A Defense of McDowell’s Response to the Sceptic

Acta Analytica 29 (1):43-59 (2014)
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Abstract

Crispin Wright argues that John McDowell’s use of disjunctivism to respond to the sceptic misses the point of the sceptic’s argument, for disjunctivism is a thesis about the differing metaphysical natures of veridical and nonveridical experiences, whereas the sceptic’s point is that our beliefs are unjustified because veridical and nonveridical experiences can be phenomenally indistinguishable. In this paper, I argue that McDowell is responsive to the sceptic’s focus on phenomenology, for the point of McDowell’s response is that it is the phenomenal character of experience that makes the belief in disjunctivism rational, and thereby also makes rational the anti-sceptical belief that, other things being equal, the world is the way it appears

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Harold Langsam
University of Virginia

Citations of this work

The intuitive case for naïve realism.Harold Langsam - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (1):106-122.

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References found in this work

Mind and World.John Henry McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Science, Perception and Reality.Wilfrid Sellars (ed.) - 1963 - New York,: Humanities Press.
Consciousness, Color, and Content.Michael Tye - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
The intrinsic quality of experience.Gilbert Harman - 1990 - Philosophical Perspectives 4:31-52.
Mind and World.John Mcdowell - 1996 - Philosophical Quarterly 46 (182):99-109.

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