A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition
. In recent philosophy of mind and psychology, this has come to denote a view very similar to INTERNALISM in its main sense, holding that the content of an individual’s thought or experience depends simply on that individual, and does not logically (though of course it may causally) depend on things in the individual’s environment. Sometimes, however, a distinction is made between individualism as a doctrine about mental states and internalism as a doctrine about the contents of those states, and it is claimed that individualism does not entail internalism (Egan, 1992).
Methodological individualism covers various views to the effect that facts about societies are explainable in terms of facts about individuals, while methodological holism denies this.
T.Burge, ‘Individualism and the mental’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. IV, Minnesota UP, 1979. (Cf. also his ‘Individualism and psychology’, Philosophical Review, 1986. Burge introduces individualism in this sense, arguing against it.
M.Davies, ‘Individualism and perceptual content’ and G.Segal, ‘Defence of a reasonable individualism’, both in Mind, 1971, respectively defend and attack Burge’s position.)
F.Egan, ‘Must psychology be individualistic?’, Philosophical Review, 1991. (Attacks both Burge and Fodor, and claims the answer depends on the goal of the theorizing.)
F.Egan, ‘Individualism, computation, and perceptual content’, Mind, 1992.
J.A.Fodor, Psychosemantics, MIT Press, 1987, chapter 2. (Defends individualism in psychology. See also his ‘A modal argument for narrow content’, Journal of Philosophy, 1991, for a distinction between individualism and internalism.)
D.-H.Ruben, The Metaphysics of the Social World, RKP, 1985. (See especially pp. 150ff. for methodological individualism. See also K.R.Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, RKP, 1945, chapter 14.)
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