Naturalism and the Space of Reasons in Mind and World

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 22 (1):49-62 (2014)
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Abstract

This paper aims to show that many criticisms of McDowell’s naturalism of second nature are based on what I call ‘the orthodox interpretation’ of McDowell’s naturalism. The orthodox interpretation is, however, a misinterpretation, which results from the fact that the phrase ‘the space of reasons’ is used equivocally by McDowell in Mind and World. Failing to distinguish two senses of ‘the space of reasons’, I argue that the orthodox interpretation renders McDowell’s naturalism inconsistent with McDowell’s Hegelian thesis that the conceptual is unbounded. My interpretation saves McDowell from being inconsistent. However, the upshot of my interpretation is that what is really at work in McDowell’s diagnosis of the dualism between nature and reason is the Hegelian thesis, not the naturalism of second nature.

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Tsung-Hsing Ho (何宗興)
National Chung Cheng University

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References found in this work

Mind and World.John Henry McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mind and World.Huw Price & John McDowell - 1994 - Philosophical Books 38 (3):169-181.
Responses.John McDowell - 2018 - In André J. Abath & Federico Sanguinetti (eds.), Mcdowell and Hegel: Perceptual Experience, Thought and Action. Cham: Springer Verlag.
Mind and world: with a new introduction.John Henry McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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