Preface

Summary

This is a book about individualism in psychology, a view that has generated much debate in the philosophy of mind over the last twenty years and that is pivotal for other issues in contemporary philosophical psychology: the naturalization of intentionality, the autonomy of psychology, the supervenience of the mental on the physical, the nature of mental causation, the viability of commonsense or ‘folk’ psychology, and the forms the cognitive sciences can and should take.

I have adopted a perspective on individualism that has not, in my view, received its due, one that approaches individualism in psychology from the viewpoint of the philosophy of science and attempts to identify and discuss the chief metaphysical intuitions that individualism rests on. I have also tried to make the book more accessible to those working in the cognitive sciences without compromising its philosophical audience so as to put some substance into the often glib hope expressed on jacket covers of books in the philosophy of mind: ‘This book will be of interest to psychologists and cognitive scientists’. Although the reader will find a healthy dose of quotations to illustrate views that I discuss and the occasional comparison of my particular views to those of others, I have made only brief textual citations to relevant literature in the field and have kept notes to a minimum. This way, I should manage to annoy everyone.

I have benefitted from detailed comments in the early stages of this project from Sydney Shoemaker and Robert Stalnaker, to both of whom I am grateful.