Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-13T08:52:00.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - Bald Naturalism and McDowell’s Hylomorphism

from II - Later Papers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2020

W. P. Małecki
Affiliation:
University of Wrocław, Poland
Chris Voparil
Affiliation:
Union Institute and University, Ohio
Get access

Summary

In “Bald Naturalism and McDowell’s Hylomorphism,” Rorty distinguishes between two views of the mind’s relation to the world. One view, which he calls “bald naturalism” and attributes to Donald Davidson, sees the mind as a network of intentional states profitable to attribute to certain complexly behaving objects to predict and control their interactions with the environment. The other view, which he dubs “naturalized Platonism” or “hylomorphism” and attributes to John McDowell, sees the mind as a device for getting the world right, where this process consists in the reproduction of the world in the mind. Rorty then uses the distinction to assess the force of McDowell’s criticisms of Davidson’s bald naturalism in Mind and the World. He argues, first, that those criticisms rely on attributing to Davidson a set of views only expressible in terms for which there is no place in his bald naturalism. Second, Rorty holds that those terms belong to McDowell’s hylomorphism and that this view needs to be abandoned, along with the intuitions it expresses. The paper makes this case by pointing to various counterintuitive consequences of McDowell’s view, such as its implication that the world has its own language.

Type
Chapter
Information
On Philosophy and Philosophers
Unpublished Papers, 1960–2000
, pp. 214 - 225
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×