8 ideas
| 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! |
| 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? |
| 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'. |
| 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. |
| 10356 | Relativism can be seen as about the rationality of different cultural traditions [MacIntyre, by Kusch] |
| Full Idea: MacIntyre formulates relativism in terms of rationality rather than truth or objectivity. Things are rational relative to some particular tradition, but not rational as such. | |
| From: report of Alasdair MacIntyre (Whose Justice? Which Rationality? [1988], p.352) by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.19 | |
| A reaction: Personally I had always taken it to be about truth, and I expect any account of rationality to be founded on a notion of truth. There can clearly be cultural traditions of evidence, and possibly even of logic (though I doubt it). |
| 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). |
| 23080 | Liberals debate how conservative or radical to be, but don't question their basics [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. There is little place for the criticism of the system itself. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (Whose Justice? Which Rationality? [1988]), quoted by John Kekes - Against Liberalism 01 | |
| A reaction: [No page number given] Kekes seems to be more authoritarian, and MacIntyre is a communitarian (which can be rather authoritarian). I'm dubious about both. |
| 4422 | The end need not be the goal, as in the playing of a melody (and yet it must be completed) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not every end is the goal; the end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Wanderer and his Shadow [1880], §204) | |
| A reaction: A nice message for Aristotle, that there is no simple separation of ends and means. |