INTRODUCTION

First published in 1994, John McDowell's book, Mind and World, has already won recognition as a philosophical classic. Few works of the past 100 years have managed to challenge so profoundly the host of preconceptions that prevent modern empiricism from truly being the philosophy of experience it aims to be. Ever since Locke, empiricist appeals to “experience” have remained trapped behind a “veil of ideas,” unable to make contact with the world itself. The mind has been understood as having immediate experience, not of things themselves, but only of its own impressions, and as therefore having to build up from these givens a picture of the reality beyond. Yet every attempt to bridge this gap between inner and outer has fallen short. In fact, the very notion of something simply “given” in experience has proven impossible to articulate clearly. Others before have tried to forge a way out of this cul-de-sac, though often at the price of abandoning the idea that experience forms a tribunal for our beliefs about the world. McDowell presents a new understanding of mind and world that looks better poised to redeem the empiricist ideal.

Despite my admiration for his accomplishment, the two of us differ greatly in our conceptions of philosophy itself, however. This difference in outlook colors my large measure of agreement with the details of his remodeled empiricism, leading me to see new problems arising where McDowell believes he need not push further.