Full Idea
Davidson urges that we should hold that the world exerts a merely causal influence on our thinking, but I am trying to describe a way in which the world exerts a rational influence on our thinking.
Gist of Idea
Davidson says the world influences us causally; I say it influences us rationally
Source
comment on Donald Davidson (Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge [1983]) by John McDowell - Mind and World II.5
Book Reference
McDowell,John: 'Mind and World' [Harvard 1996], p.34
A Reaction
McDowell seems to be fighting for the existence of 'pure' reason in a way that is hard to defend with a thoroughly materialist view of human brains. If the world is coherent, then maybe it is rational, and so has reasons to offer us?