1

Bryce Paulson

Dr. McDowells Homeopathic Prescription

The sixth lecture of Mind and World, is McDowells final step in his
renowned therapeutic system. By this point of the treatment, we the
patients,

have

hopefully

understood

and

overcome

our

ungrounded

anxieties. These anxieties were so crippling, that considering them to be an

illusion before a proper understanding of their root, would have been
laughable. I have been cured and want to help others with any remaining
illusory worries, setting them free from their turmoil. To do this, I will cover
what I believe to be the most helpful and striking advice that McDowell offers
in his final lecture. The issue he is trying to dispel, in the form of an illusion,
is tough to swallow because it has been gaining momentum for hundreds of
years. The illusion takes many forms but can be generalized as some type of
gap or duality between mind and world. I will argue that McDowells vision of
the inseparable unity between mind and world is correct, yet incomplete. The
incompleteness stems from some nagging questions and issues of my own
that are born from McDowells Kantian claims about human freedom.
Specifically, do his claims about positive freedom tell the whole story and
different levels of human experience?
Before I go directly into his argument, I believe that it would be helpful
to provide a brief overview of the therapy he has meticulously constructed
for our benefit. Firstly, let me clarify, he is attempting to show us how and

why our understanding of, or the lack of, the connection between our mind
and the world out there is completely mistaken. This is not to say that our
misunderstanding is ungrounded per se, and to explain why, he provides the
historical story of science-based logic that gave birth to the illusion. The
illusion takes many forms but on a whole can be generalized as, our belief
that humans have some type of foothold outside of natural biology due to
one or many unique capacitates. Instead of rising above and beyond nature,
McDowell argues that quite the opposite type of relationship exists. We are
natural beings and are more intimately bound with nature than we
commonly believe. The gift of subjectivity and spontaneity gives humans the
ability to live in the world, as opposed to living in an environment as he
claims animals do. I will speak more about this difference and its implications
shortly. He simply wants to show us that when we are talking about things in
the world, we can talk about those actual things in the world. There is no
strange sorcery at play that allows us to be influenced by the world but not
be able to confidently talk about the things we experience as being real and
outside of us.
McDowells appeal to the difference between mere animals and
humans serves two purposes. Firstly, to remind us that we are animals born
of nature and we need to take this fact seriously. Secondly, he uses mere
animals to describe the difference between their mere proto-subjective lives
and our fully fledged subjective experience of life. What he wants to show is
that animals live (perspectivally) in a different place than us in regards to

mental life. Animals live in the environment; this means that they are at its
mercy and therefore locked into a constant struggle to meet their biological
needs. Mere animals were not stripped of their freedom, rather they never
had it, or the possibility of gaining it to begin with. Us rational animals start
out as mere animals, but can naturally become more than this by becoming
rational. This is possible by rediscovering our natural potential of freedom. As
discussed in class we defined the difference between positive and negative
freedom as: positive freedom (freedom to) is freedom to submit to a law or
rule, while negative freedom (freedom from) is freedom from external
constraints.

The ability to exert freedom (a freedom that we are born

pregnant with) is due to our superior natural design and the learning of a
historical concept-rich language. To summarize and foreshadow what is to
come, humans are: rational, free, active, and have the privilege of
experience, specifically subjective I experience. Lets take a look at how we
naturally are endowed with the possibility for all of this.
First, I want to point out an important detail pertaining to the scope of
what McDowell is willing to make claims about in his description of minimal
empiricism. He states that he does not mean to be objecting to anything in
cognitive science.1 This is not important or relevant to the picture he is trying
to rescue beneath the veil of our common illusion. But I mention this, for our
own sake because it can be difficult to overlook and cast aside these types of

1 McDowell, John. Mind and World. Pg 121

thought. To help ease the mental hurdles he appeals to the difference

between animals and us.
The key to our freedom our second nature and it is completely natural.
It can be better looked at as a potential ability we are born with, rather than
something we have created by some mad scientist means in order to break
free from our biological imperatives and rise above nature itself. Our second
nature is a remembered or learned type of practical wisdom that is
acquired through our concept-rich language, which has been refined by and
passed down through history. It allows us to revise concepts in our
experience by way of our spontaneity (which is considered a natural faculty).
Spontaneity can only be understood together with receptivity, there is no
dualism, but rather a duality that allows for passive experience to be
responded

to

rationally

(via

spontaneity)

and

contribute

concepts.

Experience belongs to spontaneity in many senses, due to the fact that

spontaneity is what allows for our sense of self and our perspectival place in
the world.2 McDowell explains this perspectival unity of the self and the world
thusly, the objective world is present only to a self-conscious subject, a
subject who can ascribe experiences to herself...It is the spontaneity of the
understanding, the power of conceptual thinking, that brings both the world
and self into view.3 In a strange way, I take this to be saying that nature, via
humans and our conceptual capacities, can observe and judge itself
2 McDowell, John. Mind and World. Pg 114
3 Ibid., Pg 114

(objective nature). Our learned/rediscovered second nature lets us compare

and contrast (as well as accept or reject) our concepts with the passive
concepts illumined in our experience of the world. We can fact check our own
subjective realities, this allows us to discern and decide what we take to be
the case and overcome our biological imperatives, by seeing them for what
they are, rather than being unknowing slaves to them. McDowell states this
in a slightly different way, by saying that we can view the world and be a
part of it, while animals can only view it. 4 We are essentially able to choose
to be free from the biological needs and desires.5
I agree with most of McDowells arguments, yet, I cant seem to shake
the feeling that his Kantian notion of freedom and spontaneity in relation to
self-consciousness, is lacking a part of our experiential story. According to
McDowell freedom is only possible for us human rational animals because we
have a sense of self, live in the world and have the faculty of spontaneity. He
claims that, the power of spontaneity comprises a network of conceptual
capacities linked by putatively rational connections essentially subject to
critical reflection.6 Going on to say that Thought can bear on empirical
reality only because to be a thinker at all is to at home in the space of
reasons.(that allow for the potential of a) reflective stance at which the

4 McDowell, John. Mind and World. Pg 115

5 Ibid., Pg 119
6 Ibid., Pg 124

question arises whether one ought to find this or that persuasive. 7 I dont
have a problem with this general description, yet I do not feel that the force
or, the mover if you will, has been convincingly explained enough to grant
us freedom in the sense that I take us to have. I may be misunderstanding
him, but I take him to be arguing for a type of naturalized compatibilism. If
he is not trying to make this strong of a claim about our freedom, then I think
his Kantian use of spontaneity can only be taken to show, that yes, we differ
from mere animals, we live in the world and have a sense of self, but are
only free to form judgements about what is going on. McDowell seems to be
taking consciousness and self-consciousness to be the same thing. I take
self-consciousness to be instances of reflective thought like, I believe that
the person I just saw, who looked like an old friend, wasnt actually them.
Consciousness on the other hand is more passive and while we are
experiencing the world, the sense of self is not hovering over and making
active judgments of approval or rejection. It is difficult to fully express my
distaste that I believe is justified against McDowell, but to put it as simply as
possible, I feel that he does not allow for the type of autonomy that we
appear to embody. As I have argued this is due to his use of spontaneity
drawn from Kant. I think he is too selective with what he takes from Kant and
believes that by adopting spontaneity in his specific use pardons him from
the other issues that normally come with Kants arguments about
consciousness and experience.
7 Ibid., Pg 125