Accepting the consequences of anti-individualism
The characteristic thesis of anti-individualism is that certain de dicto cognitive attitude predicates such as 'is thinking that water is wet' express 'wide' psychological properties properties, that is, whose possession 'presupposes' or 'necessarily depends upon' the existence of objects that are external relative to the person to whom the properties are ascribed. In my paper 'Anti-Individualism and Privileged Access' [6], I argued that contrary to the claims of Burge [3], the characteristic thesis of anti-individualism is inconsistent with the Cartesian idea that we each have privileged access to the contents of our thoughts. In his reply to my paper, Anthony Brueckner [1] claims that my criticism is wrong because it is based on a simple misunderstanding of Burge (pp. 111, 114, and 116, note 5). My argument relied on my contention that the anti-individualist's notion of 'necessary dependence' should be understood as logical, or conceptual, implication. Brueckner claims that this is wrong. The anti-individualist's notion of necessary dependence, he says, is much weaker than conceptual implication (p. 114). Brueckner's opinion was quickly seconded by Warfield [9], who claims repeatedly (pp. 232-33) that 'Brueckner has refuted McKinsey'. Although Brueckner is unclear about what he thinks the notion of necessary dependence is supposed to be, his considered view seems to be that necessary dependence should be interpreted as metaphysical dependence (p. 116). But if so, then it seems that, contrary to Brueckner's claims, I did not misunderstand Burge after all. For one of the points that I was most concerned to make in my paper was that Burge's argument in [3] for the consistency of anti-individualism and privileged access tacitly (and illegitimately) identifies the anti-individualist's notion of necessary dependence with that of metaphysical dependence (see [6], pp. 12-13). Since this is an interpretation of Burge to which Brueckner himself is committed, he is wrong to claim that my main mistake was that of not understanding what Burge really had in mind. Again, an interpretation of Burge that Brueckner endorses is an interpretation that I myself took (laborious) pains to emphasize in my paper. Moreover, by resting his whole case merely on the claim that I misunderstood Burge, Brueckner neglects the fact that I gave an argument for the conclusion that the anti-individualist's notion of necessary dependence should be interpreted as conceptual implication ([6], pp. 13-14). For (I argued), interpreting the notion as metaphysical dependence results in a