Haddock on McDowell
[*Update: The password protection has now been removed. Enjoy.]
Adrian Haddock came to Essex yesterday to give a really interesting paper, "McDowell and Transcendental Idealism". In it he argued that the transcendental and the naturalist elements in McDowell's philosophy are in tension. The transcendental part is the contention that there is no tract of reality beyond the conceptual sphere, that no aspect of the world is unthinkable. The naturalistic part is the claim the the thinking subject is (essentially) an embodied presence in the world.
The tension appears when we notice that the very fact of our embodiment may place limits on what we can think, such that a gap opens up between what is thinkable per se and what is thinkable by us (embodied subjects). To motivate this thought, consider Nagel's suggestion that we can conceive of 'higher beings' that are to us as we are to nine year olds. Such higher beings may be able to think thoughts that for us, due to our embodied nature, unthinkable. Or, we can entertain the thought that there might be objects about which we can never entertain de re thoughts, because we cannot come into the appropriate causal relationships with them.
But given the naturalistic element of McDowell's philosophy, there is to be no gap between what is thinkable per se and what is thinkable by us. It seems that something has to go, either the transcendental claim that no aspect of the world is unthinkable, or the naturalistic claim that the subject of experience is necessarily embodied.
I'll mention a couple of quesitons that arose in discussion.
(1) Surely the move from being embodied to there being limitations on what is thinkable by us is rather quick. Might it not be that an adequate account of embodiment would block the argument. After all, McDowell says precious little about exactly how he conceives the subject's essential embodiment.
(2) Doesn't Nagel's thought experiment beg the question against McDowell? For in order to support the contention that there are possibly some thoughts that are unthinkable by all possible embodied thinking subjects, the 'higher beings' must be disembodied. But this just flatly contradicts McDowell's claim that all thinking subjects are essentially embodied. To the extent that we have independent reason to accept McDowell's naturalism, we shouldn't be moved by Nagel's 'higher beings'.
Adrian Haddock came to Essex yesterday to give a really interesting paper, "McDowell and Transcendental Idealism". In it he argued that the transcendental and the naturalist elements in McDowell's philosophy are in tension. The transcendental part is the contention that there is no tract of reality beyond the conceptual sphere, that no aspect of the world is unthinkable. The naturalistic part is the claim the the thinking subject is (essentially) an embodied presence in the world.
The tension appears when we notice that the very fact of our embodiment may place limits on what we can think, such that a gap opens up between what is thinkable per se and what is thinkable by us (embodied subjects). To motivate this thought, consider Nagel's suggestion that we can conceive of 'higher beings' that are to us as we are to nine year olds. Such higher beings may be able to think thoughts that for us, due to our embodied nature, unthinkable. Or, we can entertain the thought that there might be objects about which we can never entertain de re thoughts, because we cannot come into the appropriate causal relationships with them.
But given the naturalistic element of McDowell's philosophy, there is to be no gap between what is thinkable per se and what is thinkable by us. It seems that something has to go, either the transcendental claim that no aspect of the world is unthinkable, or the naturalistic claim that the subject of experience is necessarily embodied.
I'll mention a couple of quesitons that arose in discussion.
(1) Surely the move from being embodied to there being limitations on what is thinkable by us is rather quick. Might it not be that an adequate account of embodiment would block the argument. After all, McDowell says precious little about exactly how he conceives the subject's essential embodiment.
(2) Doesn't Nagel's thought experiment beg the question against McDowell? For in order to support the contention that there are possibly some thoughts that are unthinkable by all possible embodied thinking subjects, the 'higher beings' must be disembodied. But this just flatly contradicts McDowell's claim that all thinking subjects are essentially embodied. To the extent that we have independent reason to accept McDowell's naturalism, we shouldn't be moved by Nagel's 'higher beings'.
posted by Joel at 4:05 pm
4 Comments:
The PDF is password-protected -- was this intentional? I've been enjoying following along with the other papers, so I suspect this was an oversight.
The objections look good to me. Nagel's nine-year-olds have never impressed me. It seems to me there is a slide between the two meanings of "due to our embodied nature" - that is, from "due to the nature of our embodiment" to "due to our embodiment qua embodiment". And I have other objections too (not that McD is necessarily blameless, mind, but a lot of his critics seem to be missing the point). But I would like to read the paper, which is still password-protected.
A link to a non-password protected version of this paper is on the way. I'll update the post as soon as I have a copy of it.
Thanks!
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