scholarly journals What is ‘Representation’? – a Debate Between Tyler Burge and John McDowell (with a Reference to Daniel Dennett)

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Miguens
Keyword(s):  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Daniel Dennett ◽  
Tyler Burge

Reply to Guy Longworth

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Representational Content ◽  
Main Issue ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Law

Starting in about 2004 John McDowell and I have engaged in a debate. There have been a number of public exchanges, and quite a few more private ones. In my view, some progress has been made (though the debate continues). Others may disagree (the ‘law of diminishing fleas’). I, at any rate, think I have learned from him. Guy Longworth does us both the honour of comparing our debate to one a half century earlier between J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson. Honours apart, I think he has pointed to an illuminating connection between what I have long thought the main issue and another. If I had been asked what question McDowell and I had been (most centrally) debating, I would have said: it is the question how enjoying an experience of perceiving (e.g., of seeing) can make judging one thing or another intelligibly rational (that last term lifted from McDowell). I have a story to tell which is, in one key respect, sparser than his. To telegraph, he thinks such experience must have (representational) content. I think, not just that it needn’t, but that if it did, we would be cut off from ...

Reply to Nat Hansen

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
John Mcdowell

Hansen is certainly right that the aim of my ‘Travis examples’ is, not to explain anything, but rather to point to a phenomenon. Or perhaps I would not now say so much as that. Over the course of my career I have been very deeply influenced by John McDowell. The main lesson I have taken from him is that the most important ‘result’ in philosophy—one of its most important tasks—is showing (to borrow a bit of McDowellian terminology) how it is ...

Sincerity and the Reliability of Testimony

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Graham
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
P Content ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony ◽  
Content Preservation

“Content Preservation” by Tyler Burge is one of the most influential articles in the epistemology of testimony. Burge argues for three theses: (1) That we enjoy a prima facie entitlement to take testimony (presentations-as-true) at face value, (2) That this entitlement has an a priori basis, based in the nature of reason, and (3) That in some cases testimony-based beliefs are warranted a priori. Most of the debate in the testimony literature is over the truth of (1). Most of the criticism of Burge’s paper focuses on (3). Burge has since abandoned (3). What about (2)? Burge’s argument for (2) is compressed; the underlying nuts and bolts are difficult to understand. This chapter reconstructs Burge’s overall teleo-functional reliabilist framework and then reconstructs Burge’s overall argument for (2) in some detail. Three criticisms are then offered of the argument. Even granting (1), Burge’s argument does not establish (2).

Narrow Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Narrow Content

Narrow mental content, if there is such a thing, is content that is entirely determined by the goings-on inside the head of the thinker. A central topic in the philosophy of mind since the mid-1970s has been whether there is a kind of mental content that is narrow in this sense. It is widely conceded, thanks to famous thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, that there is a kind of mental content that is not narrow. But it is often maintained that there is also a kind of mental content that is narrow, and that such content can play various key explanatory roles relating, inter alia, to epistemology and the explanation of action. This book argues that this is a forlorn hope. It carefully distinguishes a variety of conceptions of narrow content and a variety of explanatory roles that might be assigned to narrow content. It then argues that, once we pay sufficient attention to the details, there is no promising theory of narrow content in the offing.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Narrow Content ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

The Introduction outlines the history of the narrow content debate. It introduces the famous thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, discusses why the debate only came to prominence in the 1970s, and outlines what is to come.

Are the Colours of Things Secondary Qualities?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
General Notion ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Independent Reality ◽  
Metaphysical Status

This chapter challenges the notion that the colours we believe to belong to the objects we see are ‘secondary’ qualities of those objects. Such a notion is endorsed by John McDowell, who has explained why he thinks the author is wrong to resist it. McDowell recognizes that the author’s focus on the conditions of successfully unmasking the metaphysical status of the colours of things is a way of trying to make sense of whatever notion of reality is involved in it. However, the author argues that the notion of reality he is concerned with is ‘independent reality’, not simply the general notion of reality. He also contends that an exclusively dispositional conception of an object’s being a certain colour cannot account for the perceptions we have of the colours of things.

"Taking in the world". L'ereditŕ kantiana in John McDowell

PARADIGMI ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Anselmo Aportone
Keyword(s):  
Final Part ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
The World

McDowell carries on the dialogue with Kant opened by Sellars and Strawson. He is particularly interested in Kant's idea of intuition as an impression that is already an actualization of the conceptual capacities exercised by the knowing subject in judging. It enables him to release the contemporary discussion on intentionality from the stalemate between bald naturalism and coherentism. Because of the issues raised by both philosophers and some features of their arguments, it is undoubted that Mc- Dowell belongs to the Kantian heritage and exploits some of its elements. The final part of the essay aims at showing that these have in their original context a stronger und more definite meaning than in McDowell's proposal, and that it could be what we are in need of to make the latter more accurate.

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