Abstract

In Mind and World (1994/1996), John McDowell follows Donald Davidson in claiming that the world is a conceptually laden structure. A (conceptual) language and tradition constitutes the world, and our (conceptual) "openness to the world� (ibid, p.155). This means that the condition for access to the world is a clear subject – object split, and a clear split between content and the way the content is presented. With this view as the basis he criticizes the idea of a non-conceptual1 experience and non-conceptual content, starting from the demand that (conceptual) thinking must be constrained by, and rationally answerable to the empirical world (ibid p.xii)