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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 Ref
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?
| 19081 | Coherence with a set of propositions suggests we can know the proposition corresponds [Davidson, by Donnellan] |
| 8255 | Davidson says the world influences us causally; I say it influences us rationally [McDowell on Davidson] |
| 18703 | Davidson's Cogito: 'I think, therefore I am generally right' [Davidson, by Button] |
| 8252 | Davidson believes experience is non-conceptual, and outside the space of reasons [Davidson, by McDowell] |
| 8801 | Coherent justification says only beliefs can be reasons for holding other beliefs [Davidson] |
| 8802 | Sensations lack the content to be logical; they cause beliefs, but they cannot justify them [Davidson] |
| 8804 | Reasons for beliefs are not the same as evidence [Davidson] |
| 8805 | Skepticism is false because our utterances agree, because they are caused by the same objects [Davidson] |
| 8806 | The concepts of belief and truth are linked, since beliefs are meant to fit reality [Davidson] |