Single Idea 8255

[catalogued under 12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique]

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?