Subsequent stronger versions of the social-constitution thesis (e.g., in Hegel, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Burge, and Brandom) attempt to go beyond Herder's empirical claim.

In a further seminal move in the philosophy of mind Herder argues that linguistic meaning is fundamentally social—so that thought and other aspects of human mental life (since they are essentially articulated in terms of linguistic meanings), and therefore even the very self (since the self is essentially dependent on thought and other aspects of human mental life, and moreover defined in its specific identity by theirs), are so too. Herder’s version of this position seems intended only as an em