Deir el-Medina, the village of the workmen who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, is a uniquely rich source of information about life in Egypt between 1539 and 1075 BC. The abundant archaeological remains are complemented by tens of thousands of texts documenting the thoughts and activities of the villagers. Many of the texts are written on papyrus but most are on flakes of limestone which, being free and readily available, were used for even the most (...) casual and temporary of records. They include private letters, administrative accounts, magic spells, records of purchases, last wills and testaments, laundry lists, and love songs. The value of these rare glimpses of daily life is greatly enhanced by the concentration of texts in one time and place. This book combines translations of over 200 of these texts spanning the entire range of preserved genres with stunning illustrations. The reader will, therefore, be able to experience the life of the villagers through their own words whilst viewing places known to each individual writer. Each text is introduced by a commentary that provides the context and explains the contribution each text makes to our understanding of Egyptian society at this period. (shrink)

On the view proposed, the content of an intention in action is given by what one would say in expressing it, and the proper form for expressing such an intention is a statement about what one is doing: e.g. ‘I am doing such-and-such’. By contrast, some think that there are normative or evaluative elements to the content of an intention in action which would be left out of a form that merely stated facts. They think that the appropriate way to (...) express such an intention is a statement about what one should be doing. Davidson, for example, thinks that the statement must essentially be a verdict: that doing such-and-such is all-out desirable. But this is to assume that practical reason is reasoning towards the truth of a proposition, the very mistake which obscures its ‘true character’, as Anscombe correctly points out. Moreover, although Davidson's view helps him account for the possibility of weakness of will, his explanation of the phenomenon is strained and inferior by contrast with the account which the proposed view makes available. The proposed view fits into a broader picture in which intentional action is the exercise of a practical conceptual capacity. (shrink)

According to G. E. M. Anscombe, practical knowledge, an agent’s knowledge of what she is intentionally doing, is not contemplative or speculative; it does not owe its being knowledge to its being derived from what it knows. She argues for this on the ground that practical knowledge can be one of “two knowledges of the same thing”, where the other of the two is speculative. If we try to conceive practical knowledge as speculative, we fall into a hopeless picture in (...) which practical knowledge is provided by “a queer and special seeing eye in the middle of the acting”. I take Anscombe’s thought to be this: practical knowledge is knowledge concerning a happening that the agent may also know speculatively is her doing. I argue that this thesis is not threatened by the possibility of cases in which a happening that the agent knows as her doing would not be available to her to know as her doing if she did not know it speculatively. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant diagnoses an antinomy of taste: either determinate concepts exhaust judgments of taste or they do not. That is to say, judgments of taste are either objective and public or subjective and private. On the objectivity thesis, aesthetic value is predicable of objects. But determining the concepts that would make a judgment of taste objective is a vexing matter. Who can say which concepts these would be? To what authority does one appeal? (...) On the subjectivity thesis, aesthetic value is not predicable of objects. But this threatens judgments of taste with a sort of relativism. Can we not firmly assert the aesthetic value of any object? Have we no authority to make criticisms of taste? Following John McDowell’s “Aesthetic Value, Objectivity and the Fabric of the World”, I will hold that aesthetic value is neither objective nor subjective, but rather intersubjective. But, contra McDowell, I will argue that the validity that intersubjective aesthetic value bestows on judgments of taste must assume an indeterminate absolute conception of reality, of the world as it is in itself. Only such a conceptual resource can in turn make intelligible the notion of a shared or common sense according to which a judgment of taste can be universally valid, that is, valid for all subjects. Finally, I will consider an objection to common sense in matters of taste. (shrink)

This paper argues that McDowell wrongly assumes that “terror”, Cavell’s reaction to the radical contingency of our shared modes of knowing or our “attunement”, expresses a skepticism that is antinomically bound to an equally unacceptable dogmatism because Cavell rather regards terror as a mood that reveals the “truth of skepticism”, namely, that there is no conclusive evidence for necessary attunement on pain of a category error, and that a precedent for McDowell’s misunderstanding is Hegel’s argument for necessary attunement (...) in a system of knowing, whose refutation Schelling holds it is the “merit of skepticism” to provide. (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for (...) a dialetheist answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

In Mind and World, John McDowell argues against the view that perceptual representation is non-conceptual. The central worry is that this view cannot offer any reasonable account of how perception bears rationally upon belief. I argue that this worry, though sensible, can be met, if we are clear that perceptual representation is, though non-conceptual, still in some sense 'assertoric': Perception, like belief, represents things as being thus and so.

This essay deals with the problem of the status of colours, traditionally considered as the paradigmatic case of secondary qualities: do colours exist only as aspects of experience or are they real properties of objects, existing independently of human and animal perception? Recently, John Campbell has argued in favour of the simple view of colours, according to which colours are real properties of objects. I discuss the place of Campbell's position in a debated which was started by John Mackie and (...) continued by John McDowell, and defend it from a criticism due to Michael Smith. I conclude that the simple view is a philosophically credible position. Subsequently, I consider an alleged contradiction between the simple view and semantic externalism pointed out by Jim Edwards. I suggest that a supporter of the simple view may consistently maintain semantic externalism, if she also accepts epistemological externalism about the canonical warrant of perceptual judgements. (shrink)

In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans argues that the content of perceptual experience is nonconceptual, in a sense I shall explain momentarily. More recently, in his book Mind and World, John McDowell has argued that the reasons Evans gives for this claim are not compelling and, moreover, that Evans’s view is a version of “the Myth of the Given”: More precisely, Evans’s view is alleged to suffer from the same sorts of problems that plague sense-datum theories of perception. (...) In particular, McDowell argues that perceptual experience must be within “the space of reasons,” that perception must be able to give us reasons for, that is, to justify, our beliefs about the world: And, according to him, no state that does not have conceptual content can be a reason for a belief. Now, there are many ways in which Evans’s basic idea, that perceptual content is nonconceptual, might be developed; some of these, I shall argue, would be vulnerable to the objections McDowell brings against him. But I shall also argue that there is a way of developing it that is not vulnerable to these objections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian PhilosophyHarold CowardSemantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy. By Jonardon Ganeri. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 266.In Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy, Jonardon Ganeri adds to our understanding of the Nyāya philosophy of language in the modern English-speaking world. Building on Bimal (...) Matilal's introduction to Nyāya thought in Matilal's foundational Epistemology Logic and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis (1971) and on Karl Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika from Gangeśa to Raghunatha Siromani (1993), Ganeri's clearly written book valuably extends our knowledge of the Nyāya philosophy of language by its exposition of the seventeenth-century Nyāya philosopher Gadādhara's Saktivāda or "Essay on Semantic Power." Ganeri's exposition is based on having read the first half of the Saktivāda text with Matilal, before the latter's untimely death, and the second half with Bhattacharyya in Calcutta.In the Saktivāda, Gadādhara defends key Nyāya claims as to how language conveys meaning. In the first half of the text, the author deals with such questions as whether languages are convention-based, whether the central function of language is as an instrument of knowing, whether word meaning or sentence meaning is conceptually prior, and whether the notion of meaning is reducible to physical and/or psychological concepts. In the second half, Gadādhara looks at the semantic problems connected with particular constructions: notably proper and theoretical names, anaphors, indexicals, and the quantifiers. The English exposition of Gadādhara's text offered by Ganeri in this book covers the same topics.According to Gadādhara and the Nyāya philosophy, "the language faculty is a sui generis epistemic faculty, reducible to neither perception nor inference nor some combination of these two. The question for the Naiyāyika is: what properties must the language faculty have if it is in this way to be a source of knowledge?" (p. 15). The Nyāya approach also places an emphasis on testimony as a valid source of knowledge (pramāna), which it understands simply as the transmission by language of knowledge from the speaker to the hearer. The "Communication-intention" variable, discussed by recent thinkers such as McDowell, is not dealt with by Nyāya thinkers, who would deny that the acquisition of knowledge by testimony involves anything like the recognition of the speaker's intentions. Rather, the Nyāya thesis is "that understanding typically consists in direct, non-inferential assent, is in sharp contrast to the assumption implicit in McDowell's position: that assenting to another's utterance is never direct, but always depends on the speaker's intentions, or of the speech-act performed by the speaker" (p. 17). In supporting the Nyāya position, Ganeri appeals to Frege's theory of understanding.The basic idea in the Nyāya philosophy of language is that each of us is endowed with a language faculty, analogous to our perceptual faculty, which generates beliefs from perceived utterances. It has a meaning function. As Ganeri puts it: [End Page 419]My testimonial faculty fixes, as it were, a mapping from utterances of a given language to belief contents. The 'meaning' of a statement for me is, by definition, the belief content to which it is mapped by my testimony faculty. If I am able to understand every statement I hear, the language processing mechanism which underpins this faculty must have a certain compositional structure, and that leads to an assignment of belief-content components to subsequential elements in the language, (p. 29)This thought of Gadādhara, dating from about 1700 C.E., resonates with Chomsky's contemporary ideas of "deep structure" and, in classical Indian philosophy, with Bhartṛhari's fifth-century notion of innate-structuring ideas within consciousness (see Coward and Raja, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 5). Like Bhartṛhari, Gadādhara takes the sentence to be the irreducible meaning-bearing unit of language.While Karl Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's volume 6 of The Encyclopedia... (shrink)

(NEG) is widely accepted both by internalist and by externalists. In fact, there have been very few opponents of (NEG). Timothy Williamson (e.g., 2000) rejects (NEG), for reasons that have by now received a great deal of scrutiny.2 John McDowell also rejects (NEG), but his reasons have not received the scrutiny they deserve. This is in large part because those reasons have not been well understood. We believe that McDowell’s challenge to (NEG) is important, worthy of fair assessment, (...) and maybe even correct. In this paper, we explain McDowell’s challenge to (NEG), and also explain how McDowell can address a seemingly fatal objection to his view. (shrink)

My paper is motivated by two thoughts: that there’s significant overlap between J. G. Herder’s romanticism and, what I call, the ‘late’ conceptualism of John McDowell; that recognizing this helps to settle a dispute in contemporary epistemology concerning the contents of perception. I argue, on the basis of that overlap, that “romantic conceptualism” avoids two pressing criticisms of conceptualism: It offers a reply to the argument from the fineness of grain of perceptual experience and it explains the relationship between (...) human perceptual experience and the perceptual experiences of non-human animals. I start with the interpretation of McDowell’s views, tracing the significant revisions in the period following the publication of Mind and World; then I try to compare his views with Herder’s, trying to establish a framework for responding to the more trenchant criticisms of McDowell’s non-conceptualist opponents, and the explanatory force of conceptualist hypotheses beyond the context of contemporary epistemology. The first arc of the paper, therefore, traces the evolution of McDowell’s thought concerning perceptual contents. The second attempts to demonstrate where that view converges with a romantic philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive and detailed exploration of the relationship between the thought of G.W.F. Hegel and that of John McDowell, the latter of whom is widely considered to be one of the most influential living analytic philosophers. It serves as a point of entry in McDowell’s and Hegel’s philosophy, and a substantial contribution to ongoing debates on perceptual experience and perceptual justification, naturalism, human freedom and action. The chapters gathered in this volume, as well as (...) class='Hi'>McDowell’s responses, make it clear that McDowell’s work paves the way for an original reading of Hegel’s texts. His conceptual framework allows for new interpretive possibilities in Hegel’s philosophy which, until now, have remained largely unexplored. Moreover, these interpretations shed light on various aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the philosophies of these two authors, thus defining more clearly their positions on specific issues. In addition, they allow us to see Hegel’s thought as containing a number of conceptual tools that might be useful for advancing McDowell’s own philosophy and contemporary philosophy in general. (shrink)

The essay’s main goal is to see what connection (if any) may be drawn between McDowell’s theoretical quietism and Hegel’s idea of philosophy. McDowell’s view is explicitly rooted in Wittgenstein’s belief that «philosophy leaves everything as it is» and that its task only «consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose», but it may be interesting to investigate whether this quietism, as he has recently reiterated, is merely «Wittgensteinian» or has a broader import. The issue is approached «sideways (...) on». The essay starts with a discussion of David Foster Wallace’s view that «the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about» and it bridges the gap between Hegel and McDowell’s Wittgensteinianism by resorting to an examination of Charles Taylor’s «qualitative conception of action». (shrink)

In this article I raise a number of issues concerning John McDowell’s widely influential revisionist reading of Kant. These have to do with what I see as his failure – despite ambitious claims in that regard – to overcome the various problematic dualisms that dogged Kant’s thought throughout the three Critiques. Moreover, as I show, they have continued to mark the discourse of those who inherit Kant’s agenda in this or that updated, e.g., ‘linguistified’ form. More specifically, I argue (...) that McDowell’s ‘new’ reading amounts to no more than a series of terminological shifts or substitutions, such that (for instance) the well-known problem with explaining how ‘sensuous intuitions’ can be somehow synthesised with ‘concepts of understanding’ is replaced – scarcely resolved – by an equally opaque and question-begging appeal to Kantian ‘receptivity’ and ‘spontaneity’. My essay goes on to discuss a number of kindred dichotomies, among them that of nature and ‘second nature’, all of which can basically be seen as resulting from the normative deficit entailed by McDowell’s particular kind of half-way naturalizing project. I conclude that this project shows insufficient regard to the history of post-Kantian continental thought, in particular the similar problems faced by ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ idealists like Fichte and Schelling. (shrink)

El renacimiento del interés por Hegel en el mundo filosófico se apoya en varios puntos: la superación del dualismo entre el esquema conceptual y el contenido (Davidson, McDowell), la disipación del mito de lo dado (Sellars, Quine) y el inferencialismo (Brandom). En relación con el primer punto, John McDowell intenta superar aquel dualismo, echando mano de un Hegel cuya retórica requiere de una domesticación. Se intenta iluminar el alcance y algunas limitaciones de esta propuesta, en su intento por (...) desmontar la filosofía del permanente movimiento entre el mito de lo dado o la inmediatez, por un lado, y el coherentismo, por el otro. (shrink)

“Dialectic” has been a matter of growing interest in contemporary philosophy. The present article analyzes dialectical methods and positions them by reference to two paradigmatic texts of German idealism and analytic philosophy, i.e. J.G. Fichte’s Science of Knowing (1804) and J. McDowell’s Mind and World. Both dialectical approaches will be interpreted with regard to their contribution in the debate on reductionism and anti-reductionism: both Fichte and McDowell claim that philosophical positions and logical terms stand in a dualistic relationship (...) to one another, on the one hand, but are separated by a gulf, on the other. I will argue that for McDowell dialectic seems to be an alternative to one-sided reductionisms as well as to normal anti-reductionistic holism. Furthermore, for Fichte dialectic is an adequate method for describing the relationship of reductionism and anti-reductionism itself. Both see in dialectic a technique for bridging the gulf between binary opposite terms of logic as well as mutually exclusive positions, such as mind and world, subject and object, or idealism and realism. (shrink)

The historical origins of the analytic style that was to become dominant within academic philosophy in the English-speaking world are often traced to the work of Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore at the turn of the twentieth century, and portrayed as involving a radical break with the idealist philosophy that had bloomed in Britain at the end of the nineteenth. Congruent with this view, Hegel is typically taken as representing a type of philosophy that analytic philosophy assiduously avoids. Thus, (...) while Hegel’s writings are regarded as indirect, metaphorical and “darkly Teutonic”, analytic philosophers usually think of themselves as prizing the clarity of plain speech, except when making use of the precision of scientific logical notation. This analytic directness, furthermore, is usually seen as consonant with the increasingly “naturalistic” outlook of analytic philosophy, especially as practiced in the United States. In contrast, Hegel is seen as regarding philosophical thought as mysteriously engaging with a content that is somehow generated out of the mind’s own activities, linking philosophy more to art and religion than natural science. Moreover, it is usually accepted that Russell had shown Hegel’s bizarre metaphysic doctrines to be based on a few fundamental logical mistakes, even if the details of Russell’s criticisms have been largely forgotten. (shrink)

In this article I take a closer look at Adorno's methodology, and specifically the question of how – in Adorno's view – philosophy ought to be done. In this, my aim is to see whether there might be ‘quietist’ elements in his methodological account, i.e. the meta‐philosophical position of quietism as it stands against (scientific) naturalism in recent discussions. Recent work on Adorno and classical critical theory has discussed numerous similarities and overlaps with the post‐analytical work of, e.g., John (...) class='Hi'>McDowell and Michael Thompson. Building on this recent work, my article suggests further points of contact, by focusing on the interplay of question and answer present in both McDowell and Adorno. To do this, I first outline McDowell's version of quietism. From there, an interpretation of Adorno can proceed along the lines developed with McDowell, centering the idea of unanswerable philosophical questions that need to be treated instead of answered straightforwardly. I demonstrate the relation he draws from disappearance of questions to ‘praxis’ and suggest how this differs from McDowell yet might still be viewed as an account related to quietism. I conclude by suggesting taking up Adorno's term ‘immanent criticism’ as a methodological concept. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Sellars’s conceptualist reading of Kant, though less radical than more contemporary approaches (e. g., Brandom, McDowell), relies on a controversial account of the relations between the givenness of intuitions, the productive imagination and the power of judgment. I will discuss: 1) how Sellars reconsidered Kant’s account of intuition; and 2) the kind of conceptualism he argues for. I will raise two main claims. First, Sellars’s conceptualist reading of intuition overlooks the role of space (...) and time as givenness conditions. Second, Sellars’s account of the productive imagination disregards the complementary significance of the power of judgment in a priori synthesis, the role of which is to grant synthetic unity. My aim is to reconstruct a consistent dialogue between Sellars and Kant by discussing Sellars’s reading of a priori synthesis and comparing his views to Kant’s original aims. (shrink)

I tackle the definition of the relation between first and second nature while examining some problems with McDowell's conception. This, in the first place, will bring out the need to extend the notion of second nature to the social dimension, understanding it not just as `inner' second nature — individual mind — but also as `outer' second nature — objective spirit. In the second place the dialectical connection between these two notions of second nature will point the way to (...) a critical use of the concept itself, which will link up with a theory of reification. Furthermore, I shall endeavor to fit my reflection into the problematic constellation of critical theory: my analysis in fact rests on the question whether, within a critical theory, the philosophy of nature can be recaptured today, in such a way as to give meaning to the very notion of socio-philosophical criticism of reality. (shrink)

There is supposed to be deep agreement among the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Robert Brandom, and John McDowell in regard to normativity. As a result, according to Robert Brandom (2008), and echoed by Chauncey Maher (2012), “normative functionalism” (NF) may refer to a position held by Sellars, Brandom, and McDowell, i.e., “The Pittsburgh School” of philosophy. The standard criticism of the various forms of this normative functionalist position points out the inconsistency in the commitment of normative functionalists to (...) both metaphysical realism and psychological nominalism. Yet, the inconsistency between metaphysical realism and psychological nominalism may be difficult to see until the relation between normativity and perception is clarified. To this end, in this article I discuss the role of habit in perception. Normative functionalists aspire for a sort of pragmatism between the horns of psychologism and pan-logicism. However, once a discussion of habit in perception reveals a kind of relation between an agent and its environment that exceeds the inferential capacity of normativity, the normative functionalist position seems tautological. Put more specifically, the NF thesis may merely be claiming that the inferential sort of normativity which governs rational synthetic processing of experience is an inferential sort of normativity governing rational synthetic processing. The revelation of such a tautological grounding should be sufficient evidence for the Pittsburgh School to consider re-working its understanding of the functionality of normativity; for example, regarding claims such as: “In an important sense there is no such boundary [between the discursive and non-discursive], and so nothing outside the realm of the conceptual” (Brandom 2000, 357). This discussion should be, at least, valuable as a supplement to the standard criticism of NF or in regard to the Pittsburgh School’s avowed relation to G.W.F. Hegel. (shrink)

This paper defends Kant against a neo‐Hegelian line of criticism, recently advanced by John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and Sebastian Rödl, targeting Kant's alleged claim that forms of sensibility other than space and time are possible. If correct, the criticism identifies a deep problem in Kant's position and points toward Hegel's position and method as its natural solution. I show that Kant has the philosophical resources to respond effectively to the criticism, notably including the set of claims about the limits (...) of meaningful thought that P. F. Strawson calls Kant's “principle of significance.” By Kant's lights, first, the concept “non‐spatio‐temporal form of sensibility” is meaningless, so he cannot meaningfully grant that such a form is possible; and second, there is no need to prove (e.g., from reflection on pure intellect) that non‐spatio‐temporal forms of sensibility are impossible, because insofar as the concept “knowing” means anything, that meaning is provided by our own always‐already‐spatio‐temporal case. An upshot of the argument is that Kant's two “stems” of knowledge or cognition, sensibility and understanding, are merely aspects of a single epistemic capacity rather than each a separate capacity in its own right. Many today are unwilling to take Kant's claims about the limits of meaningful thought at face value, notwithstanding their ubiquity and explicitness. This paper is therefore an indirect argument on behalf of that dimension of Kant's position: We have something significant to lose in not taking it seriously. (shrink)

This article (in German) discusses the scope and content of John McDowell's famous claim that human perception is "conceptual all the way out". I motivate the claim by explaining its role within McDowell's transcendental concern to account for the mind's "openness to the world", i. e. the immediate presence or givenness (no capital "G") of objective reality in human perception. I argue that (a) dissolving this problem requires us to understand human perception as a rational power, that (b) (...) a rational power is a power whose actualizations involve the actualization of conceptual capacities, and that (c) the actualizations of powers that involve the actualizations of conceptual capacities have conceptual contents. I discuss the different versions of this claim to be found in McDowell's writings since "Mind and World". Furthermore, I distinguish between two ways of reading the claim which I call the "apperceptive" and the "phenomenal" reading respectively. The first reading, I argue, is the one McDowell actually endorses, whereas the second reading, which is not a part of his position, is the one foisted on him in many of the critical engagements with his work. (shrink)

There is a broad distinction in Descartes’s writings between doctrine and method. The staying power of these two elements has been unequal. Descartes’s doctrinal influence on contemporary epistemology has been largely as a foil against which some of its major currents have been developed. Few contemporary philosophers have adopted his positive doctrines. The situation is brighter on the methodological side. Here, Descartes’s practice of beginning with common sense and moving, step by step, to philosophical conclusions is a model much admired (...) by contemporary philosophers. Still, the negative verdict on doctrine stands as the main verdict. I maintain that this verdict is undeserved I first distinguish between Descartes’s general epistemology and the purpose to which he puts it – the quest for certainty. I then argue for a positive verdict for his general epistemology. I do so by showing that Descartes has a non-normative account of knowledge but an “ethics of responsible belief ” account of epistemic normativity. Unlike some contemporary accounts of epistemic responsibilism, e.g. Bonjour, in which epistemic responsibility is a condition for knowledge, on Descartes’s account, knowledge is a condition for epistemic responsibility. Descartes thus anticipates what Sylvan calls the “knowledge-first” approach in contemporary epistemology, which I defend in the paper. Relying on Audi’s distinction between “sources” and “reasons,” I show that Descartes’ analysis of knowledge proper, which I also defend in the paper, anticipates and improves on the “factive access” analysis of knowledge due to McDowell. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on attributions of the transparency of thought to early modern figures, most notably Descartes. Many recent philosophers assume that Descartes believed the mind to be “transparent”: since all mental states are conscious, we are therefore aware of them all, and indeed incorrigibly know them all. Descartes, and Berkeley too, do make statements that seem to endorse both aspects of the transparency theses (awareness of all mental states; incorrigibility). However, they also make systematic theoretical statements that directly countenance (...) “unnoticed” thoughts or mental states, that is, thoughts or mental states of which the subject is unaware and has no knowledge. Descartes, having identified the essence of mind with thought or representation, distinguishes bare states of mind from states of which we have reflective awareness, thereby providing a theoretical tool for understanding both his seeming endorsement of transparency and his actual denial of it: Descartes distinguished between a basic perceptual state, or a basic awareness, and reflectively conscious states that involve explicit noticing and cognizing on the part of the subject. Leibniz (as is better known) directly endorsed a similar distinction between bare perception and reflective consciousness, using the term “perception” for the first and “apperception” for the second. In these cases, bare perceptions are not transparently available to the subject, and so in fact the subject does not have knowledge, hence does not have incorrigible knowledge, of all its occurrent mental states. This chapter gives evidence to support these claims; elaborates the complex psychology of the subject found in Descartes and other early moderns; and notes some ways in which these early moderns contributed to the genesis of the modern subject. Finally, it compares McDowell’s conception of the Cartesian mind with the conceptions of mind found in the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, finding that his characterization caricatures the positions of early modern philosophers. McDowell's characterization has four elements: consciousness as essence of mind; intentionality as exclusively mental; the veil of perception; and the transparency of mind. Only the second point, about intentionality, fully fits Descartes. As a consequence of his own misdirection, McDowell misses the actual basis of his difficulty in connecting mind with world, which arises from a point of agreement between him and Descartes: the removal of intentionality from material sensory systems. But whereas Descartes could relocate (nonconceptual) sensory intentionality in mental states, McDowell is left to account for it with his overly cognitivized scheme of perceptual content as exclusively conceptual. (Paper first given at the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy, 2007.). (shrink)

We enjoy immediate knowledge of our own limbs and bodies. I argue that this knowledge, which is also called proprioception, is a special form of perception, special in that it is, unlike perception by the external senses, at the same time also a form of genuine self-knowledge. The argument has two parts. Negatively, I argue against the view, held by G. E. M. Anscombe and strengthened by John McDowell, that this knowledge, bodily self-knowledge, is non-perceptual. This involves, inter alia, (...) rescuing from McDowell’s attack the very idea of receptive self-knowledge. On the positive side, I develop, by drawing on the work of Brian O’Shaughnessy, a detailed account of bodily self-knowledge as a special form of perception. This account spells out how this special form of perception is epistemologically mediated by sensations of a special class of primary qualities—vital-dynamic sensations as I call them—in one’s limbs. (shrink)

Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?

For more than 20 years, research has proven the beneficial effect of natural frequencies when it comes to solving Bayesian reasoning tasks (Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1995). In a recent meta-analysis, McDowell & Jacobs (2017) showed that presenting a task in natural frequency format increases performance rates to 24% compared to only 4% when the same task is presented in probability format. Nevertheless, on average three quarters of participants in their meta-analysis failed to obtain the correct solution for such a (...) task in frequency format. In this paper, we present an empirical study on what participants typically do wrong when confronted with natural frequencies. We found that many of them did not actually use natural frequencies for their calculations, but translated them back into complicated probabilities instead. This switch from the intuitive presentation format to a less intuitive calculation format will be discussed within the framework of psychological theories (e.g., the Einstellung effect). (shrink)

Different philosophers tried ways to restore the role of reason in ethics. This shift in the philosophical climate was influenced by--or was at least in accordance with--the thought of the later Wittgenstein. In particular, this article will consider the relevance of Wittgenstein for cognitivist views, such as that of S. Toulmin, relativist like G. Harman, and British moral realists like S. Lovibond and J. McDowell. In fact, Wittgenstein is one of the founding fathers of antifoundationalism. He gives us the (...) hopeful insight that the end of foundationalism does not necessarily imply the end of moral philosophy but must be considered a new start of it. (edited). (shrink)

In this paper, I contest increasingly common "realist" interpretations of Hegel's theory of "the concept" (der Begriff), offering instead a "isomorphic" conception of the relation of concepts and the world. The isomorphism recommended, however, is metaphysically deflationary, for I show how Hegel's conception of conceptual form creates a conceptually internal standard for the adequacy of concepts. No "sideways-on" theory of the concept-world relationship is envisioned. This standard of conceptual adequacy is also "graduated" in that it allows for a lack of (...) fit between concept and world. The possibility for a "maximally isomorphic" fit between concept and world obtains through the teleological realization of concepts, which marks especially the "artificial" world of human culture (law, art, religion, etc.). Some of the most seemingly exaggerated claims Hegel makes about the concept, I contend, can be understood when we consider the significance Hegel ascribes to human making, which is provided for in his conceptual theory. But my framework provides an interpretive key for the way Hegel sees concepts imperfectly realized in the natural world as well. (shrink)

Inspired by the writings of J. M. Hinton (1967a, 1967b, 1973), but ushered into the mainstream by Paul Snowdon (1980–1, 1990–1), John McDowell (1982, 1986), and M. G. F. Martin (2002, 2004, 2006), disjunctivism is currently discussed, advocated, and opposed in the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the theory of practical reason, and the philosophy of action. But what is disjunctivism?

Advocates of particularism in moral philosophy (e.g. Prichard, Dancy, McDowell) hold that moral theory contributes little if anything to moral deliberation, claiming that we do best in moral judgement by relying on our intuitive moral sensitivities to situations rather than on general principles. In this paper I argue that particularism lacks the resources to provide a preferable account of moral deliberation and justification.

This introduction provides a highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth-century and contemporary metaethics. It traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. A highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth century and contemporary metaethics. Asks: Are there moral facts? Is there such a thing as moral truth? (...) Is moral knowledge possible? Traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent debates between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and noncognitivism. Provides for the first time a critical survey of famous figures in twentieth century metaethics such as Moore, Ayer and Mackie together with in-depth discussions of contemporary philosophers such as Blackburn, Gibbard, Wright, Harman, Railton, Sturgeon, McDowell and Wiggins. (shrink)

Este artigo propõe uma releitura do artigo Other Minds de J. L. Austin, um exemplo clássico e central do realismo de Oxford, que é hoje exponenciado por autores tão distintos entre si como John McDowell, Timothy Williamson, M. G. F. Martin, Paul Snowdon ou Charles Travis. Um objectivo da leitura é pôr em relevo algumas características da abordagem das questões epistemológicas no seio dessa corrente. Começo por contextualizar o estatuto da investigação epistemológica num quadro de filosofia da linguagem comum. (...) Segue-se uma análise do artigo Other Minds em cinco passos. Finalmente exploro a aplicação ao problema das outras mentes das considerações performativas sobre conhecimento desenvolvidas ao longo do artigo, focando em particular o caso do testemunho. (shrink)

Our ultimate purpose is to give an axiomatic treatment of recursion theory sufficient to develop the priority method. The direct or abstract approach is to keep in mind as clearly as possible the methods actually used in recursion theory, and then to formulate them explicitly. The indirect or experimental approach is to look first for other mathematical theories which seem similar to recursion theory, to formulate the analogies precisely, and then to search for an axiomatic treatment which covers not only (...) recursion theory but also the analogous theories as particular cases.The first approach is more general because it does not depend on the existence of analogues. A concrete mathematical theory, it seems, need have no such analogues and still be important, as e.g. classical number theory. In such a case, an axiomatic treatment may still be useful for exhibiting the mathematical structure of the theory considered and the assumptions on which it rests. However, it will lack one of the most heavily advertised advantages of the axiomatic method, namely, the “economy of thought” which results from an uniform theory for several different and interesting cases: we cannot hope for this if, by hypothesis, we know of only one particular case. In contrast, the second approach, if successful at all, is bound to achieve such “economy” because we start out with several interesting particular cases. Another possible virtue of the second approach is that of field work over insight: the abstract pattern that we are looking for and hoping to formalize in axioms, may not be evident in any one mathematical theory, but may spring to the eye if one happens to look simultaneously at several theories which happen to realize the pattern. (shrink)