Though not a full-fledged solipsism, the atomistic view puts forth a methodological solipsism for epistemological purposes (Potter 1993), and is antithetical to social analyses of knowledge.
The research strategy of "methodological solipsism" (Fodor 1980 , 1981 is one classic version of this individualistic conception of cognition.
As Fodor goes on to point out, the semantic evaluation of a mental state will typically be relational, e.g. whether certain beliefs about water are true will depend upon how things happen to stand with water in the world; thus methodological solipsism has the consequence of precluding one type of relational property from playing a role in the individuation of mental states.
To be sure, this did not prompt Carnap (1961a) to abandon as mistaken reconstructions of the scientific language on the basis of methodological solipsism.
Likewise, Carnap had not been prompted do so some thirty years earlier by Neurath (1931b, 1932a) who argued that such a type of rational reconstruction traded on objectionable counterfactual presuppositions (methodological solipsism did not provide a correct description of the reasoning involved in cognitive commerce with the world around us).
Fodor introduces it by way of a distinction between "methodological individualism" and "methodological solipsism".
'Methodological solipsism' is, in fact, an empirical theory about the mind". 1987, 43).
Thus in Fodor's use of the terms, "methodological individualism" is not really individualistic, and "methodological solipsism" is not really methodological.
"Methodological solipsism" is the stronger claim that "psychological states are individuated without respect to the semantic evaluations" (1987, 42).
Fodor's article "Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology" (1980) offers an early statement.
