William Ferraiolo, Individualism and Descartes, Teorema 16/1, 1996, 71-86

In this paper, I shal attempt to raise some concerns as to whether contemporary thinkers are justified in claiming Descartes an advocate of individualism (p. 72).

Ferraiolo orientiert sich an einer Definition von Tyler Burge, Cartesian Error and the Objectivity of Perception, in Petit, P. and McDowell, J. (eds.), Subject, Thought, and Context, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 117-36:

B individualism is the view that an individual person or animal's mental state and event kinds - including the individual's intentional or representational kinds - can in principle be individuated in complete independence of the natures of empirical objects, properties, or relations (excepting those in the individual's own body, on materialistic and functionalistic views) - and similarly do not depend essentially on the natures of the minds or activities of other (non divine) individuals. The mental natures of all an individual's mental states and events are such that there is no necessary or other deep individuative relation between the individual's being in states, or undergoing events, with those natures, and the nature of the individual's physical and social environments (Burge p. 118-9).

Ferraiolo will zeigen:

... we must be cautious in our ascription of B /or any close cousin) to Descartes. (...) I shall present the case that the text containing the relevant doctrines offers insufficient warrant for the conclusion that Descartes was an individualist regarding the mental (p. 72).

Argumente für eine solche Unterstellung:

Argument 1

If S has special authority regarding the identification of mental states internal to her (or to her mind), then her external environment plays no necessary role with respect to the individuation of mental content (p. 74)

Dagegen:

Descartes' special access to his mental states is entirely independent of the determination of the content fixation of those states. The Question: Waht intrinsic or extrinsic features or relational properties of state M determine M's content? may be answered independently of the question: DOes the agent to whom M is attributable stand in some special authoritative relation to M? (p. 75)

Argument 2

If Descartes allows radically different causal antecedents to produce the same mental state M, the does he not thereby indicate that he takes M's content to be determined irrespective of external cause? (p. 76)

Ferraiolo vergleicht Descartes' Vorgehen mit den Putnamschen Gedankenexperimenten, die ja gerade den Individualismus wiederlegen sollen: Er wird vorgestellt, daß derselbe mentale Zustand (modus cogitandi) auf andere reale Ursachen zurückgeht.

It is not uncommon for anti-individualists to present counterfactual circumstances in which one's external environment is different than one suposes it to be (p. 76).

Individualismus kann also nicht folgen, wenn nicht auch fü Putnam.
Dabei übersieht Ferraiolo (insb. p. 83) die Möglichkeit, seine Argumentation direkt durch Descartes zu stützen: dieser sieht ja gerade nur darin eine Möglichkeit, mentale Zustände zu identifizieren, indem von deren Sachgehalt gesprochen wird. Der Sachgehalt hat aber letztlich eine Ursache außerhalb meiner selbst qua Individuum (3. Med.).

Argument 1 und 2

Man nehme zu 1 und 2 zusätzlich an:

(...)
iii) Premises i) and ii) entail the individual's having privileged acces to what her mental states would be in any counterfactual world (p. 77).

Dagegen:

...there is insufficient evidence that Descartes believed premise iii) (p. 78).

Descartes ist aber auch nicht dazu gezwungen, iii) anzunehmen:

S's having privileged access to her mental states in the actual world w (where her beliefs are largely true) does not entail S's having privileged access to what her mental states would be in any counterfactual world w' ... (p. 78).

Hierzu beruft sich Ferraiolo wieder auf Burge.

To ask what language or what thoughts would be impossible if the world were in a given counterfactual state is to raise a question different from those raised in the Cartesian thought experimants (Burge p. 123).

Argument 3

Given a mind isolated in this manner from any external environment it seems clear that the content of its various states or modes must be determined by factors which are independent of anything not internal to it.

Dagegen: Descartes legt sich nicht fest, was füZustände der Geist denn ohne den Körper haben könne (p. 80), und er schreibt auch nie, der Geist könne ohne jede Externalität sein (p. 81).

The demon, though not physical, id nonetheless external to Descartes' mind and also responsible for its content. If the possibility of something external to Descartes' mind is suggested as responsible for the indiviusation of his mental content even before he is certain of the existence of anything external to himself, then any hopes of extracting individualism from the mere independence of the mind from the body are hopelessly dashed (p. 81).

We may not, therefore, conclude from Descartes' ability to think of a solipsistic world that he is, thereby, thinking of a world in which he would have contentful thoughts (p. 82).