Social Externalism is the thesis that many of our thoughts are individuated in part by the linguistic and social practices of the thinker’s community. After defending Social Externalism and arguing for its broad application, I turn to the kind of defeasible first-person authority that we have over our own thoughts. Then, I present and refute an argument that uses first-person authority to disprove Social Externalism. Finally, I argue briefly that Social Externalism—far from being incompatible with first-person authority—provides a check on (...) first-personal pronouncements and thus saves first-person authority from being simply a matter of social convention and from collapsing into the subjectivity of “what seems right is right.”. (shrink)

Self-directed and self-evaluative attitudes are often connected to one’s social position. Before investigating the dependence relations between individual self-evaluation and social positioning, however, there is a prior question to answer: What are the conditions under which an individual can have any self-directed attitudes at all? In order to be the subject of self-directed or selfevaluative attitudes, I shall argue, an individual must have linguistic and social relations. I’ll discuss the first-person perspective, self-concepts and their acquisition—all from a radically nonCartesian, externalist (...) point of view. This paper will combine my work on first-person perspectives with my work on “content externalism” in the philosophy of mind in order to understand how someone can have self-directed attitudes at all. Having self-directed attitudes—attitudes about oneself—is a precondition for making any individual self-evaluation. Self-directed attitudes and self-evaluative attitudes—such as self-love, self-esteem and self-loathing—“are [in the words of our organizers] often closely tied to the position one occupies within a network of social relations.”1 Quite so. But before investigating the particular dependence relations between individual self-evaluation and social positioning, there is a prior question to answer: What are the conditions under which an individual can have any self-directed attitudes at all? That is the question that I want to address here. Then, I want to draw a moral about what it is to be a human person. In order to be the subject of self-directed or self-evaluative attitudes, I shall argue, an individual must have linguistic and social relations. Some self-directed attitudes obviously require the subject to have linguistic and social relations. For example, pride in one’s class rank requires comparison between oneself and others (as well as having the concept *class rank*.) By contrast, other attitudes of self-satisfaction (such as one’s self-satisfaction in sticking to a healthful diet) do not obviously require one to have linguistic and social relations.. (shrink)