• frank
    16.4k
    An advocate of conceptual schemes would tell you that when you look out at a landscape and pick out mountains, trees, clouds, sky, dirt, etc., you have fallen under the spell of a particular conceptual scheme that shapes the reality you experience. This idea popped spontaneously into my mind when I was a teenager thinking about the world that a spider must experience. I was thinking that the spider wouldn't even recognize that we were in a room with a ceiling and floor. It wouldn't think of the room as filled with air which was different from the air on the other side of the window. None of this would translate. At the same time, I wouldn't be able to understand the spider's point of view since I lacked the kind of sensory organs it has. This realization had a far reaching impact on the way I thought about myself from that point on. I always thought of my perception, cognition, consciousness in general, as limited by my physical state. Immersed in science fiction, I could easily imagine that aliens would know all sorts of things I couldn't know.

    What would Davidson's criticism of this be? Basically, he would say that I've overstepped in claiming that a spider has a conceptual scheme. In order to know for sure, I'd need to go beyond the human format and somehow come to know what spiders experience. But this is the very thing I've said I can't do, so I'd have to contradict myself. Davidson would say that by the time I've verified that spiders actually have experiences different from my own, I will have destroyed scheme-content duality.

    This is a very persuasive point. Still, I think spiders do experience things, and I think it's probably so different from my own experience that if we could upload the spider's thoughts and download them into my brain, my mind would just detect inexplicable noise. I may be wrong about this, but it seems plausible enough that I can still do something with the idea of conceptual schemes. For instance, I agree with anthropologists that agriculture brought about changes in human life that would represent a shift in conceptual schemes related to the passage of time and the idea of home.

    In other words, I don't think I have to prove that spiders have experiences before I can tentatively believe that they're incommensurable to mine. Do I?
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Excellent OP.

    I hope we can use it to bring out some of the subtly of On the very idea of a conceptual scheme.

    Someone who agrees with Davidson can agree that spiders have very different experiences to you and I. The sort of conceptual schemes that Davidson is addressing do not consist in experiences, so much as in beliefs about those experiences. They are for Davidson much the same as Quine's web of belief. Similar ideas are found throughout the literature. It is the foundation for conceptual relativism of all sorts.

    Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; they are points of view from which individuals, cultures, or periods survey the passing scene. — On the very idea, p.1

    The basic idea in Davidson's paper is fairly straight forward. That folk have different points of view can make sense only if there is some common framework from which we might notice the difference. But if we have such a common framework, then by that very fact, aren't we working in the same conceptual scheme? Doesn't the difference now become that of a disagreement within a conceptual scheme, and not between conceptual schemes?

    And if that is the case, then any plurality of conceptual schemes reduces to at most one.

    And there is a further step for Davidson. If there is at most one conceptual scheme, then how does it make sense to talk of conceptual schemes?

    The conclusion Davidson reaches is that the notion of our beliefs being embedded in a conceptual scheme drops out of consideration. Our beliefs are tested against the world, not against competing conceptual schemes.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    What would Davidson's criticism of this be? Basically, he would say that I've overstepped in claiming that a spider has a conceptual scheme. In order to know for sure, I'd need to go beyond the human format and somehow come to know what spiders experience. But this is the very thing I've said I can't do, so I'd have to contradict myself. Davidson would say that by the time I've verified that spiders actually have experiences different from my own, I will have destroyed scheme-content duality.frank

    This is a good explanation. There is more to be said here.

    The spider's conceptual scheme is not just it's experiences, but the beliefs it forms as a result. For Davidson, becasue those beliefs and our beliefs are about the same world, they will be congruent. And this may well be so regardless of the experiences of the spider.

    As she crawls along the ceiling of the room, she believes that she can move forward, and does so again and again. Until she encounters the wall. Here she stops believing that she can move forward - stretching her pedipalps forward reveals an obstacle - instead believing that she must change direction.

    Despite the experiences had by the spider and ourselves being quite different, the belief had by both is congruent.

    Might leave this here. I'm sure it will be enough to receive a reaction.
  • Joshs
    5.9k


    The basic idea in Davidson's paper is fairly straight forward. That folk have different points of view can make sense only if there is some common framework from which we might notice the difference. But if we have such a common framework, then by that very fact, aren't we working in the same conceptual scheme? Doesn't the difference now become that of a disagreement within a conceptual scheme, and not between conceptual schemes?Banno

    The schemes dont have to be identical , they can be similar. And they can be alike when it comes to superficial aspects of behavior that don’t matter deeply to us, but differ profoundly concerning matters of great personal significance. One person can subsume another’s conceptual scheme as a variant of their own, thereby recognizing both the points of similarity and of difference. One person can understand another person’s conceptual scheme better than the other person can understand the first person. I dont have to understand you to know that your way of thinking about a certain matter is different from my own.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    I had a useful (for me!) discussion with Google's Gemini about Davidson's paper that I had last read many years ago. I posted the discussion here. We also discussed John McDowell's correctives and improvements (according to me!) on Davidson's coherentist theory of epistemic justification. Our discussion of J. J. Gibson and his concept of affordance connects with @frank's example of the spider and of its experience in the OP.
  • Wayfarer
    23.5k
    Similar territory traversed by Nagel's What is it Like to be a Bat, isn't it? Although I think I can imagine that bats, being warm-blooded mammals, have a rudimentary form of self-awareness, which I can't help but think completely absent in arachnids. But even bats aren't going to wonder about what it would be like to be .... That is an idea that to our knowledge only humans can entertain.

    Davidson would say that by the time I've verified that spiders actually have experiences different from my own, I will have destroyed scheme-content duality.frank

    Ever seen The Fly?
  • frank
    16.4k
    The basic idea in Davidson's paper is fairly straight forward. That folk have different points of view can make sense only if there is some common framework from which we might notice the difference. But if we have such a common framework, then by that very fact, aren't we working in the same conceptual scheme? Doesn't the difference now become that of a disagreement within a conceptual scheme, and not between conceptual schemes?

    And if that is the case, then any plurality of conceptual schemes reduces to at most one.
    Banno

    But this doesn't rule out varying conceptual schemes between say, humans and aliens. It just says that if there are such differences, we wouldn't be able to detect them. But consider this scenario, taken from the plot of the movie Arrival:

    Aliens arrive and begin teach humans their language. But eventually, one woman discovers that the aliens have a completely different view of time. She realizes this because through association with them and their language, she has developed the same perspective on time they have. Yes, their language is now translatable to her, but what she's discovered is that in the past there was a conceptual rift.

    I think in the same way, we could speculate that people in the past were missing some of the concepts needed to understand the world as we see it. In other words, Davidson doesn't really rule out scheme-content duality, he's just criticizing cases where people assert the existence of a rift, and immediately show that there is no rift by offering the translation. It remains possible that there could be aliens who have untranslatable languages.

    Our beliefs are tested against the world, not against competing conceptual schemes.Banno

    The information @Pierre-Normand provided calls this into question. Davidson has been criticized for rejecting any rational influence of the world on our beliefs. I'll flesh that out after I've understood it better.
  • Outlander
    2.2k
    Excellent OP.Banno

    Well the standards for a proper, valid, and lasting OP on TPF have to be fairly excellent as a bare minimum per the rules so let's not get carried away. Superfluous praise truly helps no one, certainly not the praisee.

    Our beliefs are tested against the world, not against competing conceptual schemes.Banno

    This, while hard to refute as anything less than relevant, has a few points of contention I feel you'd agree are wholly reasonable to address. "The world", as many would perceive, is not truly "the world." It's how people have made society and thus an illusion of comparison to some sort of absolute everlasting state that both has been and would be without social engineering or otherwise, any other person living on it. One cannot truly "test their beliefs" against the "world" unless in an enclosed, isolated environment where either the individual (or group of like-minded individuals) are free to do so in an environment truly their own without any sort of influence or control by external factors. This cannot be done unless in some sort of socially and technologically barren or isolated landscape, which is virtually non-existent to the vast majority of persons.

    We are social beings, meaning, to an extent, we're socially-engineered to be noticeably different or "set apart" from "the world" around us. Wherever people manage to thrive, that is solely because of artificial (or non-organic) creation of society and civilization. In short, society or groups of people and nations especially are in fact unique from "the world", per se. Each are furthermore in fact in competition, otherwise, armies and borders would not exist. So, there's basically nowhere on Earth you could go that is not socially engineered or given an artificial set of "what works vs. what doesn't" by those who live and place their identity under what eventually is little more than a competing social (ie. conceptual) scheme.

    Basically, our beliefs "can", in theory, be tested against the "world", truly. It's not impossible. But realistically in 99% of cases never truly are, and simply are in fact tested against by what, by all irrefutable logical definition is in fact, a competing conceptual (specifically, social) scheme.

    Let's say it's 1,000 years ago and you go to a never-visited island with a population of a few dozen people. That's you testing your beliefs against the world. But not really. Because they have made the region or reality you, in that moment, are confined to, as their own. No different than preaching the general belief in "equality" to a town of slave-owners. The "world", per se, has nothing to do with it. You're in a constructed society or region where the law, no matter how just or injust, is the only thing you're reasonably competing against ie. that provides resistance or response, at least, overshadows anything else by pure social will or force.

    Ultimately, the only thing you're testing your beliefs against is that of others who have made a certain world, geography, region, or society, according to their conceptual belief, which by nature is in fact a competing one.

    So, I disagree with the quoted statement above as some sort of 100% "happens all the time" absolute where a claim of the opposite would be, seemingly according to your wording, invalid.

    --

    But in general, while I've never (to my recollection) read a word of the individual in question, giving the OP the benefit of the doubt and respect that he understands what the individual (Davidson) claims, and has the ability to recite it for us, I feel it appropriate to respond to that as one and the same.

    In other words, I don't think I have to prove that spiders have experiences before I can tentatively believe that they're incommensurable to mine. Do I?frank

    This is interesting. What is the compelling or jarring factor that makes a spider different from one's own? Is it the size? The (so-called) scientific awareness of its ability (or lack thereof) to perceive the world (at least, in comparison to one's own)? Or something beyond? Surely one can imagine being kidnapped and placed in a hypothetical mansion where everything is say, equivalent to the difference in scale to the size of a spider vs. a human, perhaps 1000x the size of what a person is accustomed to? And then what? If we believe the spider has a conscious, a mind, a medium to process its surroundings to the point of a larger, more-intelligent picture, though perhaps not to the same degree, naturally, we have a reasonable avenue to contend the claim in one way or another. Otherwise, surely. It's just a spider, it doesn't know anything, it just "does". So which do we attest as more likely, and why?
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Meh. I liked the OP.
  • Banno
    26.1k


    Well, 's AI starts off by talking about "raw sensory data" in. a way which is not found in the article. Looks to be a confabulation, again. As a foundation, sense data is explicitly rejected in the argument, at page 12 of the Jstore version. The AI partly saves itself later, but I remain dubious as to the benefits of such conversations. They are unreliable.

    But if you want to put something together, that might be of interest.

    A simpler example of the sort of argument you propose might be dolphins rather than aliens. Here we have a creature that has the brain capacity and social structure we'd expect to see in a creature with a language, but we have been unable so far to build a simple translation. Perhaps their beliefs are so different that there are no common grounds on which to build a mutual understanding - "If a dolphin could speak, we could not understand him". But notice that what is at stake is whether dolphins have a language, and we can't understand it, or whether they have no language at all. This lends itself to Davidson's idea that in order to recognise that dolphins have a language, we would need to understand at least some of what that language is doing.

    The apocryphal that the Greeks had no "concept" of the colour blue is not a bad point, either. Tentatively accepting the apocryphal, we would say that we learned to distinguish blue from red, because that was a distinction on which we could agree and which became relevant. That distinction is not just in the mooted conceptual scheme, but is found in our shared beliefs. It became part of the language when our attention was drawn towards it.

    Davidson has been criticized for rejecting any rational influence of the world on our beliefs.frank
    Again, that looks to be more than Davidson is saying. While some of our beliefs are caused, it does not follow that they all are. The belief in that pain in your back is not a rational deduction. But go ahead.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    A belief that you can walk thorough walls can be tested very readily. A conceptual scheme in which you could walk through walls would have very different meanings for "walk" or for "wall". There are two simple points here, that not just any belief will do, and that overwhelmingly we agree as to what is the case. In order for another way of talking to be recognised as a way of talking at all, it would be largely congruent with our own way of talking. Yes, we live in communities and hold our language is common, but that language is embedded in how things are, which is largely not chosen by us but a given.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    Well, ↪Pierre-Normand's AI starts off by talking about "raw sensory data" in. a way which is not found in the article. Looks to be a confabulation, again.Banno

    If you want to argue that LLMs are faulty, prone to hallucination and confabulation, and can't generally be relied upon as authoritative sources, you will find no argument from me. In fact, in all of those respects, I've found them to be nearly as bad as your average human being!

    Although Davidson didn't use the word "raw", Gemini's initial characterisation of the dialectical situation and its unpacking of the basic concepts, seemed very good to me. The second sentence Davidson wrote in On the Vey Idea of a Conceptual Scheme is "Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of
    organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation". So, when setting out to criticize the scheme/content dichotomy, Davidson takes as one of his main targets the idea of data of sensation that have not yet been informed by conceptual categories. He later refers to those, I dare say "raw" materials, as "uninterpreted contents," a concept that, he proposes, can be relinquished without giving up on the idea of (informed) empirical content. So, when Gemini paraphrases "the data of sensation" or "uninterpreted content" as "raw data of experience" in its explanation, I give it a pass.

    Let me stress also, as I had already hinted, that I didn't use Gemini merely to report to me on the content of a paper that I hadn't read. I had read it at least twice in the early 2000s after having already read reactions to it by Brandom and McDowell. I just wanted to have my memory jogged. I must say, though, that the structured way in which Gemini responded greatly helped my get a better handle on Davidson's these by situating it within the main components of his thought, which I was familiar with but hadn't yet been able to integrate coherently within the broader dialectical situation (where he targets Quine, Whorf & Sapir, Kuhn, etc. and is being responded to by Strawson, Brandom, McDowell, etc.)
  • frank
    16.4k

    I've also read the paper, so no one is using an AI comment in lieu of reading and considering. I didn't know about the "spinning in the void" criticism and looking into that is giving me a deeper understanding.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    , I'm not suggesting the AI is wrong, just unreliable. Nor am I interested in a debate over AI in a thread about Davidson. By all means make a case using the AI, but I hope no one here will accept the AI as an authority.

    If this is to be yet another thread about AI, I'm out.
  • Janus
    16.7k
    I read through your conversation with the LLM about Davidson vs McDowell in the thread you linked. From the little I know of Davidson's work I had formed the opinion that the idea that experience is always already interpreted is central to his philosophy. If that is the case, I am not seeing how his view differs in any important way from McDowell's.

    Any ideas?
  • frank
    16.4k

    I would rather you stayed, so no using AI as an authority.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    I read through your conversation with the LLM about Davidson vs McDowell in the thread you linked. From the little I know of Davidson's work I had formed the opinion that the idea that experience is always already interpreted is central to his philosophy. If that is the case, I am not seeing how his view differs in any important way from McDowell's.

    Any ideas?
    Janus

    There is significant overlap between Davidson's and McDowell's philosophies. The idea that experience is always already interpreted is common ground between them. But that's because Davidson conceives of the content of experience as the contents of (conceptually informed) belief states that are somehow caused to occur in an individual by the world. The whole thrust of McDowell's Mind and World (which is the reprinting of his 1991 John Locke Lectures) is to thread a middle path between a conception (like Quine's) where the empirical source of our beliefs (the "irritations of our nerve endings") resides outside of the sphere of the conceptual, but causes events within that sphere (in the form of intentional attitudes that are "Given", as Sellars would put it) and a conception like Davidson's where empirical contents reside within that sphere, and aren't "Given" in the Sellarsian sense, but still are caused by the world to occur in a non-normative fashion that makes them unsuitable for grounding empirical beliefs, according to McDowell. I think Gemini had done a good job (when I prompted it to do so) in expounding on McDowell's Kant-inspired idea that the passive actualization of conceptual abilities are drawn in acts of receptivity as a result of our active engagements with the world (thereby integrating Kantian receptivity and spontaneity in the same act), and also on my purported elucidation or demystification of this process in terms of Gibson's ecological approach to animal perception.
  • Janus
    16.7k
    But that's because Davidson conceives of the content of experience as the contents of (conceptually informed) belief states that are somehow caused to occur in an individual by the world. The whole thrust of McDowell's Mind and World (which is the reprinting of his 1991 John Locke Lectures) is to thread a middle path between a conception (like Quine's) where the empirical source of our beliefs (the "irritations of our nerve endings") resides outside of the sphere of the conceptual, but cause events within that sphere (in the form of intentional attitudes that are "Given", as Sellars would put it) and a conception like Davidson's where empirical contents reside within that sphere, and aren't "Given" in the Sellarsian sense, but still are caused by the world to occur in a non-normative fashion that makes them unsuitable for grounding empirical beliefs, according to McDowell.Pierre-Normand

    The problem I see is that if our experience of the world is always already interpreted, and we acknowledge that we are being affected pre-cognitively by the world (although it would seem inapt to refer to those affections as "empirical contents" since those are part of cognition), and we also refer to what we cognize as 'the world', then it seems that when we speak of the world we are not speaking unequivocally.

    Add to that the fact that we are arguably 'brain blind' and if we also accept that we are part of the world both in the pre-cognitive and cognitive senses, then i wonder where that leaves us in our attempt to make sense of much less answer such questions. To me it looks like a Gordian knot; which edge of the sword will we use to cut it? Perhaps we cannot cut it because we have access to only one edge of the sword.
  • Apustimelogist
    676
    For instance, I agree with anthropologists that agriculture brought about changes in human life that would represent a shift in conceptual schemes related to the passage of time and the idea of home.frank

    Would these meet the criteria for conceptual scheme under Davidson though? I believe Davidson's main target is some kind of claim that there are different conceptual schemes, ways (forms) of living (life) that are inherently unintelligible from some other perspectives. So the question is whether changes of norms about home life or concepts of time are unintelligible? I believe if anthropologists can talk about them, then probably not, at least to some degree. I'm sure a spider could never understand the majority of human existence though.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    The problem I see is that if our experience of the world is always already interpreted, and we acknowledge that we are being affected pre-cognitively by the world, and we refer to what we cognize as 'the world', then it seems that when we speak of the world we are not speaking unequivocally.Janus

    Where is the problem, though? If our epistemology is Cartesian and representationalist, then "The World" is what it is regardless of the manner in which we conceive it to be and it is also forever hidden behind a veil of perceptions. The former idea—"metaphysical realism"—has been Hilary Putnam's target over much of the second half of his long career. He has proposed to replace it with a form of pragmatic Realism with a Human Face (and has claimed indebtedness to McDowell). If we acknowledge, however, that our experience of the world always is already interpreted, then we lose the idea of a view from nowhere, but our references to the world (our world) aren't thereby rendered equivocal. Davidson's views on radical interpretation, and the principle of charity, also yield some common ground with McDowell in dispelling the idea of incommensurate conceptual schemes. Our disagreements about the world don't stem from an inability to agree on what it is "in itself" but rather are manifestations of our willingness to negotiate how it is that we can most perspicuously define it in relation to us and us in relation with it. This sort of organism-environment mutuality that was already at play before we became rational animals remains at play after we have.
  • Janus
    16.7k
    Where is the problem, though? If our epistemology is Cartesian and representationalist, then "The World" is what it is regardless of the manner in which we conceive it to be and it is also forever hidden behind a veil of perceptions.Pierre-Normand

    Well, if we are always and only working with and within the always interpreted world that would seem to dispel any significant difference between Davidson's and McDowell's positions. Within that interpreted world we inhabit and understand there would seem to be no problem regarding the rationality of our judgements, at least when it comes to empirical matters.

    On the other hand, if we acknowledge that we are pre-cognitively causally affected by the pre-interpreted world and that those affections feed into our thinking in ways we cannot hope to understand (which seems most plausible) it would seem the problem of just what is primordially given to us remains untouched.

    Am I missing something here?
  • Banno
    26.1k
    The idea that Davidson would deny that some of our beliefs might be the product of ratiocination is absurd.

    If nothing else it ignores triangulation and holism, and that interpretation itself is a rational process.
  • Apustimelogist
    676
    Our disagreements about the world don't stem from an inability to agree on what it is "in itself" but rather are manifestations of our willingness to negotiate how it is that we can most perspicuously define it in relation to us and us in relation with it.Pierre-Normand

    Hmm, thought provoking statement, very interesting.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    Well, if we are always and only working with and within the always interpreted world that would seem to dispel any significant difference between Davidson's and McDowell's positions. Within that interpreted world we inhabit and understand there would seem to be no problem regarding the rationality of our judgements, at least when it comes to empirical matters.Janus

    How are basic empirical judgments primarily justified? You might judge that the cat is on the mat because you looked and saw that it is. What happened when you looked? On McDowell's view, the conceptual elements that make up this perceptual content—along with your self-conception as a being with sense perception, the Kantian 'I think'—are passively drawn upon in experience. This allows you to judge that the cat is on the mat based on it visually appearing to you that it is. This is a joint actualization of conceptually informed rational abilities, enabling you to withdraw the judgment if you detect misleading circumstances or misapplied concepts, and of a receptive ability that makes you perceptually sensitive to cats, mats, etc.

    On Davidson's view, the presence of the cat on the mat causes you to acquire the belief that the cat is on the mat. New perceptual beliefs might trigger revisions of prior beliefs, in line with his coherentism. However, Davidson would describe illusory or misleading perceptions as cases where the world causes us to form a false belief. The experience is still the causation of a belief, regardless of its truth.

    For McDowell, this is insufficient. It doesn't explain how experience can provide reasons for our beliefs, especially when we know our experience might be misleading. Davidson focuses solely on the causal role of experience, omitting the rational constraint McDowell sees as necessary for genuine knowledge. The problem isn't that Davidson denies fallibility, but that his account gives experience itself no role beyond that of a causal intermediary, making it hard to see how experience could justify our beliefs..
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    The idea that Davidson would deny that some of our beliefs might be the product of ratiocination is absurd.Banno

    We were talking specifically about empirical judgements and their justification. Who suggested Davidson would issue such a denial? Davidson's claim that experiences cause agents to acquire beliefs is an expression of his conception of empirical experience, not belief.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Davidson denies, as the third dogma of empiricism, that a distinction can be maintained between a conceptual component and an empirical component; between supposed objective and a subjective aspects of knowledge.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    Davidson denies, as the third dogma of empiricism, that a distinction can be maintained between a conceptual component and an empirical component; between supposed objective and a subjective aspects of knowledge.Banno

    This is very much common ground, isn't it? I don't view Davidson as denying that experiences (empirical beliefs) can rationally ground other beliefs. He denies that uninterpreted experiences could fulfill that role. And McDowell questions that Davidson's empirical beliefs (as conceived by him to be caused to occur by a subjects transactions with the world) could fulfill this normative role.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    We were talking specifically about empirical judgements and their justification.Pierre-Normand
    You might be. I think the discussion should be somewhat broader.

    Davidson's claim that experiences cause agents to acquire beliefs is an expression of his conception of empirical experience, not belief.Pierre-Normand
    Of course it is an expression of his conception of belief. How could it be one and not the other? That would be to reintroduce the scheme - content dualism he rejects. He denies that there is a place for experience in our knowledge apart from our beliefs. There can be no "pure experience" separate from our ratiocinations; any empirical judgements already have the whole web of belief "built in". If McDowell seeks to seperate out again the experience from the judgement, he is a long way from Davidson.

    And I think mistaken.

    But this is a thread about Davidson, not McDowell. That McDowell misapplies Davidson is neither here nor there.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.5k
    Of course it is an expression of his conception of belief. How could it be one and not the other? That would be to reintroduce the scheme - content dualism he rejects. He denies that there is a place for experience in our knowledge apart from our beliefs. There can be no "pure experience" separate from our ratiocinations; any empirical judgements already have the whole web of belief "built in". If McDowell seeks to seperate out again the experience from the judgement, he is a long way from Davidson.Banno

    What I meant simply was that, according to Davidson, experiences are beliefs. They are beliefs of a specific sort: empirical beliefs (that are caused by the world to occur) but not all beliefs are, according to him, empirical beliefs. Beliefs indeed could the product of ratiocination according to Davidson (which is a claim that you seemingly thought I might deny.)

    It is true that McDowell seeks to distinguish the experience (things seeming, or visually appearing, to be thus and so) from the belief or judgement that things are thus and so. The need for such a distinction is apparent when one is subjected to a visual illusion, one is aware of the illusory nature of the experience, and one thereby isn't inclined to judge (or believe) that things are the way experience represents them to be. Marking this distinction doesn't result in expelling perceptual contents from the sphere of the conceptual. It was likely the need not to expel them thus that motivated Davidson to equate experiences with beliefs (and to claim that only a belief can be such as to justify another belief) but it may have been overkill. A perceptual state can be conceptually informed and still fall short from being endorsed as the content of a judgement or belief.

    Your suggestion that a thread being about philosopher X should exclude discussions of philosopher Y who has been critical of X, because you personally don't agree with the criticism, in a philosophy forum, is wrong headed.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    For Davidson, the "world-in-itself" is a nonsense. His is a rejection of "Cartesian" and "representative" approaches. Indeed, it follows Wittgenstein in rejecting that sort of dualism, the very grounding of the realism/idealism dichotomy. It's not that there is one conceptual scheme, but that the very idea cannot be made coherent.
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