Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for David Fair, Johann Winckelmann and John McDowell

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8 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 3. Pure Reason
8251 The logical space of reasons is a natural phenomenon, and it is the realm of freedom [McDowell]
     Full Idea: The logical space of reasons is just part of the logical space of nature. ...And, in a Kantian slogan, the space of reasons is the realm of freedom.
     From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], Intro 7)
     A reaction: [second half on p.5] This is a modern have-your-cake-and-eat-it view of which I am becoming very suspicious. The modern Kantians (Davidson, Nagel, McDowell) are struggling to naturalise free will, but it won't work. Just dump it!
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation
8128 Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge]
     Full Idea: McDowell has claimed that one cannot make sense of representation that plays a role in epistemology unless one takes the representation to be propositional, and thus capable of yielding reasons.
     From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.456
     A reaction: A transcendental argument leads back to a somewhat implausible conclusion. I suspect that McDowell has a slightly inflated (Kantian) notion of the purity of the 'space of reasons'. Do philosophers just imagine their problems?
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 5. Interpretation
19092 There is no pure Given, but it is cultured, rather than entirely relative [McDowell, by Macbeth]
     Full Idea: McDowell argues that the Myth of the Given shows not that there is no content to a concept that is not a matter of its inferential relations to other concepts but only that awareness of the sort that we enjoy ...is acquired in the course of acculturation.
     From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Danielle Macbeth - Pragmatism and Objective Truth p.185
     A reaction: The first view is of Wilfred Sellars, who derives pragmatic relativism from his rejection of the Myth. This idea is helpful is seeing why McDowell has a good proposal. As I look out of my window, my immediate experience seems 'cultured'.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
8253 Sense impressions already have conceptual content [McDowell]
     Full Idea: The world's impressions on our senses are already possessed of conceptual content.
     From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.6)
     A reaction: This is a key idea of McDowell's, which challenges most traditional empiricist views, and (maybe) offers a solution to the rationalist/empiricist debate. His commitment to the 'space of reasons' strikes me as an optional extra.
19. Language / F. Communication / 4. Private Language
8254 Forming concepts by abstraction from the Given is private definition, which the Private Lang. Arg. attacks [McDowell]
     Full Idea: The idea that concepts can be formed by abstraction from the Given just is the idea of private ostensive definition. So the Private Language Argument just is the rejection of the Given, in so far as it bears on the possibilities for language.
     From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.7)
     A reaction: I'm not clear why the process of abstraction from raw impressions shouldn't be a matter of public, explicit, community negotiation. We seem to be able to share and compare fairly raw impressions without much trouble (discussing sunsets).
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression
8119 Art aims only at beauty, of form, of idea, and (above all) of expression [Winckelmann, by Tolstoy]
     Full Idea: According to Winckelmann, the law and aim of all art is beauty, independent of goodness. The three kinds of beauty are of form, of idea, and of expression (the highest aim, attainable only when the other two are present).
     From: report of Johann Winckelmann (History of Ancient Art [1764]) by Leo Tolstoy - What is Art? Ch.3
     A reaction: This sounds very like 'art for art's sake', but a hundred years earlier. This is quite a good distinction, and I particularly like the 'beauty of idea', which is often overlooked.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 4. Naturalised causation
8326 Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley]
     Full Idea: Basic causal relations can, as a consequence of our scientific knowledge, be identified with certain physicalistic [sic] relations between objects that can be characterized in terms of transference of either energy or momentum between objects.
     From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by E Sosa / M Tooley - Introduction to 'Causation' §1
     A reaction: Presumably a transfer of momentum is a transfer of energy. If only anyone had the foggiest idea what energy actually is, we'd be doing well. What is energy made of? 'No identity without substance', I say. I like Fair's idea.
10379 Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Fair, who originated the energy flow view of causation, moved to a view that understands connection in terms of counterfactuals about energy flow.
     From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.1.2
     A reaction: David Fair was a pupil of David Lewis, the king of the counterfactual view. To me that sounds like a disappointing move, but it is hard to think that a mere flow of energy through space would amount to causation. Cause must work back from an effect.