Experience and the World of the Living

338 Pages·2007·1.3 MB·English

by  Hakos, Gregory S

EXPERIENCE AND THE WORLD OF THE
LIVING:

A CRITIQUE OF JOHN MCDOWELL’S
CONCEPTION OF EXPERIENCE AND NATURE

Gregory S. Hakos

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 2007

Committee:

Michael Bradie, Advisor

Cynthia Baron,
Graduate Faculty Representative

Sara Worley

Marvin Belzer
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ABSTRACT

Michael Bradie, Advisor

John McDowell’s work (in Mind and World and elsewhere) has largely been devoted to
two main objectives: 1) defending a non-traditional form of empiricism; and 2) articulating a
revised conception of nature. McDowell sees these two objectives as connected. He wants to
defend a conception of experience as involving the reception of conceptual “impressions” from
the world. But, he sees that such a conception of experience seems to be blocked by a dominant
form of naturalism which views nature as devoid of value and meaning. Such a “disenchanted”
view of nature makes it impossible to combine the idea that impressions are impacts from the
world with the idea that impressions are conceptually structured (by human minds). McDowell’s
solution to this problem involves “re-enchanting” or revising naturalism so that nature can be
understood as incorporating a “second nature”. McDowell’s notion of second nature is intended
to “make room” (in nature) for the idea that the world’s impacts on the sensory faculties of
concept-using human beings can be already imbued with intentionality.
I agree with McDowell that both our concept of experience and our concept of nature are
in need of revision. But, I disagree with (and critique) the revised conceptions that McDowell
proposes. McDowell’s view is that experience should be conceived in terms of “subjects”
passively receiving conceptual contents (or “impressions”) from the world. I criticize
McDowell’s conception of experience for focusing on “subjects” who are passively acted upon
by the world. Instead, I argue that experience needs to be conceived as an agential interaction,
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which involves organisms actively doing and undergoing things. Because McDowell conceives
of experience in terms of being subject to passive transactions, his revision of naturalism does
not challenge the widespread conception of nature as exhausted by passive relations, a
conception which, I argue, extrudes agency from nature. Instead, he advocates for the idea of a
second nature that simply “makes room” in nature for passive relations to be concept-involving.
In this dissertation I charge that McDowell’s re-conception of nature does not go far
enough. Nature, I argue, needs to be re-enchanted with more than just concepts; it needs to be
re-enchanted with active relations. Thus, I argue for a different idea of second nature, one which
includes all living organisms, not just concept-using creatures. I argue that the sort of relations
that occur in the world of the living—i.e. my conception of second nature—are fundamentally
distinct from the inanimate, passive relations that occur in first nature. Relations in second
nature are “active” because they involve organisms doing things to their environment in an effort
to utilize energy for the process of living. Experience, accordingly, must be understood as an
agential relation; thus I argue that “experience” is a term that essentially refers to the doings and
undergoings of living organisms.
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To Michelle and family:
for their support and encouragement.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
INTRODUCTION. NATURALISM, EXPERIENTIAL AGENCY,
AND THE WORLD OF THE LIVING................................................................................. 1

CHAPTER I. MAKING IT SAFE FOR INTENTIONALITY: MCDOWELL’S RE-
ENCHANTMENT OF NATURE.......................................................................................... 5
Introduction: The Disenchanted View of Nature and the Interminable Oscillation… 5
Traditional Empiricism and the Myth of the Given................................................... 9
Unconstrained Coherentism and Frictionlessness ..................................................... 19
McDowell’s Re-Enchantment of Nature ................................................................... 35

CHAPTER II. MCDOWELL’S CONCEPTION OF THE EXPERIENTIAL RELATION:
ABOUTNESS, IMPRESSIONS, AND ANSWERABILITY TO THE WORLD ................ 59
Answerability to the World, Aboutness, and Impressions......................................... 62
Psychological Nominalism and the Naturalistic Fallacy ........................................... 80
The Coherentist’s Route: Non-Relational Content .................................................... 89
McDowell’s Route: Experiential Openness............................................................... 100
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CHAPTER III. A CRITIQUE OF MCDOWELL’S RE-ENCHANTMENT OF NATURE,
PART I: NATURALISM AND EXPERIENTIAL AGENCY.............................................. 130
Introduction: Two Sorts of Naturalism...................................................................... 130
McDowell on Naturalism, Causation, and Passivity ................................................. 139
Agency and the Passivity of Causation: The Dogma of Agent Causation ................ 153
Passivity, Presentationalism, and Knowledge ........................................................... 185

CHAPTER IV. A CRITIQUE OF MCDOWELL’S RE-ENCHANMENT OF NATURE,
PART II: FREEDOM AND INTELLIGENCE IN ACTION ............................................... 216
Two Sorts of Skepticism: Threats to the External World and Threats to
Freedom……. ............................................................................................................ 216
“Experience” and Education ...................................................................................... 253
Relaxed Naturalism and Second Nature: Experience and the World of the Living… 286

REFERENCES. . 320
APPENDIX A. MCDOWELL’S RELAXED NATURALISM VERSUS THE
DISENCHANTED VIEW OF NATURE.............................................................................. 324
APPENDIX B. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................... 331
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INTRODUCTION
NATURALISM, EXPERIENTIAL AGENCY, AND THE WORLD OF THE
LIVING

As the title suggests, this dissertation claims only to offer a critique of John McDowell’s
conceptions of “experience” and “nature”. But, in my eyes at least, it tries to do much more than
that. I think it ought to be seen as something more than a mere critique, that is, as a piece of
positive philosophizing. The sort of philosophy it espouses—if it can indeed be seen in that
light—is grounded upon a view of nature that can best be seen as a form of pragmatic
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naturalism. Specifically, I have largely been inspired by the work of John Dewey. In fact, the
title of this dissertation is intended to allude to what is considered by many to be the greatest
work of that American philosophical naturalist: Experience and Nature.
I have framed this project in terms of a commentary on and critique of the work of a
single contemporary philosopher: John McDowell. I think that John McDowell is the
appropriate target because a major theme running throughout his work is the articulation of a
new, more liberal naturalism. McDowell has proposed the idea that there can be “Two Sorts of

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See, e.g., S. Morris Eames, Pragmatic Naturalism: An Introduction, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1977. Eames generally associates the term “pragmatic naturalism” with the pragmatic philosophy espoused
by Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead. However, I have something more specific in mind when I use the term
“pragmatic naturalism.” My use of the term is meant to refer to a form of naturalism that is pluralistic about natural
relations. By contrast, traditional, scientistic naturalism tends to be monistic about natural relations, seeking to
reduce all relations in nature to causal relations. The form of pragmatic naturalism that I defend in this dissertation
is “pluralistic” because it admits not only causal relations but also, specifically, agential relations—which I take to
be a natural, non-causal relation. I cannot defend this point here; I begin to offer a defense for such a view in
Chapter Three.
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Naturalism,” corresponding to two conceptions of nature: first nature and second nature.
McDowell critiques a more restrictive, scientistic naturalism which he calls the “disenchanted
view of nature.” According to the disenchanted conception of nature, “something’s way of being
natural is its position in the realm of law.” McDowell’s complaint is that this picture of nature as
exhausted by first nature threatens “to empty it of meaning.”
In response to the disenchanted view of nature, McDowell articulates a conception of
“second nature”, which is intended to naturalize the space of reasons, or, alternately, the space of
concepts. McDowell thinks that intentionality can only be naturalized if the space of concepts is
already seen as occupying a part of the space of nature. Hence, when he talks about re-
enchanting nature, he means to incorporate into our ordinary understanding of “nature” relations
in the space of reasons—relations (or concepts) such as warrant, justification, aboutness,
answerability, in short, normative, epistemological notions such as giving and asking for reasons.
McDowell describes his re-enchantment of nature as “making room” in nature for the inclusion
of conceptual content. He then discusses the acquired ability of second nature as a capacity to
“resonate to the space of reasons.” The idea is that the acquisition of second nature affords
human beings the capacity to have experience, which he conceives as the passive reception of
conceptual contents.
I agree with McDowell’s basic strategy of articulating a more relaxed conception of
naturalism, one that can include the idea of a first nature and a second nature. But, I critique his
particular revision of naturalism as still being committed to a view of natural relations as
exhausted by passive occurrences or mere happenings. McDowell’s response simply
incorporates conceptual relations (or “impressions”) in this space of passive occurrences. In

2
John McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1998). pp. 167-97.
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contrast to this passive view of natural relations, I propose an alternative relaxed naturalism, one
that views natural relations as divided into two basic types: active relations and passive relations.
Passive relations apply to inanimate objects—the scope of such relations extend to what I call
(following McDowell’s locution) first nature. Active relations, by contrast, apply to all living
organisms (not just concept-using creatures) and they differ from passive relations in that living
things are active: they do and undergo things by utilizing energy in the process of living. So
when I use the term second nature I mean to refer to the relations of living agents. Accordingly,
my conception of experience differs from McDowell in that I view experience as involving the
active relation of doing and undergoing.
I think that the most devastating effect that passive naturalism has is on our conception of
experience and agency. The overall thrust of my critique is that a passive naturalism simply
cannot account for agency and action. Passive naturalism, I argue, thus results in a deformed
picture of experience, one in which experience is understood merely an undergoing—i.e., as a
state or episode of awareness or consciousness of content, a mere “impression”. As such, the
conception of experience that I attack is one that takes humans and animals to be passive subjects
rather than agents.
Informally, the dissertation can be understood as divided into two parts. Part one could
be entitled: “an exploration and analysis of the epistemology of John McDowell.” It would
consist of the first two chapters. Chapter one is an attempt to provide a charitable and objective
reconstruction of the basic structure of McDowell’s argument in Mind and World and his defense
of a non-traditional empiricism and an accompanying re-enchantment of nature. The second
chapter also aims to be charitable to McDowell; it essentially endeavors to defend his view
against recent attacks from anti-empiricists like Davidson and Rorty.
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Part two of the dissertation can be understood to consist of the final two chapters, in
which I provide a critique of McDowell’s re-enchantment of nature. He sees “nature” as being
grounded in passive relations—relations in which one thing is passively acted upon by another.
Chapter three lays out my criticism of the particular way that he divides up nature into first
nature and second nature. In that chapter I provide reasons for thinking that second nature
cannot be properly understood as resting upon a picture of natural relations as passive
occurrences. I describe first nature as the realm in which inanimate objects are subject to the
passive forces of cause-effect relations; and, I describe second nature as the world of the living—
the world of active, non-causal relations in which living organisms (agents) do and undergo
things. In the final chapter I focus more on exposing the flaws in McDowell’s account that result
from his continued attachment to a passive conception of natural relations. I argue that the
reliance upon a passive view of natural relations results in the inability to coherently naturalize
experience, education, and free-agency itself.