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Single Idea 8128

[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation ]

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.

Gist of Idea

Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological

Source

report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.456

Book Ref

Burge,Tyler: 'Foundations of the Mind' [OUP 2007], 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?

The 23 ideas with the same theme [theory that mind represents in order to perceive]:

20894 Man is separated from reality [Democritus]
1734 In moral thought images are essential, to be pursued or avoided [Aristotle]
22168 Minds take in a likeness of things, which activates an awaiting potential [Aquinas]
7400 Descartes said images can refer to objects without resembling them (as words do) [Descartes, by Tuck]
18258 We can only know the exterior world via our ideas [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P]
12948 A pain doesn't resemble the movement of a pin, but it resembles the bodily movement pins cause [Leibniz]
3957 Immediate objects of perception, which some treat as appearances, I treat as the real things themselves [Berkeley]
6495 Berkeley's idealism resulted from fear of scepticism in representative realism [Robinson,H on Berkeley]
2237 It never occurs to people that they only experience representations, not the real objects [Hume]
16913 I can't intuit a present thing in itself, because the properties can't enter my representations [Kant]
6514 Russell's representationalism says primary qualities only show the structure of reality [Russell, by Robinson,H]
13983 Representation assumes you know the ideas, and the reality, and the relation between the two [Ryle]
4043 Elephants can be correctly identified from as few as three primitive shapes [Goldman]
8128 Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge]
2716 To see something as a field, I obviously need the concept of a field [Audi,R]
2717 How could I see a field and believe nothing regarding it? [Audi,R]
7629 We see objects 'directly' by representing them [McGinn]
3899 The representational theory says perceptual states are intentional states [Scruton]
6484 Most moderate empiricists adopt Locke's representative theory of perception [Robinson,H]
6638 One must be able to visually recognise a table, as well as knowing its form [Lowe]
6644 Computationalists object that the 'ecological' approach can't tell us how we get the information [Lowe]
6647 Comparing shapes is proportional in time to the angle of rotation [Lowe]
21215 The representation may not be a likeness [Velarde-Mayol]