Tuesday, August 26, 2008
obscure comment by Leiter...
In a recent article on the state of the vocation of philosophy in The Philosophers Magazine, Brian Leiter makes the following comment about McDowell: "There are perhaps a handful of living philosophers who can even pretend to dominate the central issues in the field – the nature of truth, knowledge, and value – like the recently deceased. John McDowell at the University of Pittsburgh stands out in this regard, though the range of philosophical opinion about his work is so wide that it is hard to see him occupying anything like the place of the recently departed. (A famous and influential philosophical naturalist, for example, refers to him as “McDarkness,” which is indicative of the extremities of opinion about his philosophical merit.)" While Leiter is correct that the range of opinion is wide, this does not mean that he will not hold a place in the canon like the recently departed, e.g., Davidson, Hempel, Lewis, Quine, Rawls, PF Strawson. The comment in parentheses shows that Leiter is not inclined to explicate "the range of opinion" but would rather focus on the negative opinion. However, instead of providing reasons for this opinion, he quotes an ad hominim remark by "a famous and influential philosophical naturalist," whose name does not appear. Fame and influence do not provide reasons, neither to accept the undisclosed figure's opinion nor to accept that 'McDarkness' is a fitting name for McDowell. That I am even considering whether I should agree with Leiter's nickname for McDowell may be a sad reflection of the state of the vocation. And, highlighting someone's nickname for McDowell doesn't indicate the extremities of opinion, but merely one extreme.
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3 comments:
I decided to bring McDowell's Mind and World to the top of my reading list because of Leiter's comment! I even found this blog through a google search for some background information on the text.
As I understand, McDowell is opposed to the prevalent 'scientism' in philosophy today, which hints at Leiter's background and is likely why Leiter made his comment. Interestingly, McDowell's opposition to 'scientism' has only made me more anxious to read Mind and World!
On a semi-related note: a philosophy professor that I respect very much gave me this advice when I took one of my first philosophy courses:
There are generally three kinds of people working in philosophy departments: ideologues, scientists, and philosophers. Beware of the first two.
This was rather surprising as an ambitious undergrad philosophy student. Unfortunately, I have found great truth in that professor's warning.
Hello Vileru,
Thank you for your comment. I’m glad to hear you are reading Mind and World. I would be happy to confer with you about it. I am not sure that I understand Leiter’s reasons for quoting the naturalist behind the curtain, and I’m not sure I understand how scientism relates to his reason. I just wanted to address a comment you make about McDowell’s opposition to scientism. I don’t think McDowell is *opposed* to scientism. It is true that in McDowell’s Woodbridge Lectures on Sellars he suggests that his account of intentionality is not as thoroughly scientistic as Sellars, and more aligned with Geach’s but, I have never been sure what to make of this note. However, if we assume we are dealing with intentionality, or the problem of how our words, thoughts, or concepts are about objects in the world, then a scientistic philosopher may approach this problem by developing hypotheses about the intermediaries which do the work of explaining how our words, thoughts, or concepts are about objects in the world, look to data culled from experiments to see if their hypotheses are correct, and render the philosophical problem more or less solved, adjusting hypotheses where the data is recalcitrant, or developing new hypotheses where they find data that cannot be brought under the umbrella of their theories. McDowell admits in Ch. 3 of mind and world that psychologists and philosophers of psychology should not be discouraged from such work. But, in certain cases, motivation for the work is just not uncalled for. So, McDowell, as “an anti-constructive naturalist” thinks that we hit upon a philosophical problem, that philosophical problem makes us wonder, we find it baffling and mysterious, but once we do the hard philosophical work of diagnosing the problem, e.g., finding out what assumptions underly the major claims in the formulation of the problem, then we may discover a therapy for problem by the philosophical discovery that it was never a real problem in the first place. In the case of intentionality, the origin of the problem in in baleful assumptions that Descartes, Brentano, or Husserl engendered in the philosophical tradition, but assumptions that are not sacrosanct. Obviously, I have not done the work of showing how McDowell peels the onion of our seemingly baffling and mysterious philosophical problems until the rotten core, our philosophical illness, is exposed. You’ll have to read more McDowell and judge for yourself whether his anti-constructive therapizing of the problems awaiting us in the philosophical emergency room are any good. Sometimes I find the therapy a relief and sometimes I don’t. Now, one of the biggest issues with philosophical naturalists finding McDowell’s difficult to understand (Is that what “McDarkness” means?), is that McDowell is advancing a complex account of naturalism himself, and constructive or scientistic naturalism cannot be the only variety to be allowed admitted into the discussion of viable naturalisms…
Thank you for the reply! It definitely has helped me gain insight into McDowell's methodology, which I hope will be useful as I read Mind and World.
What led me to suspect McDowell's opposition to 'scientism' is this quote:
"My main concerns in philosophy centre on the effects of a metaphysical outlook into which we easily fall, at the point in the history of thought that we occupy. This outlook might be called naturalism or scientism. I believe it tends towards a distortion of our thinking about the place of mind in the world: the damaging effects show up not only in metaphysics itself, but also (for instance) in reflection about language, and in the philosophy of value and action. The task of philosophy, as I see it, is to undo such distortions." -John McDowell (in "Philosophers" by Steve Pyke).
So, given your reply in the context of this quote, McDowell isn't opposed to naturalism per se, but he believes that naturalisms other than 'scientistic naturalism' should be seriously considered?
On a semi-related noted: is McDowell of the opinion that all philosophical problems can only be dissolved, therefore they cannot be solved? Furthermore, from McDowell's perspective, given an appropriate therapy for a philosophical problem, would that philosophical problem completely cease to be a problem altogether or would it be possible for the problem to simply lose its philosophical status and become a problem that can be solved by other means?
Lastly, could you very briefly explain some key points that McDowell makes about problems concerning intentionality?
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