ABSTRACT
Some interpreters take Tyler Burge to be rejecting the tradition of metaphysical realism. As long as one clings to scientism, metaphysical realism and relativism will remain tempting positions, because one will want to treat inner experience as though it were a unified phenomenon that admitted of a unified explanation, and one will treat that experience as related only externally to the manifest world of objects and events. Metaphysical realism and anti-individualism are incompatible. The anti-individualist, as one might guess, denies individualism. Indeed, they are the sorts of psychological states recognized by versions of individualism. On the basis of Burge's reasoning, it seems possible to accept a constrained version of the Cartesian conception of first-person authority by endorsing claims and and rejecting claim, while at the same time being an anti-individualist. Unless Burge is prepared to abandon metaphysical realism, there is no consistent way he can deny the claim of the Cartesian conception of first-person authority.
