11. Finally, there is epistemological individualism a
theory about the nature of knowledge, which asserts
that the source of knowledge lies within the individual.
Leaving aside certain varieties of solipsism and prag-
matism, the true epistemological individualist is the
empiricist (though the metaphysics of Leibniz may be
said to imply an individualist epistemology). The tra-
ditional empiricist holds that we know nothing beyond
our own purely subjective experience, enclosed within
the circle of the mind and the sensations it receives,
whether these are Locke's ideas, Hume's impressions
and ideas, or the “sensa” and sense data of more recent
theorists. Often he holds a psychological atomism, the
problem being to reconstruct knowledge out of its
simplest elements; as Hume said: “Complex ideas may,
perhaps, be well known by... an enumeration of those
parts or simple ideas that compose them,” themselves
copies of “impressions or original sentiments” (Enquiry
concerning Human Understanding [1748], VII, Part I).
The French disciples of Locke and Hume in the eight-
eenth century took this sensationalism very seriously.
It is, in general, obviously closely related to the attempt
to explain wholes, including social and political struc-
tures, by breaking them down into their simplest ele-
ments (see above: II, Sec. 6).
Individualistic empiricism has experienced a revival
in the twentieth century, though less in the form of
a psychological than a logical doctrine, a theory about
meaning and understanding. The crucial objection to
it, and to epistemological individualism generally, has
taken two related forms: first, an appeal to a shared
public world and, second, to a shared “intersubjective”
language, as preconditions of knowledge. The latter
objection has become a commonplace of sociological
and anthropological theory (receiving a classical state-
ment in Durkheim's studies of primitive thought and
religion) and of contemporary post-Wittgensteinian
philosophy. Generally, epistemological individualism
is to be contrasted with all those theories which hold
that knowledge is, in part at least, the product of what
Wittgenstein called “forms of life” and is to be tested
as genuine by reference to a public world.
