John McDowell interview: Avoiding the Myth of the Given and other philosophical thoughts

[@Blankp1anet]

I am currently writing a 5000 word essay on McDowell's illustration of second nature and I have to say that if he wrote like he spoke it would make my job MUCH easier. I wish academics would keep the art and skill of language out of their work and attempt to impress their peers by just the mere function and result of their work.

[@Fafner888]

McDowell is far from being the worst offender in this respect, try reading Charles Travis...

[@donkeykrong5255]

i blame this on his not finishing graduate school; he never learned to write (well), maybe? incredible philosopher, horrendous writer.

[@gerhitchman]

McDowell is indeed a horrible writer

[@philp521]

A philosopher’s ability to write clearly varies inversely with the amount of time they’ve spent reading Sellars. (Rorty and Dennett are the exceptions here, I suppose.)

[@guidotana5521]

In fact, the style of Mind and World is self-attributed by him to try to capture the talk feel of the John Locke lectures he gave in 1991 on which he based the book. The problem I think is that in most of his writings, especially those on his disjunctive theory of perception and justification, he's grappling with topics of a Kantian variety (experience as conceptual and as providing indefeasible perceptual warrant for beliefs) that he has approached in a somewhat idiosyncratic way due to McDowell's Kant having been Strawson's Kant up until a decade ago (he says this as well in this video). The result is that he's straddling for a middle way between two perspectives which are not trivially easy to recombine.

[@Snowcountry556]

The two other talks mentioned at 20:37 are Prof John McDowell: "Can cognitive science determine epistemology?" and Prof John McDowell: "Are the senses silent?"

[@German1184]

5:13 Dublin, 2012, *A Sellarsian blind spot* by John McDowell (

[@cclus]

i don't get it

[@fletcher1941]

Good job!

[@modvs1]

J.J. Gibson’s notion of affordances clears all this up. Often wondered why philosophers focus on just the cognitive stuff: “warrant”, “justification”, “certainty”, etc, when ordinarily it is “action” that sorts out any queries one has regarding “what’s in the environment (?)”. Didn’t Ryle show that knowledge- how (procedural) trumps knowledge-that (propositional)? How on earth do other animals get about?

[@modvs1]

Brad Younger To be honest I can’t recall precisely what the comment was about, I’d have to watch it again to be sure. Don’t think it has to do with the issue of ‘Givenness’ which to me is a perfectly intelligible idea. Maybe it has to with what he suggests about “perceptual knowledge”; that we passively stand back from the world, perceive it, engage in a bit of reasoning/judgement about what it is we may or may not be perceiving and then proceed to fret as to whether we are entitled, warranted or justified about our conclusions. Some philosophers have a very disengaged/aloof account of how people typically relate to their environment. You don’t stand back and wonder whether the thing in front of you is a car, you (attempt) get in and drive it (you explore affordances). I must confess that McDowell’s style- however prosaic- is a tad cumbersome. From what I can tell he’s a very level headed philosopher.

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

interesting, thanks. Donald Norman's "signifiers" may be closer to McDowell ... capturing a little more what the subject brings to the experience. But it's important to note that for McDowell there is nothing else in the objective realm than such affordances/signifiers.

[@moshejun]

It's an interesting interview, indeed.

[@avellopublishing5851]

It was a great pleasure for me to welcome Amie Thomasson (University of Miami) to Trinity College earlier. She spoke about the truthmaker approach to ontological commitment in metaphysics. Afterwards we attended John Searle's (University of California) talk about consciousness as a problem in philosophy & neurobiology at Wolfson College, Cambridge. (Jason Wakefield, University of Cambridge).

[@luchostocchi1305]

una lastima que en la traduccion al español cuando lo nombran a Sellars lo traduzcan como "vendedor"

[@tesfuweldemikael2902]

They don't?! 🤣🤣🤣

[@haydee7476]

Es generada automáticamente. Por eso sucede.

[@tokotokotoko3]

I have no capacity... to understand a single sentence they're saying.

[@gerhitchman]

Trust me you're better off that way

[@eapooda]

8 years later I hope you’ve learned a little bit lol

[@SeanAnthony-j7f]

11 years: how is life?

[@oldsachem]

An inconclusive warrant to know sounds like a fancy way to define "reasonable doubt" in the context of English common law in the criminal law.

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

yes indeed. Newman (in The Grammar of Assent) used the move to "beyond reasonable doubt" to illustrate the move from certainty to certitude -- like McDowell's illustration of the move from bent stick to straight stick.

[@angeloraymond1137]

It seems like when you creating an elaborate conceptual apparatus to try and explain something as elusive as the mind, you wind up creating a discourse where the subject of that discourse is more your apparatus than it is the subject matter the apparatus is trying to illuminate. Maybe there's a hubris in academia which makes philosophers think that if you use a conceptual system where you make these kinds of technical dstinctions, you can somehow pin down something as illusive as the mind's epistemic processes.

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

I'd fine tune that ... It is moving towards the fundamental self-evident reality of our knowing and acting mind in relationship with our value-laden environment. But it's doing the good job of trying to re-awaken our culture to that.

[@eapooda]

I find academic philosophers attempts to explain the conceptual schemes and the content of their experience thereof completely contradictory. In any attempt to apply philosophical notions onto the ordinary man/woman you work in opposition to the nature of their own minds. This philosophical use of language doesn’t even place us on the right path, we already start making assumptions about the subject with philosophical notions, instead of trying to imagine oneself as the object of study apart from philosophy itself.

[@slowtine]

The picture on the left is crooked.

[@celestialteapot309]

Only if you perceive everything else as being straight

[@EpiCx8]

Celestial Teapot false

[@DarkMoonDroid]

3:37 Impressive right there!

[@DarkMoonDroid]

Jennifer Grove 5:38 xlnt explanation.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

Jennifer Grove 16:50 Yes! We don't seem to be able to know! "It _is_ a pickle. There's _no doubt_ about it!" LOL The way I deal with it is using irony. I don't think skepticism is healthy or sustainable. Humans like to inquire. We have an appetite for certainty. So, I think we should inquire and guess and speculate with all our heart and soul and mind. And bring the process to a place where you are willing to act on what you have. Then act. And if it turns out okay, it's okay until a better understanding comes along. One of the problems of epistemology is it tends to gum up the mental processes so much that it threatens our ability/motivation to act. Humans like to act. Just like they like to inquire. So, I think we should make both of those things possible without having to have certainty. And certain Transcendental events have left me with an awareness of how we really can't get rid of our appetite for certainty, but that we can choose the low-calorie versions of probability and possibility and good enuf for gubmint work.

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

great questions .. pretty good answers

[@Ontologistics]

no

[@modvs1]

Thank the good lord for grounded and 4E theories of cognition.

[@dubbelkastrull]

6:37 bookmark 35:53 bookmark

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

a "beautiful idea" indeed, not least because it's amazing that what is given ("small 'g'") and our capacities match so well!

[@joecotter6803]

I chuckled when John McDowell picked up his glass from the table, sipped his drink, and placed the drink back on the table. The disagreements between him, Sellars et. al. is laughable. I judge a person's ontological stance by their behaviour. McDowell's behaviour suggests he is a naturalist as are all sane philosophers. They just go off the rails, pontificating about their intellectual gymnastics. 'Giveness' is a pathetic concept.

[@Voeris1]

Add to > watch later

[@1330m]

German philosophy ---- Peirce -- lady Welby -- C. Ogden -- Ramsey -- Wittgenstein- --- Vienna circle ---- US analytic philosophy ---- Neo pragmatism ---Neo hegelism : Big uroboros panorama

[@nelsonespinoza698]

buen hombre

[@Stinkbug08]

Conclusive true belief!!

[@theobjectivistdollar9485]

KAAAAAAANT

[@Ontologistics]

Ultimately a rather trivial talk.

[@shelaghmckenna2667]

I do not agree, and I will tell you why. An experience (which is given) has epistemic certainty (which is given) at the time of its duration. This epistemic certainty is not reflective, and Sellars says it is not the same thing as knowledge, which must be of the truth of a proposition. If I accept Sellars’ definition of knowledge, the existence of the experience is still self-evident, irreducible and unquestionable, and that is epistemic certainty. Sellars doesn’t like to call it knowledge. He does not distinguish between self-evident knowledge and intellectual knowledge. To him the only knowledge is intellectual knowledge. It is generally believed that intellectual knowledge (of the truth of a proposition) does not have epistemic certainty unless it is a priori. This is where McDowell comes in. An experience is accompanied by the truth of a proposition (stated or otherwise) about the existence of the experience. Even if the terms of that proposition are understood only by the experiencer, knowledge of its truth has epistemic certainty for the duration of the experience. McDowell observes that for the duration of the experience, an opening for this epistemic certainty does exist. So no, this is not a trivial conversation. But it is a conversation about intellectual knowledge, and it begs another conversation about self-evident knowledge. I think that 'picking up' the truth of a proposition does not have to be reflective. I think that you don't have to understand what a proposition is to 'pick up' its truth. The reality of its truth will hit you anyway. I think intellectual knowledge 'picks up' the truth of a proposition as what it is, i.e. in full recognition of what it is, and self-evident knowledge does not do this, but I think self-evident knowledge 'picks up' that truth nevertheless. And even if I'm wrong, that truth still exists whether it gets 'picked up' or not. That second conversation would be far from trivial.

[@christopherhamilton3621]

@@shelaghmckenna2667 Well said!

[@Y0UT0PIA]

@@shelaghmckenna2667 but why *should* one call that experience of givenness knowledge? It's not difficult to come up with examples where something appears so-and-so in one moment only for that certainty to evaporate in the next. it seems epistemically important that things to appear to us in this way in experience, that 'seeing is believing', but it seems to me that to identify that moment with 'knowledge' is a big misstep. it is not the experience of something appearing as given that justifies or grounds knowledge, after all. the experience of givenness is itself grounded in some other process, which is why 'what appears as given' changes as we learn about the world.

[@shelaghmckenna2667]

​@@Y0UT0PIA For the duration of an appearance, we are capable of apprehending the truth value of propositions about the reality of that appearance qua appearance. The truth value of those propositions is inseparable from the appearance qua appearance, and that is true knowledge. The faithfulness of the appearance to an objective referent is not the issue.

[@Y0UT0PIA]

​@@shelaghmckenna2667 I don't deny that we experience that kind of momentary epistemic certainty all the time. But what does the fact that 'X has subjective reality for a subject while it is appearing' have to do with knowledge?