Over the past years McDowell’s conceptualist theory has received mixed phenomenological reviews. Some phenomenologists have claimed that conceptualism involves an over-intellectualization of human experience. Others have drawn on Husserl’s work, arguing that Husserl’s theory of fulfillment challenges conceptualism and that his notion of “real content” is non-conceptual. Still others, by contrast, hold that Husserl’s later phenomenology is in fundamental agreement with McDowell’s theory of conceptually informed experience. So who is right? This paper purports to show that phenomenology does not have (...) to choose between any of these positions. Central to the outline I offer is that there are multiple approaches to non-conceptual content in play today. By separating them we can begin to oversee the diversity of phenomenological contributions to the debate about non-conceptual content. I conclude that current literature presents us with at least three sound phenomenological accounts of non-conceptual content, but also that these are generally not incompatible with conceptualism. (shrink)

The principle of universal instantiation plays a pivotal role both in the derivation of intensional paradoxes such as Prior’s paradox and Kaplan’s paradox and the debate between necessitism and contingentism. We outline a distinctively free logical approach to the intensional paradoxes and note how the free logical outlook allows one to distinguish two different, though allied themes in higher-order necessitism. We examine the costs of this solution and compare it with the more familiar ramificationist approaches to higher-order logic. Our assessment (...) of both approaches is largely pessimistic, and we remain reluctantly inclined to take Prior’s and Kaplan’s derivations at face value. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that many criticisms of McDowell’s naturalism of second nature are based on what I call ‘the orthodox interpretation’ of McDowell’s naturalism. The orthodox interpretation is, however, a misinterpretation, which results from the fact that the phrase ‘the space of reasons’ is used equivocally by McDowell in Mind and World. Failing to distinguish two senses of ‘the space of reasons’, I argue that the orthodox interpretation renders McDowell’s naturalism inconsistent with McDowell’s Hegelian thesis that the conceptual (...) is unbounded. My interpretation saves McDowell from being inconsistent. However, the upshot of my interpretation is that what is really at work in McDowell’s diagnosis of the dualism between nature and reason is the Hegelian thesis, not the naturalism of second nature. (shrink)

We compare the role of Cartesian assumptions in the symbol grounding problem and in the Myth of the Given: We argue that the Sellars–McDowell critique of the Myth of the Given and, in particular, its use of the concept of normativity can provide useful resources for responding to the symbol grounding problem. We also describe the concepts of normativity at work in computer science and cognitive science: We argue that normative concepts are pervasive in the sciences and that, in particular, (...) McDowell’s dichotomy between the normative space of reasons and the realm of nature is somewhat problematic. (shrink)

Historically, the most persuasive argument against external reasons proceeds through a rationalist restriction: For all agents A, and all actions Φ, there is a reason for A to Φ only if Φing is rationally accessible from A's actual motivational states. Here I distinguish conceptions of rationality, show which one the internalist must rely on to argue against external reasons, and argue that a rationalist restriction that features that conception of rationality is extremely implausible. Other conceptions of rationality can render the (...) restriction true, but then the restriction simply fails to rule out external reasons. (shrink)

In his most recent work, McDowell argues that the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism can be avoided only by an ‘equipoise’ between the objective and the subjective. However, I argue that Adorno’s ‘cognitive utopia’ is a genuine 4th option distinct from equipoise and from the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism. McDowell’s inability to acknowledge the cognitive utopia is traced to his overly abstract conception of the disenchantment of nature, in contrast to Adorno’s (...) emphasis on the domination of nature. This difference is traced to their different interpretations of Hegel. (shrink)

McDowell recently renounced the assumption that the content of any knowledgeable, perceptual judgement must be included in the content of the knowledge grounding experience. We argue that McDowell’s introduction of a new category of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge is incompatible with the main line of argument in favour of conceptualism as presented in Mind and World [McDowell, John. 1996. Mind and World. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. We reconstruct the original line of argument and show that it rests on (...) the assumption that a specific model of justification, the Comparison Model, must apply to all cases of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge. We then show that the Comparison Model cannot be applied to McDowell’s new category of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge. As a consequence, McDowell is in need of an alternative model of justification and an alternative argument for conceptualism. We propose such an alternative model of justification based on McDowell’s reading of Sellars, but argue that the model only serves to make the need for an alternative motivation for conceptualism more urgent. (shrink)

Kant wants to show that freedom is possible in the face of natural necessity. Transcendental idealism is his solution, which locates freedom outside of nature. I accept that this makes freedom possible, but object that it precludes the recognition of other rational agents. In making this case, I trace some of the history of Kant’s thoughts on freedom. In several of his earlier works, he argues that we are aware of our own activity. He later abandons this approach, as he (...) worries that any awareness of our activity involves access to the noumenal, and thereby conflicts with the epistemic limits of transcendental idealism. In its place, from the second Critique onwards, Kant argues that we are conscious of the moral law, which tells me that I ought to do something, thus revealing that I can. This is the only proof of freedom consistent with transcendental idealism, but I argue that such an exclusively first-personal approach precludes the recognition of other rational agents. I conclu.. (shrink)

Abstract McDowell's contributions to epistemology and philosophy of mind turn centrally on his defense of the Aristotelian concept of a ?rational animal?. I argue here that a clarification of how McDowell uses this concept can make more explicit his distance from Davidson regarding the nature of the minds of non-rational animals. Close examination of his responses to Davidson and to Dennett shows that McDowell is implicitly committed to avoiding the following ?false trichotomy?: that animals are not bearers of semantic content (...) at all, that they are bearers of content in the same sense we are, and that they are bearer of "as if" content. Avoiding the false trichotomy requires that we understand non-rational animals as having concepts but not as making judgments. Furthermore, we need to supplement McDowell's distinction between the logical spaces of reasons and of the realm of law with what Finkelstein calls ?the logical space of animate life?. Though McDowell has taken some recent steps to embrace a view like this, I urge a more demanding conception than what McDowell has thus far suggested. (shrink)

I discuss the claim what makes self-knowledge epistemologically distinctive is the fact that it is baseless or groundless. I draw a distinction between evidential and explanatory baselessness and argue that self-knowledge is only baseless in the first of these senses. Since evidential baselessness is a relatively widespread phenomenon the evidential baselessness of self-knowledge does not make it epistemologically distinctive and does not call for any special explanation. I do not deny that self-knowledge is epistemologically distinctive. My claim is only that (...) talk of its evidential baselessness is insufficient to account for its epistemological distinctiveness. (shrink)

(2013). Conversational implicature, communicative intentions, and content. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 720-740.

This paper looks at statements I am in a position to make ‘straight off’: observational judgements, perceptual and memory statements, statements about my posture, my intentions, and so on. These kinds of statement pose a problem: what is the nature of my entitlement to them? I focus on observational judgements and on two contrasting approaches to them. The first, which I reject, provides an account of my warrant for them; the second, which I defend, disconnects my entitlement from possession of (...) a justification. I consider what light the second approach sheds on the other kinds of statements I am in a position to make straight off. (shrink)

The distinction between the space of reasons and the realm of law captures two familiar ways of making events intelligible, by reference to reasons or to natural laws, respectively. I describe a third way of making events intelligible, by explaining them in terms of an agent’s being motivated to do certain things. Explanations of this sort do not involve appealing to reasons for which the agent acts, nor to natural laws under which the event falls. To explain an event in (...) this way is to place it in the space of motivations. I outline the relation between the space of motivations and the space of reasons, and suggest that the space of motivations may serve as a common ground between the positions defended by McDowell and Dreyfus in their recent debate. (shrink)

Scientific naturalism—the conception according to which the natural sciences, and possibly physics alone, set the limits of ontology and epistemology—is characterized by a strong monistic tendency. For this reason, all versions of scientific naturalism face the so-called “placement problem”, which concerns the features of the ordinary view of the world that, at least prima facie, do not fit into the scientific view of the world (think of consciousness, moral properties, free will, and intentionality). To address this problem, scientific naturalists use (...) three strategies: reductionism, eliminativism, and mysterianism—none of which, it is argued, produces satisfying results. Liberal naturalism opts instead for a pluralistic attitude in both ontology and epistemology but accepts a constraint according to which one should accept no entity or explanation that is incompatible with the scientific worldview. Liberal naturalism faces the “reconciliation problem”, which concerns the relationship between the scientific and the ordinary views of the world once one denies ontological and epistemological priority to either of them. Three strategies for addressing this problem are presented: according to the first, the ordinary worldview and the scientific world are categorically distinct; according to the second, the former emerges from the latter; according to the third, between them there is a relation of global supervenience. Other objections to liberal naturalism are finally presented and addressed. (shrink)