Social Anti‐Individualism, Objective Reference

Donald Davidson taught me in graduate school. I have learned from him ever since. Quine and Hempel dealt the deathblows to the restricted approach to philosophy embodied in logical positivism. Davidson helped show how philosophy can say new and valuable things about traditional philosophical problems, including issues of fundamental human concern. His work is systematic and subtle. I think that on many basic matters it is right. Disagreement will occupy most of my remarks. But agreement looms largest in the broader scheme of things. So first, agreement. I am in substantial agreement with Donald’s discussion of the subjective-particularly our knowledge of our propositional attitudes as being authoritative and non-evidential. I also agree on what he calls perceptual externalism, and on its compatibility with authoritative selfknowledge. I agree that perceptual knowledge is non-evidential, and that it is fundamentally and directly about the physical world, not about sense-data. I see knowledge of other minds somewhat differently. I think that, like percep tual knowledge and self-knowledge, it can be direct and non-evidential.’ But I agree in holding that self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds normally stand in a reciprocal relation. Our disagreements lie primarily in our understanding of the role of the social in anti-individualism (or externalism) and in our understanding of the nature of objectivity. First, let me characterize differences in our versions of social anti-individualism. We surely agree that as a matter of psychological necessity, we must communicate with others to learn a language. Davidson further argues that, as a constitutive matter, having thoughts and having language are dependent on relations to another person. My social anti-individualism is less global. I argue apriori that given that certain contingent matters are fixed,