Avoiding the Myth of the Given

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to critically examine John McDowell's account of experience and perceptual judgment. McDowell's principal thesis in Mind and World was that experience needs to be conceived as comprising conceptual content in order to assuage what he perceives as certain characteristic anxieties in modern philosophy in relation to empirical thought. In this way, McDowell's notion of experience with a manifold of passively actualized propositional content became central to achieving that end. McDowell's recently revised account of experience, now divested of propositional content, accordingly warrants an examination of the new form of conceptually shaped experience that he offers, and of the necessity of positing experience with conceptual content, in order to avoid the Myth of the Given (as McDowell understands it).In accordance with the Mind and World paradigm of experience, I identify three central features that come to inform McDowell's account of experience with conceptual content, which in turn constitute the divisions of Chapters in this thesis: 1. Rational Entitlement; 2. Objectivity; 3. Self-Determining Capacities. In this context, I come to elucidate the particular models of conceptual intelligibility that are offered by McDowell in order to substantiate his stipulation of conceptual capacities as they are to be understood as operative in experience. I then come to critically assess McDowell's revised account of experience as conceptually shaped, in relation to these three central features, as they are understood in Mind and World.Charles Travis presents an account of experience and perceptual judgment which contributes to McDowell's critical rethink of his proposal in Mind and World that conceptually shaped experience has propositional content. In the context of discussing the three central features listed above, according to which I organize the discussion of experience and perceptual judgment, I consider those features as they are operative in Travis's account, and how they may bear upon McDowell's earlier and later accounts of experience.I propose to present a clear and charitable reading of both McDowell's Mind and World account of experience and the newly revised account. Even so, I do contend that, with McDowell no longer able to draw upon the more robust models of how to conceive of experience as conceptually shaped (which sets forth in Mind and World), and in light of certain aspects of Travis's account of perceptual judgment, such a cumulative methodology places McDowell's account of experience as conceptually shaped in serious difficulty -such that it may warrant a reconsideration of those higher-order concerns, specifically those associated with the Myth of the Given, that motivate and inform his treatment of experience and perceptual judgment.

Las Nuevas Intuiciones Conceptuales De John McDowell

“…El nuevo McDowell (2009a) de Avoiding the Myth of the Given claramente propone una teoría diferente acerca de los contenidos de la experiencia perceptual. Para él el contenido de la experiencia ya no es proposicional, sino intuitivo.…”

“…La manera en que McDowell (2009a) introduce el contenido intuitivo parece ser consistente plenamente con la tesis de que no todos los elementos constitutivos de ese contenido intuitivo son conceptos, permitiendo que existan componentes que sean en principio solo conceptualizables. Detengámonos en un par de citas en las que McDowell, a ratos de manera característicamente oscura, intenta especificar la clase de relación existente entre las capacidades conceptuales y los contenidos de la experiencia: ¿Si el contenido intuitivo no es discursivo, por qué continuar insistiendo que es conceptual?…”

“…Por ejemplo, si John sabe que una lechuza vuela sobre el bosque de eucaliptus claramente John debe poseer e implementar los conceptos LECHUZA, EUCALIPTUS y VOLAR. Sin embargo, tal como afirma McDowell (2009a), dichos conceptos no tienen por qué componer el contenido de la experiencia que justifica de forma no inferencial dicho juicio.…”

“…No es para nada evidente que estas categorías kantianas puedan codificarse con claridad en términos de lo que hoy entendemos como un concepto en el contexto neofregeano en el que el mismo McDowell se desenvuelve, es decir, como un componente de una proposición cuya posesión se especifica en términos de la implementación de un conjunto de capacidades como, por ejemplo, nuestra capacidad para reconocer y realizar inferencias racionales 16 . McDowell (2009a) no explica con claridad cómo es que cualquier concepto podría figurar realmente -como un componente-en el contenido intuitivo de la experiencia. De hecho, ni siquiera especifica en qué sentido los conceptos puros del entendimiento kantiano o, en su defecto, "las capacidades conceptuales asociadas con los conceptos de sensibles propios y comunes" (McDowell, 2009a: 260) pueden de hecho conformar el contenido de una experiencia y no solo figurar como reglas de síntesis.…”

The disjunctive conception of perceiving

“…In a recent essay, McDowell (2008) insists that seeing such-and-such -as it is enjoyed by rational animals -requires the possession of suitable conceptual capacities on the part of the perceiving subject; specifically, conceptual capacities associated with concepts of "proper sensibles of sight and common sensibles accessible to sight" (260) -concepts of (e.g.) colours, and shapes.…”