basis of reason alone, since (...) self-knowledge would fail to come out a priori in this sense. And exactly the same would happen if the property were that of being knowable by inference, since, according to a common intuition, self-knowledge is noninferential. (shrink)

Anti-individualism is the thesis that features of the social and physical environments contribute to determining the contents of our beliefs. The notion of content implicit in the thought experiments supporting anti-individualism is tied to explications of how our terms and the concepts they express are correctly applied. Since anti-individualists should regard these explications as a subject of ongoing dispute, they should claim that sameness and difference of content is not always detectable upon reflection. Many philosophers (...) accordingly worry that anti-individualists cannot accommodate the use of belief attributions to characterize individual points of view. The key to these objections is the thesis that belief attributions have the same truth-value if they attribute beliefs with the same content. When the semantic and metaphysical motivations for this assumption are discredited, anti-individualism's alleged problems with characterizing individual points of view may be solved without introducing an additional notion of "cognitive" content which tracks differential dubitability judgments. The resulting account of belief requires a new account of understanding and responsibility to evaluation which emphasizes participation in ongoing attempts to formulate explications rather than knowledge thereof. (shrink)

According to the Disjunction Problem, teleological theories of perceptual content are unable to explain why it is that a subject represents an F when an F causes the perception and not the disjunction F v G, given that the subject has mistaken G’s for F’s in the past. Without an adequate explanation these theories are stuck without an account of how non-veridical representation is possible, which would be an unsettling result. In this paper I defend Burge’s teleological theory of (...) perception against the Disjunction Problem, arguing that a perceptual state’s representing what I call an error-prohibiting disjunctive property is incompatible with the truth of perceptual anti-individualism. And because perceptual anti-individualism is at the heart of Burge’s theory, I conclude that Burgeans need not be concerned with the Disjunction Problem. (shrink)

Anti-individualists hold that having a thought with a certain intentional content is a relational rather than an intrinsic property of the subject. Some anti-individualists also hold that thought-content serves to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective. Since there seems to be a tension between these two views, much discussed in the philosophical literature, attempts have been made to resolve it. In an attempt to reconcile these views, and in relation to perception-based demonstrative thoughts, Stalnaker (Our knowledge of the internal (...) world, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) argues that an anti-individualist account of the facts that determine thought-content can be reconciled with a suitably qualified version of a principle of epistemic transparency. Acknowledging this, and in agreement with the view that thought-content should serve to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective, I argue that, his intentions notwithstanding, this view of transparency of thought-contents does not serve to explain the subject’s cognitive perspective on Stalnaker’s own terms and that the intricacies involved in his argumentation for saving his anti-individualist project are indirectly supportive of an individualist account of the subject’s cognitive perspective. In so doing, I leave intact some of his key claims that are plausible in their own right. (shrink)

This encyclopedia consists of short pieces on specific topics. My contribution concerns the nature of thought and its implications for the status of social sciences.

This chapter discusses anti-individualism—which often depicts the individual as a physical creature bounded by its skin—and how it runs contrary to the Cartesian view of the mind—which states that it is coherent to doubt whether any of one’s thoughts correspond to external objects. Anti-individualism contends that this is a conceptual truth; without objects external to an individual, that individual’s purported thoughts would have no content at all. A well-known argument presented by McKinsey holds out the possibility (...) of proving to skeptics that there are physical things. Two things have been missing from this argument, however, and they shall be outlined here. First is a thorough assessment of the extent to which the anti-individualism it relies on can be made compelling for the skeptic. Second is the application of a lesson that can be drawn from Wittgenstein to the Cartesian self-knowledge which is the other main component of the argument. (shrink)

This paper starts from the familiar premise that psychological anti-individualism is incompatible with materialism. It attempts to state more clearly what this incompatibility consists in, and — rather than arguing in detail for any particular resolution — to inquire whether this incompatibility admits any resolution. However, the paper does offer a conditional argument concerning the possibility that the incompatibility is genuine and cannot be resolved. Provided that anti-individualism and materialism cannot be squared, and anti-individualism (...) is correct, it follows that materialism has to be abandoned. If so, the situation is not as disastrous as it might at first seem. We need not, in consequence of our inability to construe a coherent metaphysics of mind, give up on intentional vocabulary any more than we must stop, in consequence of our inability to make sense of induction, anticipating the future. (shrink)

The general thrust of the dissertation may be captured by the following two claims: some mental properties play a causal role in the production of purposive behaviour; and both the intrinsic and extrinsic features of those properties may be causally efficacious in the production of such behaviour, is a claim in favour of mental causation; I take to be a claim in favour of what I refer to as an 'anti-individualistic' version of the doctrine. In the first two chapters, (...) I defend , whereas the third chapter supports claim . In the fourth chapter, I argue that the extrinsic, relational features of some mental properties have their own implementation mechanisms by which they control and structure behaviour. The last chapter, which is also the conclusion of the dissertation, is turned towards future research. It offers a general framework from which to investigate the role of semantic properties in the production of behaviour. The chapter also attempts to delineate the general features of an etiological approach to those properties. (shrink)

This paper starts from the familiar premise that psychological anti-individualism is incompatible with materialism. It attempts to state more clearly what this incompatibility consists in, and {\textemdash} rather than arguing in detail for any particular resolution {\textemdash} to inquire whether this incompatibility admits any resolution. However, the paper does offer a conditional argument concerning the possibility that the incompatibility is genuine and cannot be resolved. Provided that anti-individualism and materialism cannot be squared, and anti-individualism (...) is correct, it follows that materialism has to be abandoned. If so, the situation is not as disastrous as it might at first seem. We need not, in consequence of our inability to construe a coherent metaphysics of mind, give up on intentional vocabulary any more than we must stop, in consequence of our inability to make sense of induction, anticipating the future. (shrink)

Reflection on testimony provides novel arguments for anti-individualism. What is anti-individualism? Sanford Goldberg's book defends three main claims under this heading: first, facts about the contents of beliefs do not supervene on individualistic facts about the believers ; second, an individual's epistemic entitlement to accept a piece of testimony depends on facts about her peers ; third, processes by which some humans acquire knowledge from testimony includes activities performed for them by others. Each of these three (...) claims is argued for separately from premises about the ways in which humans, adult and child, succeed in gaining knowledge by testimony. The three arguments provide the structure for Anti-Individualism.Goldberg's argument for the first claim – that the contents of beliefs do not supervene on individualistic facts about the believers – begins from uncontroversial facts about testimony. Gaining knowledge by testimony depends on knowing the meanings of some utterances, and it is possible to know the meaning of a person's utterance while knowing little that would distinguish this person from anyone else. The best explanation of how this is possible involves postulating linguistic norms which entail facts about the linguistic meanings of utterances. Now in some cases of testimony, a hearer acquires a belief whose content is the linguistic meaning of a speaker's utterance, where the linguistic meaning of this utterance is determined by linguistic norms. But linguistic norms might have been different from what they are even while the person's and her audience's non-relational properties remained unaltered. And in such a case, the hearer would have acquired a belief with a different content. Therefore, ‘Psychological facts such as believing that p do not supervene on the individualistic facts regarding the subject’ …. (shrink)

The canonical arguments against the description theory of names are usually taken to have established that the reference of a name as used on a given occasion is not semantically determined by the qualitative descriptions that the speaker may have in mind. The deepest moral of these arguments, on the received view, would be that the speaker’s narrow mental states play no semantic role in fixing reference. My central aim in this paper is to challenge this common understanding by highlighting (...) that the same argumentative schemas can be adapted to undermine a related non-description theory, according to which the reference of a name as used on a given occasion would semantically depend on broad mental states of the speaker. Once this is realised, it becomes evident that the falsity of the description theory is not the deepest lesson of the canonical arguments, but only a consequence of the deepest lesson. The most fundamental moral is that the speaker’s mental states, whether narrow or broad, do not always determine linguistic reference. (shrink)

Epistemic anti-individualism is the view that positive epistemic statuses fail to supervene on internal, physical or mental, properties of individuals. Intellectual humility is a central intellectual virtue in the pursuit of such statuses. After some introductory remarks, this paper provides an argument for epistemic anti-individualism with respect to a virtue-theoretic account of testimonial knowledge. An outline of a dual-aspect account of intellectual humility is then offered. The paper proceeds to argue that insofar as testimonial knowledge is (...) concerned, this stripe of epistemic anti-individualism leads to a particular account of intellectual humility. (shrink)

This essay responds to the criticism that contemporary efforts to redress discrimination and inequality are overly individualistic. Critics of individualism emphasize that these systemic social ills stem not from the prejudice, irrationality, or selfishness of individuals, but from underlying structural-institutional forces. They are skeptical, therefore, of attempts to change individuals’ attitudes while leaving structural problems intact. I argue that the insistence on prioritizing structural over individual change is problematic and misleading. My view is not that we should instead prioritize (...) individual change, but that individual changes are integral to the success of structural changes. These theorists urge a redirection of attention, claiming that we should think less about the individual and more about the social. What they should urge instead is that we think differently about the individual, and thereby think differently about the social. (shrink)