John McDowell holds that empiricism as it has been traditionally conceived leads to a radical incoherency. In order to avoid this incoherency, he proposes a different though not new model for understanding the relation of experience to the empirical world and how we ground empirical judgements.
As he sees things, McDowell characterises traditional empiricism as making a strict distinction between a space of reasons and a space of facts. The space of reasons is the space wherein concepts, reasons, justifications etc are operative, whereas the space of fact is the space of scientific normativity. What is crucial about the distinction for McDowell is that the space of fact is so juxtaposed from the space of reasons that whatever is located within the space of fact is not conceptually imbued, but conceptually naked as it were; whereas what is located in the space of reasons is located in a space wherein conceptuality is present. Given this strict distinction, McDowell goes on to charge traditional empiricism with radical incoherency.
Traditional empiricism holds that our empirical judgements are justified by the empirical world, by facing the tribunal of experience as it were. On this account, the empirical world so interacts with the subject that the subject is able to justify his or her judgements about the world through an appeal to the empirical world itself. By McDowell’s lights however, this is absurd for the following reason. When we seek to justify a judgement, we seek to give reasons for why we think the content of that judgement is the case. Thus, if asked why we think that x is the case, we say 'because…'and thence give reasons for its being the case 'that x'. McDowell claims that by putting the conceptually naked given in the place where we would give reasons for why we think that our empirical judgement is the case, we are merely exculpating ourselves from blame rather than giving a reason. In other words, the given, considered precisely as lacking in conceptual content, cannot justify our empirical judgements because precisely as lacking in conceptual content, the world cannot be a justifying reason for any belief about the world. As McDowell sees things, what we are left with in traditional empiricism are two sui generis spheres, one of reasons and the other of facts, standing aloof from each other with no meaningful interaction between the two, and this is intolerable.
McDowell recognises the appeal of the given. On the one hand there is recognised the need for some spontaneity in human thought, a spontaneity without which the genius moments wherein one exclaims ‘Eureka’ would be impossible. On the other hand, such spontaneity needs to be curtailed in order that one cannot just think about the world in any way that one likes; one’s thought must be accountable to the world. As McDowell characteristically states, if we have nothing to curtail our spontaneity, we spin frictionslessly in the void. The given was intended to introduce friction and curtail our spontaneity, but, as we have seen, appeal to the given merely offers us exculpation and not a justifying reason for why we think about the world as we do.
With the issue sufficiently motivated, McDowell goes on depict his own view of the relationship between mind and world. Recognising the need for both spontaneity in thought and answerability to the world, but the incoherence of appealing to a conceptually naked given to ensure the latter, McDowell claims that the whole picture of two distinct sui generis spheres is a flawed one that will always lead to inconsistency. He recommends that in order to ensure worldly justification for empirical judgements, the world itself must be conceptual. Only if conceptuality is present in the world can the subject give a justifying reason for an empirical judgement, rather than just pointing to some conceptually naked given. On McDowell’s account then, the world is conceptual insofar as when the subject engages with the world, the subject’s conceptual capacities are brought into operation. Thus, when I experience the world, I experience the world as thus and so, and such experience is conceptual precisely because it is experienced as thus and so. The world’s being thus and so in turn brings into operation the subject’s conceptual capacities, and when asked why I have a particular belief to the effect that the world is thus and so, I can reply because the world as revealed to me in experience is revealed to me as thus and so.
McDowell’s position thus represents a definite shift away from traditional empiricism insofar as it sees the world as itself conceptual and as thus conceived the subject is able to engage with the world in a rational manner. This is not a new understanding of the mind world relationship, in fact, it can be argued that it is coloured by some very traditionalpre-modern views of the mind/world relationship. For the purposes of this discussion, I would like to know what you think about the issues involved the position outlined above.
Further Reading
John McDowell, Mind and World, Lectures 1 - 3.
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