Intro to Mind and World

I'm going to be presenting in prose form some of parts of my lectures of my lectures on Mind and World. I begin with the Kantian background for the lectures. Although McD says that he's writing a prolegomena to the Phenemonology of Spirit, it's Kant's first critique (and third) that provides much of the architecture for the edifice. There are two sets of notions that need elucidation. On the one hand, concepts and intuitions. And on the other hand, spontaneity and receptivity.

One way to access why these Kantian notions are pivotal is to begin with the question that leads to the need for these notions. And, Lecture 1 really begins with a how possible question: “How is empirical content possible?” McDowell draws from Kant in order to answer this question. What does McDowell take from Kant? First, he uses the general transcendental strategy. And answer to the how-possible question cannot go merely through a causal-intentional explanation. Two contrasting answer to the how-possible question that McDowell would reject might be (1) the causal abstractionist picture in which empirical content is possible through multiple abstractions from sensory particulars and (2) the intentional nativist picture in which empirical content is possible through our already having intentional contents in our mind/brains. Neither of these pictures answer the how-possible question, because they leave anxieties about empirical content. They attempt to answer Zeno's paradox of the stadium by walking across the stadium, where Mcd wants to answer such philosophical conundrums by showing that that which makes empirical content seem impossible is actually the product of a philosophical skepticism that we need not accept.

Part of the answer to this philosophical skepticism is to adopt Kant's distinction between spontaneity and receptivity and concepts and intuitions. Let's review what Kant says about these in the Inaugural dissertation. The Inaugural Dissertation 1770: Kant introduces the key distinction between intuitions and concepts, and introduces the distinction between sensation and the intellect, and introduces the distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are). Also, in a Letter to Herz (1772): claims that the whole secret of metaphysics is to explain how intellectual concepts which neither produce their objects nor are produced by their objects nevertheless necessarily apply to such objects. Thus, even before the first critique, Kant has a distinction between intuitions and concepts. But, what is this distinction. Intuitions: our ability to receive representations, i.e., our receptivity in experience; intuitions are products of sensibility and the sensible grounds of empirical knowledge. Concepts: our ability to cognize an object through these representations, i.e., our spontaneity in experience; concepts are rules of the understanding. It is unclear whether McDowell would accept this characterization of Kant's distinction. More needs to be said later about what McDowell's notions are, and how faithfully they map onto Kant's notions.

But, for McDowell, regardless of the particular interpretations of intuitions and concepts, Kant’s Dictum is central for McDowell: “Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/B75) It pays to compare this notion with something that Aristotle "writes" in De Anima: The mind which is actively thinking is the objects which it thinks.

Let's focus more particularly on intuitions. Intuitions relate to objects as singular terms to objects; intuitions “relate immediately to the object and is singular.” This raises several questions. Are intuitions directly referential non-conceptual representations? Kant suggests that intuitions are phenomenal presentations of objects in sensibility, but nota bene the dictum at A51/B75. Let's focus more particularly on concepts. Concepts relate to objects as general terms to objects. ‘Concept’ “refers to [the object] mediately by means of a feature [or marks] which several things may have in common.” Are concepts purely descriptive non-sensible representations?
Kant suggests that concepts are rules for the application of general terms to objects, but nota bene the dictum at A51/B75. In each case, intuitions and concepts are not defined in terms of each other, so they are distinct in some respect, but the Kantian dictum forces us to see them as together in judgment. So, we need to ask, is there an interdefinability problem in Kant's notions of intuitions and concepts? Is there the same problem in McDowell's notions of intuitions and concepts?

Throughout the lectures, we'll call the Kantian dictum the Togetherness Principle (TP). McDowell calls this the Kantian Dictum, but principles are easier to assess than dictums. The interdependence of intuitions and concepts. The togetherness principle may show that intuitions are not independent of concepts and concepts are not independent of intuitions.(Sellars (1968) and McDowell (1994)). But, we are forced into an oscillation then, because if we stress the independence too much, then we have to reject the togetherness principle. If we stress the togetherness principle too much, then we have to reject independence. In a way, this is the problem of intentionality. But, I should say that there are other passages can contradict the togetherness principle (check out Hanna's recent book on the topic): “objects can indeed appear to us without necessarily having to be related to functions of the understanding” (A89/B122);
“appearances can certainly be given in intuition without functions of the understanding” (A90/B1222); “the manifold for intuition must already be given prior to the synthesis of the understanding and independently from it” (B145).

Some have argued that these passages are consistent with the Kantian Dictum because the Kantian Dictum applies only to objectively valid judgments. Objectively validity is what furnishes the “conditions of the possibility of all knowledge of objects” (A89/B122). This would suggest that Kant thought there where empty concepts and blind intuitions that were not objectively valid (Bermudez (2003)). But, Kant might argue that such non-conceptual intuitions and non-intuitional concepts may be theoretically problematic and empirically useless. Further, McDowell will argue in Lecture III that non-conceptual content is problematic on several grounds. This debate about conceptual and non-conceptual content still continues and is probably the most rigorous debate emerging out of Mind and World. But, it should be said here that if Kant thought that the Kantian dictum was meant to insure objective validity, then McDowell is correct to borrow it in the way that he does, because the "objective purport" of empirical content is his main concern. But, how is this knowledge of the external world possible? (I'm here slumming with the term 'external,' not something that McDowell would do...)

How is Knowledge Possible? Notice that Kant asks how-possible questions about neither relations of concepts nor applications of empirical concepts. It is not difficult to explain how we know that all cats are animals; it is not difficult to explain how we know that a particular has a property, e.g., Spacetime (my cat) is a cat. The central how-possible question is how is synthetic apriori knowledge possible? How does this relate to McDowell’s question: “How is empirical content possible?” McDowell’s “How Possible” Question: How is empirical content possible? Assuming that the tribunal of experience (Quine 1956) is exhausted by sensory transactions then how is it possible that thought can have any bearing on the world? What is the obstacle to our making sense of thought bearing on the world? What makes empirical content possible?

There are two answers that trouble McDowell. I close this post with a summary of the intolerable oscillation. The interminable oscillation is between the Given on the one hand and coherentism on the other hand. On the one hand, the idea that empirical content can be understood solely in the logical space of nature (what McD calls 'bald naturalism'). On the other hand, the idea that empirical content is different in kind (sui generis) from empirical description (what McD calls 'rampant platonism'). In the next post, I will try to summarize the oscillation...