MIND and ·WORLD John Mcdowell
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Skepticism, Metaphors and Vertigo : Wittgenstein and Cavell on The
RicoGutschmidt, Dresden Skepticism, Metaphorsand Vertigo Wittgenstein and Cavell on the Human Condition Abstract: The relation of Wittgenstein’slaterphilosophytoskepticism seems to be ambiguous, since he rejects radical skepticism but also highlights the ground- lessness of our beliefs. In this paper,Iam going to discuss Wittgenstein’shinge propositions in this respect.Against the usual view,Iwill show that they do not function as acontextualist or foundationalist refutation of skepticism. Whatis more, they also do not confirm skepticism. In contrast,Iwill arguethat following Wittgenstein skepticism is neither false nor true, but still has apoint,which can be elucidated with Stanley Cavell’sconcept of a truth of skepticism. This concept roughly states that we can not know about the existenceofthe world and the others, but that we have to acknowledge them. With the help of Wittgenstein, Iamgoingtoclarify this position. The key idea is that the problem of skepticism can be understood as ametaphorical wayofpresentingthe finiteness of the human condition and thatvertiginous skeptical irritations lead to an adequate human self-understanding in this respect. Something is obscure with the statusofskepticism. What does it mean for the human to be confronted with unanswerable questions?Should he somehow deal with his incapability of answeringthem?Shouldn’thenonetheless try to find answers?Orare these questions senseless in the end, since they can not be answered anyhow?Inthe following,Iamgoing to discuss this obscure status of skepticism. In the first part of this paper,Iwill the deal with the ambiguous position of Wittgenstein’slater philosophytothe problem of skepticism, which seems neither to reject nor to confirm skepticism. This problem willbeelucidated by referringtoWittgenstein’sconcept of the hinge propositions. -
Lexington Books
NEW FROM LEXINGTON BOOKS WHITEHEAD AND THE PITTSBURGH SCHOOL: PREEMPTING THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONALITY By Lisa Landoe Hedrick “Whitehead and the Pittsburgh School: Preempting the Problem of Intentionality is an excellent addition to studies on the relationship between Whitehead and analytic philosophy in general. In particular, it shows how Whitehead’s critique of early trends in analytic thought is relevant to habits that impede progress in analytic thought today.”—Daniel A. Dombrowski, Seattle University “Hedrick makes good on her stated aim: to interpret Whitehead’s epistemology in a new way and to make her own original contribution. This is explosive philosophy!”—Robert Cummings Neville, Boston University “Hedrick is destined to become a leading author on the interpretation of the thought of Whitehead. In this extraordinary debut book, she examines Whitehead’s relevance to recent developments in analytic philosophy epitomized in the ‘Pittsburgh School’ of Robert Brandom and John McDowell and contextualized against the philosophy of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty. Not since the pioneering work of the late George W. Shields has a Whitehead scholar tackled the critical relation of Whitehead to analytic philosophy. Hedrick does it here in a thoroughly up-to-date and decisive way with a brilliant focus on the meaning of intentionality and the need to make sense of the relationship between mind and world.” —Nancy Frankenberry, Dartmouth College “With a technically precise focus on contemporary epistemology and the problems of normativity and intentionality, Hedrick demonstrates that the TABLE OF CONTENTS sustained critique of prevailing habits of thought within mainstream analytic Acknowledgments philosophy implicitly shares much in common with a similar but long- Introduction forgotten critique of Bertrand Russell’s sensedata theory, launched a century Chapter 1: Reading Plato, Aristotle, and Kant ago by Russell’s erstwhile collaborator, Whitehead. -
Reason and Nature Lecture and Colloquium in Munster¨ 1999
JOHN MCDOWELL: Reason and Nature Lecture and Colloquium in Munster¨ 1999 Edited by Marcus Willaschek LIT – Verlag Munster¨ Preface John McDowell is one of the most influential philosophers writing to- day. His work, ranging widely from interpretations of Plato and Aris- totle to Davidsonian semantics, from ethics to epistemology and the philosophy of mind, has set the agenda for many recent philosophical debates. In recent years, McDowell’s views have been hotly discussed among students and faculty in Munster,¨ too. Therefore, we were very glad when McDowell agreed to give the third M¨unsteraner Vorlesungen zur Philosophie in 1999. On May 5, McDowell gave a public lecture; on the following two days, he participated in a colloquium where students and faculty from Munster¨ presented brief papers on his philosophy. McDowell listened carefully and responded to questions and criticisms. This volume contains McDowell’s lecture, revised versions of the col- loquium papers and McDowell’s written responses to them. I should like to thank John McDowell for coming to lecture in Munster,¨ for participating in the colloquium, and for putting his re- sponses in writing. Discussing his views with him has been stimulation and pleasure for all of us. Next, I want to thank the participants in the colloquium who worked hard to come up with interesting and chal- lenging presentations. Further, thanks are due to Karsten Wantia and Florian Wessels for putting much effort and time in type-setting and designing this volume. And finally, I want ot thank the Ministerium fur¨ Schule und Weiterbildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung in Nordrhein- Westfalen for funding the 1999 M¨unsteraner Vorlesungen zur Philosophie. -
1 the Disjunctive Conception of Experience As Material for A
The disjunctive conception of experience as material for a transcendental argument John McDowell University of Pittsburgh 1. In Individuals1 and The Bounds of Sense,2 P. F. Strawson envisaged transcendental arguments as responses to certain sorts of scepticism. An argument of the sort Strawson proposed was to establish a general claim about the world, a claim supposedly brought into doubt by sceptical reflections. Such an argument was to work by showing that unless things were as they were said to be in the claim that the argument purported to establish, it would not be possible for our thought or experience to have certain characteristics, not regarded as questionable even by someone who urges sceptical doubts. So the argument’s conclusion was to be displayed as the answer to a “How possible?” question. That has a Kantian ring, and the feature of such arguments that the formulation fits is the warrant for calling them “transcendental”. Barry Stroud responded to Strawson on the following lines.3 Perhaps we can see our way to supposing that if our thought or experience is to have certain characteristics it does have (for instance that experience purports to be of a world of objects independent of us), we must conceive the world in certain ways (for instance as containing objects that continue to exist even while we are not perceiving them). But it is quite another matter to suggest that by reflecting about how it is possible that our thought and experience are as they are, we could establish conclusions not just about how we must conceive the world but about how the world must be. -
An Unrealistic Account of Moral Reasons
An Unrealistic Account of Moral Reasons PRINCIPIA LXVI (2019): 5–33 PL‑ISSN 0867‑5392 DOI 10.4467/20843887PI.19.001.11634 Susana Cadilha An Unrealistic Account of Moral Reasons1 Nierealistyczne ujęcie racji moralnych Summary In this paper I will analyze John McDowell’s broad account of prac‑ tical rationality and moral reasons, which he displays mainly in his articles “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?” (1978) and “Might There Be External Reasons?” (1995). My main aim is to argue that from a philosophical perspective, no less than from an empirical one, McDowell’s account of practical rationality is not a realistic one. From a philosophical point of view, I will argue that his intellectualist account is not convincing; and if we consider his virtue‑ethical ideal of practical rationality in light of the model of human cognition, we also realize that moral behavior is not immune to cognitive biases and does not always flow from robust traits of character like virtues. At the same time, this puts at stake his strong thesis of moral autonomy – the idea that with the ‘onset of reason’ moral beings are no longer determined by ‘first nature’ features. Keywords: John McDowell, practical rationality, moral reasons, vir‑ tue ethics, second nature Streszczenie W niniejszym artykule analizuję szerokie ujęcie praktycznej racjo‑ nalności i racji moralnych Johna McDowella, które przedstawia głównie w swoich artykułach „Are Moral Requirements Hypotheti‑ cal Imperatives?” (1978) i „Might There Be External Reasons?” (1995). Moim głównym celem jest pokazanie, że z perspektywy fi‑ 1 This paper is a substantially extended and improved version of my previous paper “John McDowell on Practical Rationality – Is He (Really) Talking about Us?” (2018). -
Compositionality and the Metaphysics of Meaning
“This is not the first time such a view has been put forward. If it could be worked out in detail, so rigorously that not the smallest doubt remained, that, it seems to me, would be a result not entirely without importance.” - Gottlob Frege University of Alberta Compositionality and the Metaphysics of Meaning by Jeffery Fedorkiw A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Philosophy ©Jeffery Fedorkiw Fall 2011 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. Dedicated to Helen Fedorkiw Abstract The principle of compositionality states that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its con- stituent parts and the way those parts are combined. Jerry Fodor has argued that semantic productivity and systematicity requires compositionality and that compositionality requires atomism about semantic values. Atomism is here the thesis that there are simple meanings which are assigned to grammatical terms completely inde- pendent of any other (i.e. -
Knowledge and the Space of Reasons: the Ideas of John Mcdowell and Paul Hirst Geoffrey Hinchliffe University of East Anglia
Geoffrey Hinchliffe 107 Knowledge and the Space of Reasons: The Ideas of John McDowell and Paul Hirst Geoffrey Hinchliffe University of East Anglia In this essay I develop an epistemological perspective that argues for the cen- tral role that knowledge plays in education. I do this first of all by elaborating John McDowell’s ideas on the “space of reasons.”1 I then use this concept to reinterpret and develop the concept of the “forms of knowledge” associated with Paul Hirst.2 I argue that the forms of knowledge can be seen as inhabiting the space of reasons. I then show how one of the key features of the space of reasons — the making of judgments — is also a key feature of education and learning. SECOND NATURE AND THE SPACE OF REASONS I will begin by giving a brief account of McDowell’s epistemological position. His exposition is wide-ranging but the force of his argument is lost unless its different strands are held together. His starting point is Immanuel Kant’s well-known remark that “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind,”3 which McDowell thinks underpins what he sees as a pernicious, oscillating dualism. On the one side is, borrowing from Wilfred Sellars, the “Myth of the Given,” and on the other side is a coherentism that McDowell attributes to Donald Davidson.4 The problem with relying on the “given” is that it is not clear how the relation between sense experience and concept can be considered as one of genuine justification since unalloyed, bare sense data is simply “other” to conceptual thought. -
The Pragmatic Century
The Pragmatic Century Richard J. Bernstein There are many ways of telling the story of the vicissitudes of pragmatism in the United States. I want to begin with a brief account of what may be considered the standard story, because I intend to challenge it. The stan- dard story goes something like this. Pragmatism was popularized primar- ily through the lecturing and writing of William James at the beginning of the twentieth century. We can even date the explicit introduction of the term “pragmatism” by James in his 1898 address, delivered at the Univer- sity of California, Berkeley, “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results.” In that address, James generously acknowledged his debt to Peirce, “one of the most original contemporary thinkers,” and he refers to “the principle of practicalism—or pragmatism as he called it, when I first heard him enunciate it at Cambridge in the early 1970s.” James initially gives a rather metaphorical description of “Peirce’s principle”: “the soul and meaning of thought, he says, can never be made to direct itself towards anything but the production of belief, belief being the demica- dence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.” Furthermore, “beliefs, in short are really rules of action; and the whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of habits of action” (James 1967: 348). In 1898, Peirce was barely known as a philoso- pher (except to a small group of admirers like James). As James’s popular version of pragmatism spread, Peirce was so appalled and outraged that he renamed his own doctrine of meaning “‘pragmaticism,’ which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers” (Peirce 1931: 5.414). -
Dewey, Continuity, and Mcdowell
Dewey, Continuity, and McDowell Peter Godfrey-Smith Philosophy Department Harvard University Keynote address at the Harvard/MIT Graduate Philosophy Conference, March 2006. To appear (with minor changes) in Normativity and Nature, edited by David MacArthur and Mario de Caro, Columbia University Press. 1. Introduction 2. Dewey on Mind and Nature 3. Criticism of Mind and World 4. Aboutness and Ideals 1. Introduction John Dewey's voluminous output includes substantial work in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. Within analytic philosophy, the implicit conclusion drawn for some decades now has been that Dewey is not especially relevant or useful in these areas. He is seen, I suspect, as well-meaning but woolly-minded, and as just not grappling effectively with the issues that are most alive to us now. I argue here for the contemporary relevance, as well as the intrinsic merit, of some of Dewey's ideas on these topics. The area I will look at is general discussions of the relation between "mind and world." Here I primarily have in mind questions about representation, belief, and knowledge, as opposed to the overtly metaphysical side of the mind/body problem. Dewey sought to assert "continuity" between mind and world. This was his response to a number of famous "dualisms" in philosophy. As the term suggests, Dewey's is a "no gulf" view of the relation between mind and world, a denial of problematic separation. But this does not mean that he refused to see a problem, and baldly asserted 1 that the mind is in straightforward contact with the world at large. -
Rule-Following, Normativity & Objectivity
Rule-Following, Normativity & Objectivity An Analysis of McDowell’s ‘Wittgenstein on Following a Rule’ James Alexander Cross UCL Department of Philosophy MPhil Stud Rule-Following, Normativity & Objectivity DECLARATION I, James Alexander Cross, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Rule-Following, Normativity & Objectivity ABSTRACT This essay offers a close analysis and critique of the complex theoretical arguments in John McDowell’s 1984 paper, Wittgenstein on Following a Rule, a seminal discussion of rule-following, normativity and objectivity that still stands in need of a thorough, clear analysis on its own terms. My aim is to clarify and assess the arguments McDowell makes against the views expressed by Crispin Wright in Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics and Saul Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. I also offer analysis of relevant parts of these works as necessary. All three texts juxtapose attempts to expound the views of the historical Wittgenstein with attempts to argue for them on his behalf, but the philosophical issues under debate are entirely separated from that interpretive context in my discussion as they merit analysis in their own right. For simplicity I treat the views each commentator attributes to Wittgenstein as if they were the commentator’s own. Chapter 1 outlines and analyses the basic premises, terminology and some central arguments of the debate, focusing on analysis of the idea that understanding the meaning of an expression involves a kind of contract. -
John Mcdowell”
”John McDowell” - On Quietism, Nonconceptual Content, and Semantics Eirik Julius Risberg M.A. Thesis in Philosophy Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas The Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo Autumn 2007 Abstract In Mind and World John McDowell proposes to exorcise ‘some characteristic anxieties of modern philosophy’ that make the relation between mind and world seem problematic. According to McDowell, we are confronted by two strong but contrary intuitions when it comes to explaining the relation between mind and world. On the one hand, we are faced with a coherentism that threatens to leave the mind out of touch with the world, and on the other, we are confronted with the intuition that justification for our beliefs is simply given in experience. However, although McDowell’s book has been at the centre of philosophical discussion since its publication in 1994, there are aspects of his philosophy that seems difficult to fit together, and which, even today, poses challenges for even the most sympathetic reader. How are we to reconcile McDowell’s interesting suggestion that experience is already conceptual, thereby exorcising the apparent problem of mind’s relation to the world, with his quietism? And what is McDowell committed to with his claim that the content of our experience is conceptual? I discuss the first of these questions in essay I, whereas the second – what McDowell takes the debate on nonconceptual content to be about – is addressed in the second essay, distinguishing it from other conceptions in play in an increasingly ramified debate. However, the question that governs McDowell’s inquiry in Mind and World – how the mind is related to the world – is not a new question to McDowell, but runs like a red thread through his philosophical career. -
Philosophy: Third Edition Robert Audi & Paul Audi Frontmatter More Information
Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01505-0 - The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy: Third Edition Robert Audi & Paul Audi Frontmatter More information THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY THIRD EDITION This is the most comprehensive dictionary of philosophical terms and thinkers available in English. Previously acclaimed as the most author- itative and accessible dictionary of philosophy in any language, it has been widely translated and has served both professional philosophers and students of philosophy worldwide. Written by a team of more than 550 experts – including more than 100 new to this third edition – the dictionary contains approximately 5,000 entries ranging from short definitions to full-length articles. It concisely defines terms, concretely illustrates ideas, and informatively describes philosophers. It is designed to facilitate the understanding of philosophy at all levels and in all fields. Key features of this third edition: Some 500 new entries covering both Eastern and Western philosophy, as well as individual countries such as China, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain Increased coverage of such growing fields as ethics and philosophy of mind Scores of new intellectual portraits of leading contemporary thinkers Wider coverage of Continental philosophy Dozens of new concepts in cognitive science and other areas Enhanced cross-referencing to add context and to increase under- standing Expansions of both text and index to facilitate research and browsing Robert Audi is John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of numerous books and articles. His recent books include Moral Perception (2013); Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State (2011); Rationality and Religious Commitment (2011); Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (2010); and Moral Value and Human Diversity (2007).