Falling Through Concepts

C.A. Postlethwaite

Abstract

It may be that our understanding of the world is necessarily conceptualised. But whether the experience that justifies our understanding of the world in necessarily conceptualised is more contentious. McDowell makes the case that it is impossible to access the world without concepts. I explore his position and conclude against McDowell’s view. Ultimately, the world need not be conceptualised, so we must be open to some non-conceptual access to it that justifies our understanding.

 

Introduction

My main goal with this dissertation is to clearly present John McDowell’s position in his book Mind and World (1994). A secondary aim will be to selectively mention scrutinized elements of the stance therein contained. The section concerning these criticisms will serve only to point out a few opposing arguments and the directions they may take. They are not without controversy. I will conclude with a brief summary of the work presented, as well as with my personal assessment of this investigation.

The principle objective is developed in two sub-sections. The first presents a general overview of McDowell’s position. The second focuses on critical elements on which his thought relies. These items were selected for focus and expansion in order to contribute details towards clarifying his stance. In the section following the explicit exposition of Mind and World, McDowell’s proposal will be assessed parting from two general issues that spring forth from his position. This critique is limited to issues which achieve polemic reactions in the consulted literature: His claim of the impossibility of nonconceptual mental content, and other philosophers’ accusations that his views result in an idealist picture of reality. They, of course, are not all the positions critiqued in subsequent philosophical responses to McDowell. Nor are the ways presented all the manners to confront them. The reason for selecting the two lines mentioned is mainly due to their prominence within Mind and World; and for their basic importance in developing philosophical stances for the issue at hand: Satisfactorily explaining the relation between mental events and the world. This will be evident ―if at times implicitly― throughout the ensuing exposition.  

Yet even before presenting the general overview, I think it aids to note a central issue (of perhaps many that can be taken as such) that branches out from McDowell’s book. It concerns our conceptions of human freedom and its place in the natural world. McDowell emphasizes Sellar’s warning that negating our observed freedom is a “naturalistic fallacy”, arrived at from the view that rationality is completely subjugate to causal laws.[1] Current advances in the sciences imply that the study of all natural phenomena belong within the realm of law. The notion of causality appears to be irrevocably imprinted upon our conception of nature; whilst explanations for the realm of mental events seem to be disbarred from such a strong deterministic compliance in order to be satisfactory. If an exact description of how photons travel through space, impact a physical object, some reflecting off of it, reaching my eye, stimulating my visual apparatus ―and other biological structures― in such a way that produce such and such hormones, electric impulses located in these precise areas, etc... it seems it would still not explain if, how, or why from that completely causal and precise description a belief of mine was formed. It seems plausible that under the same physical, causal, realm of law explanation I could possess a belief that I am looking at a cylindrical tube with ¼” diameter, ⅜” diameter, or merely a diameter “this thick”. I could perhaps not even hold a belief about diameter, but about length. I could hold a belief about having missed school as I stare at the cylinder. It seems that the more we trust realm-of-law explanations to govern natural occurrences, the more magical propositional attitudes ―such as beliefs or desires― seem to appear. Current positions in philosophy of mind tend to either reduce mental events to physical ones or even eliminate them. Still, the notion of freedom (and in particular spontaneity) is generally considered suitable to explain occurrences within the space of reasons, distinct from the so-called space of nature. Yet these two realms seem to interact despite their methodological incompatibility. Intuitively, contact must occur between mind (the space of reasons) and world (the space of nature). The problem of reconciling these two spheres of study is a major issue for McDowell, as we will see. Positions that seek to naturalize the space of reasons may have to give up aspects of the notion of freedom, imprinting causality on the realm of the mental, but producing unsatisfactory explanations for everyday conceptions of human behaviour and phenomenology. Yet, by following a different strategy, claims McDowell, other positions reach equally unsatisfactory results; by isolating the two realms in a way that denies any relation at all between the two spaces. McDowell does not accept either of these positions. He will not approve the complete dominance of the realm of law over the space of reasons, nor the complete independence of realms under a condition of no relation between them. He proposes to broaden our conception of the space of nature, so that it exceeds the mere realm of law and so that it may include the space of reasons as a second nature. Completely segregating mind from world is not an admissible option. They must coincide in a natural space. It is wrong to equate only the external world (as an entity different to minds) with nature. For McDowell it is better to view: The external world as falling under the realm of law; minds in the space of reason; and both in the realm of nature. We must acknowledge a relation between mind and world. But that relation should not explain mental activity subdued to causality. I am truly without a strong position on whether freedom of thought ultimately exists or if it may be thoroughly deterministic. I do feel a strong pull towards the belief that human thought has options of interpretation under what seem to be identical physical conditions. Still, in my estimation, there may be a way to said notion of freedom, even if irrefutable determinist conclusions are produced at the level of the physical sciences. Yet, ―again― there may be no way to conclude for freedom at all. I will attempt to guard against imposing the possible rhetorical stance that may arise from my own attitudes throughout this work with at least a minimal methodological epistemic reflexivity[2]. I have doubts about the certainty of the realm of law explanations that could undermine the perceived tension between an apparently well explained realm and an unsatisfactorily explained one, which is increasingly threatened due to the perceived accuracy of its counterpart. Indeterminacy is present at the physical sciences level, perhaps at subatomic conditions that do not seem to affect at the medium-sized-goods observations that we are concerned with, but it is still affects our explanations within the physical realm. This is not the only putative threat for realm of law explanations. A philosophical one will briefly appear after McDowell’s position is enunciated.

I have elected to say so much as a preamble to the general overview which I attempt with this investigation. In regards to the two points to be critically assessed after the main section, the following is said as a short prelude:

First, McDowell´s conclusion that experience is necessarily conceptualized leaves no room for the possibility of nonconceptual mental content. This position ultimately affects the view which one may have of what is knowable (and ultimately of what is knowledge). Following McDowell’s line of thought we must conclude that only that which is justifiable in virtue of concepts will be able to be called knowledge. All that is knowable must be conceptualizeable. What is known should be necessarily precluded by the possession of a concept for its content. Such a position rejects the conception that some knowledge may lie beyond explanation, and this, in turn, is due to the absence of concepts being available for its justification. Under such a constraint, tacit and other forms of nonexplicit knowledge must be denied. We must abandon the possibility not only that some mental contents are not yet represented conceptually, but that some may not be conceptualizeable at all. Even the view that we at times confront a reality for which we later develop concepts must be abandoned, since according to McDowell, all experience is necessarily conceptualized from the onset.

Second, the other element under scrutiny is the resulting view of the world that follows from his position. It seems that McDowell wishes for the contemporary philosophical positions ―those which have strayed from realism― to bring the external, independent world back into view. At the same time, calling upon strong realist positions to relax the hold of causality in their views of mentality. McDowell insists especially in championing empiricism for this result. It is not satisfactory to justify our thoughts and beliefs only on other thoughts and beliefs. Coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism and deflationist theories of truth are some examples of popular types of antirealist positions within the philosophy of mind and of language nowadays, which McDowell confronts. His claim is that there must be some justification work in which the world participates. Some sort of pointing-at-the-world should have this capacity. But the question arises of what exactly is this external world of which McDowell speaks, if (by his own measures) “we must not picture an outer boundary around the sphere of the conceptual, with a reality outside the boundary impinging inward on the system” [3]; and ­―as he further makes explicit his intentions in the same paragraph―: “I am trying to describe a way of maintaining that in experience the world exerts a rational influence on our thinking. And that requires us to delete the outer boundary from the picture”[4]. He will propose a view of the world whose constitution depends on the Fregean concept of sense, as we will see.

This commitment to only already-conceptualized experience may condition his picture of reality back to something like Kant´s world of appearances, if without room for the noumenon (or “things-in-themselves”) for an external and independent reality. If we are automatically constrained in our take-in of the world, there may then exist nothing apart from our direct assimilations. And so the threat of his position being a sort of idealism may be menacing to his desired conclusions.

 

McDowell’s position in Mind and World

The presentation of McDowell’s position in Mind and World is the most substantive part of this dissertation. Its presentation is divided in two sub-sections. The first aims to give an overview of the task that McDowell sets out for himself. My main intention there will be to lay out the field by introducing what I consider to be the crucial elements motivating his pursuit. In summary, I begin by presenting his view of an unnecessary philosophical anxiety that is made evident by a pull in two opposing directions. I then present generalities of each direction, mentioning afterwards his reason for deeming both invalid. He considers that the question behind the dichotomy arising at all is the matter to be corrected. And the analysis of the opposing attractions should expose the invalidity of that question. I follow by mentioning what he sees as a valid underlying insight contributing towards the dual pull; and that it should be salvaged.

The second section will focus on some of the principle considerations of McDowell’s proposal. An attempt to bring forth every detail of his critical points is inappropriate due to length constraints of this project so I have directed my efforts accordingly. I have selected to concentrate on four factors that help towards the following two objectives: Grasping his overall position, and understanding his reasons for concluding against the possibility of nonconceptual mental content. The four issues I will include are: Why he addresses the problem epistemologically; the incompatibility between reason and nature; the mind´s features for its relation with the world; and the features the world should have in this picture. By no means do these points exhaust the overarching interests of the topic. Still, I believe they provide a useful angle for attempting a first approach and evaluation of McDowell’s view in Mind and World.    

SUB-SECTION 1: OVERVIEW
Anxiety towards two directions

McDowell believes that contemporary philosophy suffers from an unnecessary anxiety. The difficulties in explaining how our minds can be in contact with the world have currently led in two general and opposing directions. Both of them will advance to what McDowell considers unsatisfactory epistemological stances[5]. One excludes reliance on the external world for its explanations of knowledge acquisition, while the other depends too much on it. Each overall direction may terminate in different philosophical positions. For example, radical idealism and anomalous monism are very different with respect to each other. But both coincide in negating the role of empirical experience in knowledge acquisition. In this same fashion, two positions that coincide in the inclusion of the external world’s role may be incompatible amongst themselves. This will not be the main issue for McDowell. He will confront concerns at the level of a general bifurcation between the two directions, though he will consider concrete positions on either side in order to reveal consequences of taking such a direction. For practical purposes, the two opposing directions can be broadly identified with Anti-Realist Coherentism on one hand, and supporting the Myth Given on the other. The distress that McDowell diagnoses is due to an irresolute attraction towards each of the two insufficient types of positions. Initially, it helps to approach the tension as existing between these two directions, in order that we may hone into view the anxiety that McDowell addresses. 

 

One Direction: Mind’s Self-Reliance

Excluding the external world from playing any role in knowledge explanation or justification will force judgments to turn only to themselves (or other things similar to themselves) in order to explain knowledge acquisition. “The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.”[6] Reasons are not able to rely on pointing to the world outside to justify that they are true. That is: Anything identified as a truth-bearer (which, in an inclusive sense may be propositions, sentences, beliefs, thoughts, ideas, judgments, statements, assertions, utterances, and so on[7]) will be reliant only on other truth-bearers for their justification. A simple way to grasp this concept is to imagine that whatever it is that contributes to knowledge should have form and content. Excluding the world, as it were, is equivalent to excluding the content. So if a thought or a proposition (or another truth-bearer) can be said to be knowable, they can be so only in virtue of other thoughts or propositions, without resorting to their content. Under this view, we cannot rely on the external world for proof of our assessments. To exemplify this overall direction one can think of something that is extremely relative to the perceiving subject. An Alaskan visitor may coincide with a tropical island tourist in London on the same day. Both see the thermometer marking the same temperature, yet for one it is too cold and for the other, too warm. This simplistic view serves merely to show that the belief one has may rely more on something within the subject herself than on something outside of her. There are still ways to include the external factors for this example, like defining the term ‘cold’ for each person with a different temperature range. But I merely want to exemplify an initial approach that is easy to grasp. To drive the point home, knowledge (that it is cold) does not depend on the external facts (the temperature) but on the subject and her internal factors. The tropical visitor might have gotten bumps on her skin at a warmer temperature and she would still believe herself to be cold. The way she takes in the external is called the subject´s “organizing framework” or “conceptual scheme” [8]. I have provided a caricature example of justification for knowledge being self-contained. At this point, we only want a general approximation for each side of the opposing directions causing the tension. For McDowell, this direction away from involving the external world in justification for knowledge is unsatisfactory since it denies all traces of empiricism and ultimately dispenses with all contact with the world. The world, in this example, contributes nothing at all for possessing beliefs or obtaining knowledge.

Positions in agreement with the direction hinted at above, accept an underlying estrangement between mind and world. They must pronounce a deceptive epistemological view of how it is that we attain knowledge, straying away from any kind of empirical explanation. These theories will have to rely only on thoughts (or other truth-bearers) and ignore external facts to justify for beliefs, imparting judgments and obtaining knowledge. This is the first position that McDowell deems intolerable. By it, “we are drawn to a Coherentism that cannot make sense of the bearing of thought on objective reality”[9]; and that “renounces external constraints on thinking”[10]. It is important to note the difference between justifying a belief by relying only on non-external factors (such as other beliefs), and explaining the acquisition of a belief without external contact: If there is no connection between mind and world, both follow. But the first is an epistemological position that, once analyzed, unveils the deeper, ontological idea that interests McDowell. He argues that Coherentism as an epistemological view may present good arguments in favour of non-external reliance for justification and knowledge attainment. But it does nothing against the idea that experience can be about something external[11]. It is fine to say that an Eskimo believes that it is hot in virtue of her inner framework, but we still feel that she is in some sort of contact with the weather as well. This is worse according to McDowell: Arguments that exclude the world for justification cannot make intelligible how thoughts can be in touch with the world at all.[12] At this deeper level, beliefs themselves are not acquired through contact with the world. Thus an intolerable position is reached. 

 

Another Direction: External Reliance

The second stance that I will mention is currently less popular in the philosophical landscape, yet equally deceptive. It opposes the first in that it suggests too strong of a dependence on the external. This amounts to what Sellars called reliance on the Myth of the Given. It is the idea that the external world somehow holds by itself the required justifications for knowledge. It is an equally precarious stance to adopt (according to McDowell) since justifications must be involved upon supporting a belief. And these reasons are not out there in the world, by themselves. The Myth of the Given, in short, is the idea that “tracing back the ground for a judgment can terminate in pointing to a bare presence”[13]. This implies that justification, which is an exercise of rationality, relies on elements outside the sphere of reason. But this cannot be. It seems evident that experience involves a receptive subject, thus the external world by itself cannot do the work in justifying anything. Though perhaps we can excuse our position by tracing it back to brute force, this will never amount to a justification[14]. By resorting to factors from the world, we develop a position of reliance upon them. The unlikely outcome is that justification of judgments will depend on the external world, not on our interpretation. McDowell, by the manner in which he proceeds, appears to see more leeway towards these types of Realist positions, though he cannot admit reliance only on a Given world. And, for him, the theoretical problematic is graver for this direction. It is a difficult task to explain how justification, which is all about giving reasonable explanations, can depend directly on physical descriptions. So hard, that McDowell deems it impossible; a lost attempt to answer an invalid question. 

A simple illustration that helps to get the feel for this direction involves attempting to present situations as completely objective, void of the subject. When asking our tropical friend from the example above how she knows it is cold, we are not satisfied by a description of the physical features of the environment, no matter how complete. This, again, is an exaggerated simplification to get a conception of what it is to rely on the Given for justifying a judgment. Falling into the Myth of the Given is thinking that her reason for being cold is the level of compression of the gas molecules of her surroundings, the reduction of speed and oscillation of particles and low presence of kinetic energy, etc... Knowing that it is cold is completely despite herself as the subject or any of her receptive capacities. I paraphrase Sellars: Empirical knowledge is something such as knowing that something is red anytime the judgment is founded on the external facts. If external facts are what justifies knowing, then it should be possible to know noninferentially. Knowing empirically presupposes that no other knowledge either of particular matter of fact, or of general truths is possessed by the subject. The inferentional knowledge of facts, then, constitutes the ultimate court of appeals for all factual claims about the world in this type of knowledge acquisition.[15] The standards laid out by Sellars cannot be met, since the subject’s capacities must figure in at least minimally. Knowing that something is red (or that it is cold) depends not only on impressions made on the subject thanks to her receptive capacities, but on other inner concepts and categories that aid in the assessment and the justification of knowing.     

 

The Real Issue

The first position that I described above, which excludes the external world, finds itself completely dependent on positions associated with terms such as: the logical space of reasons, Coherentism, denial of scheme-content dualism, anti-realism, relativism, non-representation, etc… While the second retreats to stances associated with concepts such as: logical space of nature, the Given, empiricism, experience, realism, representation, correspondence, and others… Compiling a full list of terms is impractical but it is important to note their spread, since terms appear not only in McDowell but in other sources which associate certain concepts with one or the other distinction. It will help to situate terms that spring up by asking to which of these broad directions it pertains (or at least favours). The two general underlying concepts of subject and object may offer support to the distinctive set of terms that appear. One direction favours the subject’s constitution in contributing to knowledge attainment; the other favours the factors involved with the external object. Various particular positions in either direction may be found, but since McDowell’s claim is that both directions are wrong, we needn’t arrive at the particulars to make the assessment. A first distinction to notice is that each direction favours different types of situations. Justifying a propositional attitude (a belief or desire) could intuitively be prone to exclude facts of the world and rely only on other propositional attitudes for justifying its possession. The second type of case seems to not be about propositional attitudes, but about facts. It would seem at first hand a proper strategy for giving reasons for a seed sprouting, or a rock falling to the ground, or even our tropical friend’s hair freezing. But it is never the sole fact that is up for verification, but our knowledge or belief of it. Nonetheless, one intuitively considers external facts to be capable of existing without the observer in a way that propositional attitudes cannot. Even if justification always involves the assent or concurring of an observer, external states of affairs are treated as existing independently. If McDowell has his way, these and other complications should be contained by dealing with the assumptions that lead us to pose questions about the relation between mind and world, which when pursued, end in these two general and unsolvable directions.       

For McDowell the root of the problem is not essentially in any of resulting views per se, but in the query itself. That questions arise at all concerning “how it is possible”[16] for mind and world to relate is what should be investigated. It is not an issue of finding a plausible answer for McDowell. “As I have put it, we need to exorcise the questions rather than set about answering them.”[17]

 

A Valid Insight

Revealing the erroneous presuppositions behind the philosophical unease and solving them is a task that consumes McDowell’s attention throughout Mind and World. These assumptions play a sometimes hidden[18] yet enormous task, impeding a satisfactory explanation of how, and whether, thoughts can be about the world. Yet, central to these erroneous assumptions is a distinction that McDowell recognizes as insightful[19], and which he attempts to salvage: The relations involved in constituting mentality are of a different kind than the relations found in the natural world. We have begun to see this in the simplistic views provided above, and will continue to clarify later. For now, it is important to grasp that the incompatibilities that separate the logic of reason from the logic of law ―or of the explanations deriving from natural science― may be taken to drive a wedge between these two so called “spaces”[20] perhaps making them irreconcilable. Here it is very important to clarify what it is exactly that we are opposing to the point of irreconcilability. There is a tendency to equate the realm of law ―or natural sciences― with nature. And supporting a dualism between the logical space of reasons and the logical space of law is one thing; while supporting the incompatibility between reason and all of nature is quite another.[21] We will later return to this distinction. The question to face now is whether questions about a belief that it is cold and questions about the a seed sprouting ―or hair freezing― are two mutually exclusive realms of enquiry, with no common ground between them. McDowell subscribes to the common held observation that mental attitude talk is conceptually special. Here is a quote from Davidson that describes the position:

“It is a feature of physical reality that physical change can be explained by laws that connect it with other changes and conditions physically described. It is a feature of the mental that the attribution of mental phenomena must be responsible to the background of reasons, beliefs and intentions of the individual. There cannot be tight connections between the realms if each is to regain allegiance to its proper source of evidence.”[22]

The recent advances of modern scientific investigation have drawn attention to the constitutive difference between the space of reasons and the space of law. In a laborious footnote, McDowell remits to seventeenth century philosophy and even further to Aristotle in order to point out that knowledge has long been held as operating within a space of reasons. There is nothing new in that. But it is not until a few years ago that the tension between nature and reason has been felt. “Anxiety… results when the fact is juxtaposed with the threatened extrusion of the space of reasons from nature.”[23] McDowell values its importance and proposes to reconcile the logical space of reason with the logical space of nature without stripping away the difference between them. His angle depends on a differentiation between a narrow and broader view of nature. If the space of nature commonly used excludes the space of reasons, then there must be a broader nature, where rationality (as a second nature) is understood to be included.[24] If we can do this, there is no reason to doubt that pointing to an external entity ―with which rationality shares the natural space― can contribute in knowledge acquisition, and this will imply contact between mind and world.

SUB-SECTION 2: FOCUS

To this point I have ignored some important details of the elements in play for McDowell’s position. I have established that the relational break between mind and world is his more general concern. The break may be due to an incompatibility between nature and reason which I have not yet made explicit. It was also said that two unsatisfactory directions have been previously developed; that one ends up isolating the role of mental concepts from the world, and the other establishing complete dependence of our mental concepts on the world. McDowell describes the anxiety as an attraction towards both of the two contrary positions: Back and forth between a situation of no connection and a situation of complete reliance. So, he proposes investigating the underlying assumptions, which he hopes will show the error in framing the question in the first place. Since the tension produces an illusory obligation arising from misinterpreting the peculiarities of the relation between mind and world, he believes there will be a way to dispel it.

The scene is now set so that we can focus on some critical points of his argument. I will mention the reasons for McDowell presenting his arguments in an epistemological frame. Until now, I have been talking mostly about two things as if they were interchangeable: The relation between mind and world and the role of experience in justification. I will proceed to explain their relation in McDowell’s process. This will lead me to pronounce the particular incompatibility between reason and nature. Namely, I will contrast the normative context of knowledge with the causality in natural science’s investigations. Then, I will attempt to present considerations pertaining to features of our minds due to Kantian terminology. By their contrast, the features that come into place for the mind will aid in bringing out what features the world should have for this argument. I will then present the consequences of these proceedings to McDowell’s main interest.

 

Epistemological Arguments

It appears that McDowell wishes to trace the spawning of the irrelevant question about contact between mind and world to epistemological pursuits. Questions about how we arrive at knowledge can produce Coherentist or empiricist answers. In epistemological terms these are associated with internalist and externalist theories, respectively. The Myth of the Given and Coherentism clash in the epistemological terrain. What is interesting for McDowell is that these pursuits and their answers are really just symptoms. These philosophical explanations ―about how knowledge is obtained for each realm― serve to reveal an underlying and stressful ontological position about how things really are between mind and world. Again, is there contact or not? McDowell wishes to answer yes, and sustain this commitment in explaining knowledge acquisition for both realms.

Justification plays a crucial role in getting at what McDowell aims at. It’s not only justification of beliefs for getting knowledge that he is interested in. McDowell will want to trace justification all the way down, in the tradition of epistemological endeavours. So, justifying the acquisition of beliefs is also at stake. Commonly, a true belief is taken to be a necessary condition for knowledge. And accordingly, how that belief comes about plays a significant role in explaining knowledge. Looking to other beliefs seems to be coherent for explaining the acquisition of further beliefs. But does contact with the world play a role as well? Posing the question presupposes contact; which is what McDowell wants to settle in the first place. The question seems to lead us towards explaining what the contact can be. Intuitively, sensory events figure in our belief acquisition. And these sensory events are commonly called experience. Thus viewed, contact explains belief acquisition.     

Beliefs, desires and other propositional attitudes are usually taken to be thoughts (or more generally: truth bearers). This means that they are things for which the question of truth can arise. If they are true, they constitute knowledge. And, if knowledge is compatible with belief in that the question of whether they are true can arise for them, we then have to ask what the truth (or falsity) of a belief depends on. This is where a split occurs. On the one hand, it is easy to see how things that can be true or false can only depend on other things that can be true or false. This direction takes us to Coherentism. Stating that beliefs just ground themselves on other beliefs, and so forth, seems like a way of embracing circularity. Yet, also, if the world ―as content of sensory experience― is not something for which the question of truth can arise, then it cannot contribute to justification. It is plainly beyond the space of reasons. A causal relation does not entail a normative one. Something occurring does not equate it being believed, or known. So Coherentist positions are strengthened either way. One can deny any contact with the world (or even the existence of the world) and land in a radical idealism. Or, on another hand, confirm contact; only not recognizing its role in justification. This sort of argument is why McDowell thinks that Coherentism is successful in giving reasons for non-external reliance. But he sees no satisfactory attempt in the Coherentist to deny the strong intuition that our rationality is in contact with the world[25]. In summary: the friction ―or contact― between occurrences of distinct ―incompatible― observed properties must be somehow explained. But on what terms should we search for explanation? We cannot explain possession of a belief on purely causal account, the belief that it is cold simply does not follow from a description of the mean kinetic energy in the environment and the measured temperature’s transmission to a biological entity such as an Eskimo. She could believe it is hot, cold, or that she missed class under the same conditions. 

The Coherentist answer produces as an antagonist for rationality what McDowell calls “bald naturalism”. Assuming experience does in fact point to something outside of the realm of reasons; it must pertain to the space of nature. Thus, it can play no role in serving to ground a belief. So the Coherentist can apparently recognize contact with the world. She just can´t admit this contact playing any role in justification, claiming it need not do so. McDowell has no argument against bald naturalism. He merely suggests that his explanation will be more “satisfying”[26]. It helps to think that the Coherentist, under McDowell’s view, unnecessarily radicalizes the opposition between the space of reasons and a rationally intolerant nature: Rationality vs. Bald Naturalism in order to keep the two realms out of touch.

Still, it seems that something with other than truth-bearing-like-features (something tangible) grounds our beliefs. McDowell offers experience as that something. He suggests considering experience as something that comes in contact with the world, and contributes in justification as well. But in order to do the latter, experience must have conceptual content. It must occur in the realm of reasons. So, explaining how it comes by causal contact is essential for McDowell. He must solve the issue of experience contributing to belief with an empiricist answer. Up ahead we will see why he thinks that proving this epistemological question will prove contact. In short, experience must possess the appropriate conceptual make-up so that it is within the space of reasons; and yet still be sensorial, belonging in the space of nature within the constraints that take place within the realm of law. Experience should somehow touch on the causal realm without estrangement of rationality.  

The role that concepts play in experience is also a good way to visualize the area where McDowell looks for the erroneous presuppositions in the unsatisfactory stances of Coherentism and Myth of the Given. Justification needs concepts, and he sees quite a tight knit between concepts and experience. For McDowell, much of the clean-up is to be done in this particular area. He must find a way to argue for the impossibility of sensorial perception existing without concepts. What Kant called spontaneity and receptivity should not fall apart. We will see this further on. 

 

Reason and Nature

Even if McDowell manages to convince that experience justifies belief, he must successfully explain how experience makes contact with the world. I attempt to expose his line of thinking by parting from the principle antinomy that he confronts.

Principle Antinomy (1):

(1a.) Minds must be in touch with the world, and

            (1b.) minds cannot be in touch with the world.

Each direction has different procedures for defending and explaining it. A defence of (1a.) relies on a strong and rather straightforward empirical intuition. McDowell will associate this first position to “a minimal empiricism” once he translates the proposition into an epistemological version. Still, it is tempting to refute this intuition and arrive at something like (1b.) due to perceived incompatibilities between the two putative realms of mind (reason) and world (nature). McDowell will associate (1b.)’s arguments with two ideas that are interchangeable (for his interests): Sellars being right about  “Myth of the Given” and Davidson’s objections to a “dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content”.

Hence, the epistemological turf is better suited to exploit these arguments, and so McDowell rephrases this underlying contradiction (between point 1a. and 2b.) in an epistemological antinomy:

Secondary Antinomy (2):

(2a.) Experience must contribute towards reaching our verdicts over the way things are, and

(2b.) experience cannot contribute towards reaching our verdicts over the way things are.

This is not the dichotomy he wants to argue primarily against, but an account that helps for expositional purposes. He takes this antinomy to be more of a superficial expression of the deeper anxiety that confronts us. And we have seen in the last section how he wishes to proceed with it, and what work he thinks it can do for him. Yet he cautions against misrepresenting his endeavour as a response to a purely epistemological claim, since in this version it concerns experience’s contribution (or lack thereof) towards the acquisition of knowledge. It goes deeper, he insists. Experience not being able to be in touch with the world at all is what concerns his argument, and not just whether it can produce the correct type of relation with the world, i.e. knowledge. This should hold for the second presentation of the antinomy as well. Especially since the reasons for arguing for (1b.) and (2b.) is the same: The normative context of knowledge implies the normative context of thought.

It is the first part of the second dichotomy (2a.) which can be methodologically rooted directly in what McDowell calls “a minimal empiricism”. By which he means that our experiences contribute to knowledge at least in some way. Yet the concept that he will return to, and that is best understood when used to elucidate this point, is that of the normative context for empirical justification. It is the main reason behind the putative irreconcilable difference between the logical space of reasons (where justification for empirical knowledge should occur) and the logical space of nature.

When a relation is normative, the question about adequacy or inadequacy of a belief arises with respect to something else. The belief must conform to the way things are (or aren´t). Thus the context in which the empirical mind–world relation occurs is called normative. “Suiting empirical beliefs to reasons for them is not a self contained game.”[27] In justifying a judgment or a belief we cannot continue appealing from concepts in our possession solely to other concepts. Once we exhaust this self contained exercise, we may sometimes be required to point at something in our experience. Thus, we have “a minimal empiricism” doing some work for the argument in favour ―ultimately― of mind being about the world (1a.). It does some work at least for the epistemological presentation (2a.), but the main interest should follow: Since experience of the world contributes to knowledge, so empirical thinking must make contact with the external world. Thus arguments concerning both versions of (2) can permeate to (1) if the reason for concluding (2) hold for (1) as well. In this case: both experience and thought belonging in the normative context.

Experience, therefore, takes place within what is identified as “the space of reasons” as opposed to “the space of natural law” which at time is confounded with “the space of nature” as we saw above. The normative element here seems to help the empirical stance, relying on what McDowell calls “friction” between reason and nature.[28] If thought can dig in against a reality that is independent of it, then we have the relation McDowell looks for. It seems to be the very nature of the space of reasons and of thought to rely on conforming to something outside of itself. The problem for the empirical stance arises when the realm of law differs so much from the space of reasons that no sense can be made of a relation. So the contemporary movements that McDowell wishes to dispel fall back on the normative argument as well; emphasizing the non-normative quality of nature, or world, which prevents the mind from digging in at all. This is the work that the Myth of the Given does for Coherentists. There is no such thing that reason can be said to dig into beyond its realm.

The normative context does not impose within the realm of law, as it does within the space of reasons. It makes no sense to ask what the seed sprouting ―or the hair freezing― is about. We can ask the cause for them, but not their content, or intention. This apparent incompatibility will give the impression of the disassociation between mind and world, which is the main object of McDowell’s inquiry. Since the realm of law is commonly equated wrongfully with the space of nature, as the antagonist of rationality it would erroneously follow that normativity has no place in nature. The realm of law is governed by the laws of causality, in contrast with a freedom of interpretation observed within the space of reasons. Bringing meaning into the world of law definitely does not work.[29] McDowell needs to introduce the concept of second nature. That is, concede that the space of reasons is sui generis, intrinsically different from realm of law but still not outside nature. Even if nothing like it operates within the realm of law. The human animal operates within nature, and within the realm of rationality. It is due to the type of animal that we are, an animal “permeated with rationality”[30] that the realm of reason can be accommodated in the realm of nature. Second nature is constituted in this manner. The natural sciences investigations may not have room to accommodate the space of reasons within the realm of law. But since the space of reasons ―spontaneity and understanding― is something that has come about naturally, there is a way to accommodate the space or reasons within nature[31]; and no reason to equate the realm of law with it. The space of reasons after all can be seen to share a common space with the space of law in a broader space of nature. Equating the space of law with the space of nature is the problem that McDowell sees impeding reconciliation, and producing the anxiety.

 

The Mind’s Features

The animal in which this second nature seems to take residence is, of course, the human being. We are talking about us and the features pertaining to our rationality. These are the particularities that must be accommodated by our concept of nature for McDowell to succeed. He by no means disregards past attempts to answer whether the human mind is in touch with world. Although he sees them as unsatisfactory, they are still very much a part of his strategy. Steering clear of the wrong conclusion is important, and keeping the two “pitfalls”[32] in mind help shed a light on his investigation. So McDowell will evaluate the positions he criticizes. He will asses them concerning the human features they attribute to us as possessors of rationality. The unsatisfying oscillation between isolating our justification procedures from the world, and giving reality an independent capacity to ground our judgments, has much to do with our efforts to situate and evaluate ourselves in our surroundings. Our contact, or lack thereof, with the world will depend on how we as rational entities are constituted and the compatibility with the way we explain the world to be. 

The oscillation goes something like this: First, we fail to find proper justification for our beliefs in the world due to the impossibility of the bare Given. Then we proceed in trying to accommodate our view by disassociating our thoughts from being grounded in the external world. We thus attempt to find an answer that can attribute our full reliance on elements of our inner framework. But this ultimately adds up to denying our receptive and other faculties. In McDowell’s words:

“If our activity in empirical thought and judgment is to be recognizable as bearing on reality at all, there must be external constraint. There must be a role for receptivity as well as spontaneity, for sensibility as well as understanding. Realizing this, we come under pressure to recoil back into appealing to the Given, only to see all over again that it cannot help. There is a danger of falling into an interminable oscillation.

But we can find a way to dismount from the seesaw…

We can dismount from the seesaw if we can achieve a firm grip on this thought: receptivity does not make an even notionally separable contribution to the co-operation.”[33]

He depends on Kant´s claim that receptivity and spontaneity co-operate to result in knowledge. And he emphasizes the suggestion that receptivity and spontaneity are inseparable. The quote above is full of Kantian terminology, and McDowell’s program runs immersed in Kant’s system. He claims quite straightforwardly: “One of my aims is to suggest that Kant should still have a central place in our discussion of the way thought bears on reality”. [34] McDowell does not consider his own task completely original, though his framing of the problem and his explicit descriptions perhaps are; due to contemporary contexts. But the seesaw that he describes above is the same “useless oscillation from which Kant tries to rescue us”[35]. In this way, he is contemporizing Kant.  

As for the terms “receptivity, spontaneity, sensibility and understanding”: They are faculties and modes of our minds in their role of obtaining knowledge. So focusing on them should start us on revealing the nuances pertaining to this important component of our general layout: ourselves. The four terms mentioned above appear in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

“Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).”[36]

Receptivity is the capacity for something from outside to be made present in us, and spontaneity is a freedom (of interpretation) of sorts. Sensibility is something like the mode of our receptive capacity, while understanding is what spontaneity yields.

“There are two stems of human knowledge, namely sensibility and understanding... Through the former, objects are given to us; through the latter, they are thought.”[37]

“The receptivity for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility.”[38]

The point of quickly outlining Kant’s terminology is that it is a step in fine tuning one side of our two overall directions that have been mentioned: mind and world. The mind, in as much as pertains to obtaining knowledge (and to its relation with the world), possesses these features. But the features allude to a world outside. After grasping Kant´s terminology, the conclusion we arrive at ―from considering these capacities and modes of the mind― is that there is something towards which they are directed: Something which is this way, or that way. It is a role that should be played out by the world, as it were, as the foundation of our impressions.

So McDowell sees us rocking back and forth between our inner constituents and the external facts. Kant concludes that:

 “It is, therefore, solely from the human standpoint that we can speak of space, of extended things, etc. If we depart from the subjective condition under which alone we can have outer intuition, namely, liability to be affected by objects, the representation of space stands for nothing whatsoever.”[39]

If our faculties enable space, the objects occurring within it are dependent on our faculties as well. But here, I think is the crux of this line of thought: What we get (and how we get it) when we strip away the content of our mind, is either an empty shell ―our bare capacities as it were― or nothing at all.

McDowell opts for nothing at all. “Thoughts without content ―which would not really be thoughts at all― would be a play of concepts without any connections to intuitions, that is, bits of experiential intake.”[40]  If we allow the idea of thoughts to be existent without content, the logic that follows will take us into the unending spiral that has been mentioned.

When there are thoughts without content (even an empty category of thoughts), we have possibility for justification beyond concepts. A contrast with the thought that anything occurring in the mind must be conceptual ensues. We may relax our conception of what it is to know, giving up justification as playing a part on it at all. This adds points to lone-spontaneity, which as we said is the freedom of interpretation. The constitutive subject still reaches out, as it were, with her aforementioned capacities and should be capable of possessing reasons for her beliefs without relying on concepts. But this does not work, since we do not have an understanding of what it is to have reasons that are not concepts. In McDowell’s words:

“The idea of the Given is the idea that the space of reasons, the space of justifications or warrants, extends more widely than the conceptual sphere. The extra extent of the space of reasons is supposed to allow it to incorporate non-conceptual impacts from outside the realm of thought.”[41]

Our freedom (spontaneity) is thus constrained by external elements. “It is essential to conceptual capacities that they belong to spontaneity.”[42]

 

The World

The world aids in our justifications not as something beyond concepts, but in a conceptualized form which it cannot abandon in relation to us. As long as it concerns us, it is necessarily conceptualized for all justifications. The McDowell-Kant clarification of the constitutive elements of the subjective side of the equation (“thoughts without intuitions are empty”[43]) helps determine the features of the external world under this view:  As seen by us, there is no world unconceptualizeable by us. All experience needs concepts. Still, McDowell states that “there is no guarantee that the world is completely within the reach of a system of concepts and conceptions as it stands at some particular moment in its historical development.”[44] The fact that anything which we can justify is necessarily in virtue of the possession of concepts to do that work, does not entail that all there is in the world is conceptualized, or even conceptualizeable. It does not even entail that all our experiences are conceptualized. It only means that whatever is justifiable must be conceptualizeable. All justification is in virtue of concepts. The focus here is on knowledge, not experience. But McDowell cannot settle for this minimal (merely epistemological) entailment. He must ban anything outside the conceptual from existing at all, so that the world is wholly conceptualizeable, and of course, all our experiences, and all justification. He must distance himself from Kant on this point. According to McDowell, concepts should not be considered merely to be imposed upon the world by us; the external world should possess constraints upon our receptivity. It seems that concepts should be out there, in the world, independent of our relation with it. If the world does not constrain our experience, then we have Kant’s position:

“It is as if Kant were saying that although an exculpation cannot do duty for a justification, and although, empirically speaking, we can have justifications for empirical judgements, still the best we can have for empirical judgements, transcendentally speaking, is exculpations.

This is a profoundly unsatisfactory aspect of Kant´s philosophy.”[45]      

McDowell adopts the Wittgensteinian position that neither we, nor our seeing, stop short of the facts when we see something that is the case[46]. And since he takes the world to be everything that is the case[47], then the content of our thought (when we are right) should simply be that aspect of the world: A pointing to the world, in a way. Yet McDowell also calls this position a ‘truism’: “I exploit Wittgenstein’s ‘truism’ to discourage the idea of a gap between thought as such and the world”.[48] The problem arises if we consider things in the world to be physical objects, in opposition to facts (or something that can be the case). So long as the make-up of the world is exhaustive to things which can be the case, or of which the question of truth and falsity can arise, McDowell can establish contact between thought and world. He resorts to Frege’s distinction between sense and reference to make the point. (It is scarcely satisfactory to describe the difference as reference being the object of which we speak and sense being the mode of presentation; but it is all that can be afforded in this work. Familiarity with this distinction is needed to drive the point forcefully.) Frege’s notion of sense can accommodate the needed connection between thinkers and particular objects[49].   

I remit to its first lines of this section for an important clarification of McDowell’s: The conceptualized forms in which the world aids in justification, is misunderstood if the term “conceptual” is identified with “predicative”. The right gloss being: “belonging to the realm of Fregean sense”.[50]

In closing, I quote abundantly from McDowell a text that exposes his conception of what the world should be taken to be:

    “Given the identity between what one thinks (when one’s thought is true) and what is the case, to conceive the world as everything that is the case (as in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §1) is to incorporate the world into what figures in Frege as the realm of sense. The realm of sense (Sinn) contains thoughts in the sense of what can be thought (thinkables) as opposed to acts or episodes of thinking. The identity displays facts, things that are the case, as thoughts in that sense ―the thinkables that are the case. But objects belong in the realm of reference (Bedeutung), not the realm of sense. The objection is that Wittgenstein’s “truism” yields an alignment of minds with the realm of sense, not with the realm of reference.

I can indeed formulate a main point of my lectures in terms of the Fregean notion of sense, like this: it is in the context of that notion that we should reflect about the relation of thought to reality, in order to immunize ourselves against familiar philosophical anxieties. ”[51]

This does not mean that an object’s reference or worldly presence is lost. Just that we get to it by means of its sense. Since no object will have reference without sense, we can dispel an ontological gap between thought and world by appealing to a reality constituted within the realm of sense.[52] In this fashion McDowell rejects any reality lying outside the conceptual sphere.

 

TWO CRITICISMS
Nonconceptual Content and Reality

I will present three scenarios that cut off McDowell’s progress at different points along the progression of his thought. The first two conduce towards disagreement with his notion of conceptual content’s exclusivity for mental states. The first exemplifies an attempt to stop McDowell before he gets started, by radically questioning the notion of mental content holding at all. I dedicate more space to it for the undermining potential and complexity. The second is a more conventional argument that accepts that perceptual experience has representational content, but still sees the possibility of that content to be nonconceptual. I merely wish to describe it superficially since the argument is rather straight-forward and does not necessarily negate conceptual content on the whole, but brings in the possibility of it as well. The third scenario concedes even more to McDowell’s position, as it were, but questions the ontological conjectures for the conception of the external world. It will be briefly outlined.

The idea that mental states have content relies on the view that they are representational.[53] But where do we get the idea of representation? The need to attribute content to mental states is already a complex occurrence in need of some explanation. Questions concerning content certainly do not arise for realm-of-law explanations. As we said: asking what the sprouting seed’s physical state is about does not seem a relevant question. Yet since causal explanations are unsatisfactory for questions about rationality, we look for other strategies to answer them. This, along with our intuition that a particular mental state does not lawfully follow from a physical state, is what motivates our conception of representation, or normativity. Mental states seem to have spontaneity ―some kind of freedom, or choice of options― despite a given physical situation. If causal realm-of-law type descriptions ―what McDowell calls exculpations― were satisfactory for explaining an observed human behaviour, we would be void of the very need for psychological explanations. We would do perfectly well without content attribution for mental states[54]. The question about conceptual or nonconceptual content would not prop up. But we would have to abandon the main reason that McDowell credits for the anxiety he wishes to dispel: the incompatibility between a normative and a causal realm. This would seemingly take us to the efforts of naturalizing thought, which McDowell deems unsatisfactory. But the reason he suspects an attraction towards naturalizing, is due to the success he attributes to causal explanations for the realm of law. Most stances seem to take for granted the success of the natural science’s causal strategy. If this view were not there to fall back on ―deeming unsatisfactory results for causal, realm-of-law type explanations generally― then the failure or weakening in the rational realm would not look for such a retreat to the realm of law.

 Of course there are positions that ―without negating the possibility of representation generally― still wish to do so for the mental realm. From Brentano’s remark of the intentional being the “mark of the mental”, distinct reactions have surfaced on this topic. It would be interesting to explore Dennett, Churchland, Stich, Davidson, Lewis and others on this matter, for defence and attacks on mental representation and content. Still, these authors obviate the success of realm-of-law explanations, as does McDowell, which is why I chose to briefly present Nietzsche as a radicalized position that extirpates causality as a position to fall back on, or with which to measure rationality against. My intention is to broadly outline the hardest hit, so to speak, that McDowell could take; this is what I think a development of Nietzsche’s stance would provide. A Nietzschean position stands against causal explanations for the realm-of-law as well as against normative ones for observations within the space of reasons. For Nietzsche, all representation is falsification, so the mere concepts that we produce to categorize are taken to be errors as well.

“Every concept comes into being by making equivalent that which is non-equivalent. Just as it is certain that no leaf is ever exactly the same as any other leaf, it is equally certain that the concept ‘leaf’ is formed by dropping these individual differences arbitrarily, by forgetting those features which differentiate one thing from another, so that the concept then gives rise to the notion that something other than leaves exists in nature...”[55]

This quote is a good lead-in to the next scenario, which resorts to the fineness of grain of experience with respect to our conceptual capacities in order to defend for nonconceptual mental content. But before I do so, I would like to close Nietzsche’s thought on the matter.

For Nietzsche, accepting such a strong level of perceptual distinction in experience prohibits any causal conjecture at the conceptual level. It negates the possibility of identicals existing at all[56]. This development ends in negating the concept of self identical as a possible view. Everything presents itself to us in constant flux. One person cannot have two identical perspectives on any one thing. As soon as she obtains a perspective, she is changed, as is the thing, as is the environment. Representation, normativity, and concept attribution would just be erroneous ways of treating similar things as if they were identical. The very idea of cause would be dispelled. “We are hungry, but originally we do not think that the organism wants to sustain itself; this feeling seems to be asserting itself without cause or purpose, it isolates itself and considers itself wilful.” Ultimately Nietzsche’s position arrives at negating anything being at all, and considers our world one of becoming. Dissatisfaction with McDowell’s position may stem from a pull that can be identified with particularities of this extreme view.

Arguments for admitting nonconceptual mental content include two somewhat straightforward considerations I wish to enunciate. The first can be taken to be an incompatibility between perception and concepts, while the second has to do with behavioural observations in nonconceptual animals and their intake of the world. First, “assuming that one already accepts that perceptual experience has representational content, the most straightforward argument for embracing nonconceptual content is based on the fine grained nature of experience.”[57] Do concepts really do justice to our perceptual experience? Can concepts be the content of our perceptual experience? “One’s experience is always of a maximally determinate shade, and it is hard to imagine how that fact could be affected by what concepts one possesses.”[58] We seem to subtract from or add to experience with our concepts. This argument may be seen to coincide in a way with the Nietzschean thought mentioned above. Suppose some coasters lie on a table. One cannot tell how many there are on first view. The perceptual experience in some sense represents the number of coasters on the table, though a belief must not include the content that there are seventeen coasters. It is only in conceptualizing ―counting, estimating or guessing―, that we precise the perceptual experience. Thus concepts may add to our perceptions. But we can also exemplify how concepts subtract. We attribute the same concept blue to our sensorial perception of the color of the sky and of the sea, though they are not the same colour to us, until we conceptualize.[59] With this distinction we may admit the possibility of nonconceptual mental contents as constituting some of our perceptual experiences.

A bit more biting to McDowell is the following argument for nonconceptual content: For practical reasons we are free since it seems to us we are free. This may be enough to motivate our search for a satisfactory conclusion about our freedom. This is what McDowell is at bottom looking for: An explanation of how we belong in a causally determined world and still maintain our freedom. How can this causally determined world constitute the content of mental states which are in turn representational of an external ―causally explained― world? We seem to need psychological type of explanations that root our behaviour on beliefs and desires that have content. McDowell thinks that the only way to arrive at a psychological explanation is by resorting to concepts. All our receptive faculties are constrained by possession of concepts. But it may seem that he attributes too much to this possession. “In my view the most fundamental reason ―the one on which other reasons must rely if the conceptualist presses hard― lies in the need to describe correctly the overlap between human perception and that of some of the non-linguistic animals.”[60] Animals do not possess concepts, still they relate with the world in ways similar to us. Bermúdez presents the possibility of rationality without concept possession in his book Thinking without words (2003). Pre-linguistic humans as well as animals such as chimpanzees relate to their environment in ways for which we need conceptual terms to describe; even when they themselves are void of such mental content. Tool elaboration, for example, without explicit conceptual content, seems to be a possibility in creatures without our mental capacities. This may point to thought existing before surfacing of conceptual ability. But stronger against McDowell is the possibility of some level of freedom ―or spontaneity― without conceptual content. Nonconceptual content possessive beings may react distinctly at the level of token sensorial perception and further, appear to participate in decision making independent of the information being immediately available in their environment.[61] This might necessitate psychological explanations such as a chimps desire to eat termites ―instead of ants― as a reason for the elaboration of the proper tool before looking for nourishment.          

The last objection to McDowell is present in Thornton and Gaskin[62]. It points to a putative weakness in McDowell’s argument. If reality exercises an external constraint on our thoughts, leaving no world beyond the conceptual, it is hard to figure how the world can maintain its independence with respect to the subject. As stated before, McDowell does not consider the world to be made of the physical objects, but of Fregean senses. The threat of idealism according to Thornton, is a result of postulating internal objects to carry or explain content. That “thought and reality meet in the realm of sense” ―as McDowell states―[63] leaves a connection between mind-world unaccounted for: “This is the connection, not between Thoughts and facts, but between thoughts and things.”[64] Gaskin wishes to reveal the same idealistic threat with an argument similar to Peacocke’s and Bermúdez’s mentioned above: “How is it that infants and animals, whose sensibility is not structured by a faculty of spontaneity... manage to latch on cognitively to many of the same objects (than humans)?”[65]  His conclusion states that it is unavoidable for McDowell to consider that the world which is nonconceptually accessed by animals and infants is the same world conceptually accessed by rational humans. So, the world must be noumenal with respect to the conceptual. “For, on McDowell’s own showing, an object that is present to an infant or animal consciousness... is a private object in the offending sense; that is, it is an ‘object’ about which nothing can be said, because language is incompetent to embrace it.”[66]  A simple way to enunciate this is by exposing the dissatisfaction left under the understanding of the world not being constituted by the objects in it, but by a thought-compatible entity such as sense; and then relying on demonstrative referral to such entities to contribute the contact needed with the world. It seems that McDowell’s initial promise was proof of the validity of our pointing to and being in contact with the physical objects in the world for justification of our beliefs.  

 

CONCLUSION

I feel that I have not yet scratched the surface of a problem that enticed and motivated me towards pursuing a Master’s title in philosophy. It is as if I have only set my eyes upon the front image of an invitation. Embarking on the task of understanding the general problem posed by McDowell has been challenging enough, and handling the technical nuances for an attempt at resolution has been brutal. I hope that my mistakes are benign. There are terms and concepts and considerations that add, subtract and situate this problem in practically every book I open. Still, I will attempt to close this dissertation with a minimal exposition of its philosophical achievements.

McDowell not only needs an incompatibility between the space of reasons and the realm of law, but he needs it to be a certain way. For him, the problem in explaining mentality must not only be due to the irreconcilable differences between normative and causal explanations. Causal explanations in the realm of law must also be thought of as satisfactorily successful; more so than normative explanations for the space of reasons. If they were not, the debilitation of rationality would not experience the pull towards causality. McDowell attempts to fix the normative weakness with Fregean sense. By taking the world to be constituted by it he proposes an explanation of friction in terms proper to propositional attitudes instead of physical objects. A world constituted of sense, can have its concepts explained by causal law and also by mental state’s contents. But is not the world I intuitively hoped for. The reliance on concepts as mental content and physical constitution seems to be a stretch for me. The shared natural space of both putative realms must be conceptual for all explicative purposes. Here is where I see the major problem. We still speak as if there were something to be right or wrong about beyond concepts, when all we permit ourselves to handle is concepts. Concepts bring their own kind of difficulties to the equation, especially the incapacity to treat individual occurrences without generalizing. I do not see a way to verbally communicate without generalization or treating similar things as being identical. But looking to weaken both realms equally for their dependence on conceptual terms―and not just the space of reasons― may be a way to dispel the perceived incompatibility between them.    

 

Bibliography

Bermúdez, José Luis (2003). Thinking Without Words. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1988). Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity Press.

David, Marian (2008) The Correspondence Theory of Truth, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/truth-correspondence/>.

Davidson, Donald (1974 (2001)). On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. (pp. 183-198). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

―(1975 (2006)). Mental Events. The Essential Davidson. (pp. 105-118). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gaskin, Richard (2006). Experience and the World’s Own Language. New York: Oxford University Press.

Heck, Richard G. (2007). Are There Different Kinds of Content? in J. Cohen and B. McLaughlin (eds.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kant, Immanuel (1787 (2003)). Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kirkham, Richard L. (1998). Truth, correspondence theory of. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 09, 2009, from http://0-www.rep.routledge.com.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/article/N064SECT1

McDowell, John (1994 (1996)). Mind and World: with a new introduction. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.   

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1873 (1999)). On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1882 (2001)). The Gay Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Peacocke, Christopher (2001). Phenomenology and Nonconceptual Content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol. LXII, No. 3, May 2001. pp. 609-615.

Sellars, Wilfrid (1956 (1997)). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

Thornton, Tim (2004). John McDowell. Chesham: Acumen Publishing Limited.

Honderich, Ted (1995). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York: The Oxford University Press.

Wright, Wayne (2003). McDowell, demonstrative concepts, and nonconceptual content. Disputatio 14, 37-51.

 

Notes

[1] McDowell (1994 (1996)). p. xix.

[2] Bourdieu (1988). p. 26.

[3] McDowell (1994 (1996)). p. 34.

[4] Ibid. p. 34.

[5] Ibid. p. 16, 24-25, 37, 108, others.

[6] Sellars (1956 (1997)). p. 76.

[7] “Proposition, sentence, belief, and so on.” Kirkham (1998). Section 1 p. 1. Also: “Thoughts, ideas, judgments, statements, assertions, utterances, sentences.” Marian (2008). Introduction, p. 1.

[8] Both appear in Davidson, Donald (1974 (2001)) p. 189

[9] McDowell (1994 (1996)) p. 23.

[10] Ibid. p. 96.

[11] Ibid. p. xvii.

[12] Ibid. p. 17.

[13] Ibid. p. 39.

[14] Ibid. p. 8.

[15] Sellars (1956 (1997)). p. 68-69.

[16] McDowell (1994 (1996)) p. xxiii.

[17] Ibid. p. xxiv.

[18] Ibid. p. xiii.

[19] Ibid. p. 78

[20] “Space of Reason” in Sellars (1956 (1997)) pp. 25, 45, 53, 76, 83. “Space of Nature” in McDowell (1994 (1996)) p. xx.  

[21] McDowell (1994 (1996)) pp. 77, 85.

[22] Davidson (1970 (2006)) p. 117.

[23] McDowell (1994 (1996)) pp. 80.

[24] Ibid. p. 84.

[25] Ibid. p. xvii.

[26] Ibid. p. xxiii.

[27] Ibid. p. 6.

[28] Ibid. pp. 67-68.

[29] Ibid. pp. 78.

[30] Ibid. pp. 85.

[31] Ibid. pp. 124-126.

[32] Ibid. pp. xvi, 41.

[33] Ibid. p. 9.

[34] Ibid. p. 3.

[35] Ibid. p. 114.

[36] Kant (1787 (2003)). p. 92.

[37] Ibid. p. 61-62.

[38] Ibid. p. 65.

[39] Ibid. p. 71.

[40] McDowell (1994 (1996)). p. 4.

[41] Ibid. p. 7.

[42] Ibid. p. 49.

[43] Ibid. p. 43.

[44] Ibid. p. 40.

[45] Ibid. p. 43.

[46] Ibid. p. 27, 29, 33, 44.

[47] Ibid. p.27.

[48] Ibid. p. 179.

[49] Ibid. p. 106.

[50] Ibid p. 107.

[51] Ibid. p. 179.

[52] McDowell shares Gareth Evan´s view of Fregeian sense. That is, that terms without reference will not have sense and they cannot be taken to be real thoughts, nor, for that matter anything in the world. 

[53] Wright (2003). p. 39.; Heck (2007) p. 5.

[54] Heck (2007) p. 5.

[55] Nietzsche (1873 (1999)) p. 145.

[56] “For there is nothing identical as such.” Nietzsche (1882 (2001)) p. 112.

[57] Wright (2003) p. 39.

[58] Heck (2007). p. 16.

[59] Both examples appear in Heck (2007) p. 18.

[60] Peacocke (2001) p. 613-614.

[61] Bermúdez (2003) p. 116-126.

[62] Thornton (2004) p. 233-244 and Gaskin (2006) p. 166-198.

[63] McDowell (1994 (1996)). p. 180.

[64] Thornton (2004) p. 238.

[65] Gaskin (2006) p. 166.

[66] Ibid. p. 169.