Examination of Fodor's Across-Context Test in Favour of Individualism

In this article, Fodor’s argument in favour of psychological individualism is studied. Fodor states that psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (A) that cognitive/scientific psychology individuates psychological states with respect to their causal powers; and (B) that psychological causal powers supervene on subject’s intrinsic physiological state or subject’s local microstructure. Then, Fodor’s across-context test is examined. In order To understand whether causal powers are the same or different, the individuals “across contexts rather than within contexts” must be considered. According to Fodor, the idea of the cross-context test is that individuals have the same causal powers if and only if in every context (actual or counterfactual), they have the same effects. That is to say, uniformity of causal powers can only be assessed by appealing to sameness of effects with respect to (actual or counterfactual) shared contexts. Three replies are presented which all reject the cross-context test. The paper concludes that the three replies can reject the cross-context test. Thus, the Fodor’s across-context test in favour of individualism is correct.