L'artrite nella testa

The thought experiment offered by Tyler Burge in Individualism and the Mental is intended to show that the propositional content of our mental states is at least in part individuated by the social environment. But if we give a metalinguistic reformulation of his though experiment, it no longer counts as relevant for the issue of propositional content. Keith Donnellan offered a metalinguistic reformulation of the thought experiment, but his solution fails to adequately account for the linguistic phenomena Burge draws our attention on. However, the metalinguistic reformulation may be presented in a different version from that offered by Donnellan, in such a way that it accomodates the relevant linguistic phenomena. This version seems to resist to the objections that have been raised by Burge himself and by Pierre Jacob. Therefore, there is reason to doubt that Burge's thought experiment supports his conclusion about propositional content.