Price Mind And World
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What is it?
Price’s review of Mind & World. It doesn’t really deal with a lot of the aspects of the book but some of the points he raises regarding its central theme need thinking out.
Where can it be found?
Price, H., Review of Mind & World, Philosophical Books, Vol 38, pp 169-181 (includes a response by McDowell)
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Summary
M&W in a nutshell (maybe) - empiricism leaves a gap to be filled between mind and world - experience is generally called upon to bridge this gap - in order to provide rational constraint on thought experience must couple receptivity with conceptuality - in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Sellars argued that this was not possible (Myth of the Given) - McD takes up the story here and argues that where we actually end up is in a dilemma between the choice of the Given (and exculpations rather than reasons) or some sort of blind internalism in which our beliefs about the world have no content - McD’s strategy is to remove the abovementioned gap altogether, giving us a direct experience of the world that is both receptive and conceptual
Initial concerns regarding McD’s position - how does McD’s view allow for mistaken appearances without leading us into scepticism? - and how does it do so without leading us into Berkleian idealism rather than direct realism?
Using Kant Against McD - Kant responded to the Lockean idea of experience as “copying” the world by pointing out that the output of our perceptual apparatus is always processed - Price argues that this kind of conceptualised experience is “too far in” for McD to use however as its conceptual content is the result of contingent features of our own constitution - furthermore, we don’t need the transcendental perspective to see this, natural science tells us that at the very least our physical make-up impacts upon what we perceive - thus we can’t be in direct contact with reality unless we are idealist - Putnam has interpreted this Kantian point to mean that only secondary properties exist
_ Mc Dowell on Davidson_ - Price argues that McD’s reject of the “side on” perspective means that he cannot adopt this stance in order to criticise Davidson’s position as being out of contact with the world. If one is dealing with the interpretative stance as the only stance that one can take, then the Davidisonian is as in-contact with the world as it is possible to be.
Overall We are left with only one horn of the dilemma. Furthermore, we don’t lose anything if we reject the given.
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- Mc Dowell’s response* {[green I’ll read this tomorrow. ]}
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What do I think? - perhaps McD is okay with the contingent nature of our conceptualised experience argued for by Price above. If so however, he needs to deal with how one is to respond to thought experiments involving a being with radically different perceptual apparatus.
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