Abstract
An articulation of problems with certain themes at work in the existential phenomenology that underpins Dreyfus’ critique of McDowell, especially insofar as Dreyfus draws on Heidegger’s existential analysis. Although this paper argues that the substance of Dreyfus’ critique of McDowell is compelling, this paper further demonstrates that Dreyfus’ own account of human experience needs to be enhanced through a more critical exploration of the themes of freedom, expertise, and solicitation.
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Notes
- 1.
This paper is warmly dedicated to my colleague and friend on the other end of Commonwealth Avenue: Richard Cobb-Stevens. In a meeting of SPEP some years ago, Richard voiced concern publicly about the troubling notion of hyletic data in Husserl’s thought. The notion is troubling since, on Husserl’s account, they are at once non-intentional yet somehow part of intentionality. In certain pivotal respects, the debate between Dreyfus and McDowell echoes Richard’s concern. Indeed, both thinkers attempt to provide explanations of the role of sensory experience by bypassing any reference to hyletic data that enter independently into the constitution of intentionality, by way of insisting on either the unconditional conceptuality of experience (McDowell) or the mindlessness of human coping – a “motor intentionality” – at the base of experience (Dreyfus). I am grateful to Lee Braver, Hubert Dreyfus, and Timothy Nulty for their critical discussion of an earlier version of this paper.
- 2.
John McDowell, “Response to Dreyfus,” Inquiry, 50, no. 4 (August 2007): 366.
- 3.
Hubert L. Dreyfus, “The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” Inquiry, 50, no. 4 (August 2007): 353, 364.
- 4.
Ibid., 359.
- 5.
The very etymology of the term ‘concept’ and, by extension, ‘conceptuality’ suggests this idealism. ‘Concept’ (as used in the history of logic) derives from conceptus as the past participle of concipio and, at least in that sense, literally signifies nothing more and nothing less than ‘what has been conceived, i.e., grasped or taken up by the mind.’
- 6.
John McDowell, “What Myth?” Inquiry, 50, no. 4 (August 2007): 346: “On this [McDowell’s own] view, our relation to the world, including our perceptual relation to it, is pervasively shaped by our conceptual mindedness.”
- 7.
See my “Gibt es eine eigentliche menschliche Anschauung?” Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Theorie der Biologie 8 (2001): 107–121, especially 120: “Auch wenn die Eigentümlichkeit der menschlichen Anschauung darin bestehen soll, daß sie immer schon begriffen ist, bleibt McDowell uns die Bestimmung der Anschaulichkeit der Anschauung (Materie) – im Gegensatz zur Begrifflichkeit (Form) – immer noch schuldig.”
- 8.
“What Myth?” 348. Form and content are no doubt functionally relative, contextually dependent concepts for McDowell, analyzable much as ‘simple’ and ‘composed’ were by Wittgenstein; see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 21 ff.
- 9.
Dreyfus makes a similar point when he insists that reflection must introduce some content rather than simply making the same content more explicit; see “The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 360; note, however, that McDowell distinguishes his idea of conceptual capacities from an idea that depends upon the difference between being implicit and making explicit; see “What Myth?” 347f and “Response to Dreyfus,” 366 f.
- 10.
Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Response to McDowell,” Inquiry, 50, no. 4 (August 2007): 372f, 376; see, too, “The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 361.
- 11.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 363; Dreyfus probably has in mind McDowell’s following remark: “Perception discloses the world only to a subject capable of the ‘I think’ that expresses apperception” (“What Myth?” 346). Things are more complicated, however, since McDowell insists on distinguishing the ‘I think’ from the ‘I do’; see “Response to Dreyfus,” 367.
- 12.
These theoretical limits are particularly evident if we consider the role that concepts, traditionally construed, play in theory. Concepts – whether they be conceived as mental representations, abilities, abstract objects (Fregean senses) – match up with generic or iterable features of things or experience. Aristotle seems to some interpreters to exclude knowledge of individual existence from theory, setting it aside precisely because it is undefinable and neither predicable of nor present in another. In addition to characterizing concepts as Regeln and Teilvorstellungen, Kant describes them as ‘predicates of possible judgments’; when he does so, he seems to be iterating Aristotle’s insight about the limits of theory, since predicates precisely are or can be said of more than one subject.
- 13.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 354.
- 14.
In this respect McDowell borrows Gadamer’s view of a “free, distanced orientation” (freies, distanziertes Verhalten) to the environment (Umwelt), not open to other animals, an orientation that is in each case a linguistic act or achievement (Vollzug), one that elevates human beings to the world (Erhebung zur Welt); see “What Myth?”, 346; “Response to Dreyfus,” 369; and Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 3., erweiterte Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972), 421.
- 15.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 355.
- 16.
“Response to McDowell,” 373.
- 17.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 354.
- 18.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 352.
- 19.
Ibid., 355. It would be useful to have some account of the difference that Dreyfus envisages between the pre-conceptual and the non-conceptual.
- 20.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 360.
- 21.
In an earlier draft of this paper I next wrote: “Similar considerations apply not only to the batter’s deliberation about what pitch to expect between pitches but even as a pitch makes its way to the plate. The batter has to think fast but his expertise to a large extent turns on judging whether it is a fastball, slider, or changeup and adjusting accordingly.” I am less sure of this point since such expertise might be a matter of programmed pattern recognition bypassing any conceptual or thinking processes – as Dreyfus insists is the case for the chess Grandmaster playing a game of lightning chess. My guess is that, in the case of batting, it depends on the qualities of the batter; just as not every player closes his eyes or even blinks at the same time, e.g., at the moment of hitting the ball or swinging, so there could be some who actually register (classify) the pitch as a fastball or slider while hitting. We have reason to conjecture that reasoning at some level is at work since most batters are trying to guess what pitch is coming, even if they thoughtlessly respond to a 95 mile an hour fastball, whether they have guessed rightly or not.
- 22.
This point applies to other positions as well. When asked why his star receiver, Randy Moss, is so good at his position, Tom Brady, the quarterback of the New England Patriot football team, answered: “He makes good inferences.”
- 23.
“Response to McDowell,” 375; “The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 356–360.
- 24.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 357, 360.
- 25.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 356f: “On McDowell’s view, we are directly open to…affordances in so far as they are facts like that apples afford eating.....Facts about what affords what, however, are not what we are directly open to according to Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty....instead of the affordance-facts that on McDowell’s view we are directly open to, it is the affordance’s solicitations – such as the attraction of an apple when I’m hungry – to which I am directly open.”
- 26.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 358f, 361. The sexual and even criminal senses of ‘solicitation’ probably make all too patent Dreyfus’ point about the difference between solicitation and affordance.
- 27.
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1972), 139. To be sure, Heidegger emphasizes how feelings are constitutive of our being-in-the-world precisely by disclosing to us our world, what is within it, and thereby ourselves. That is to say, analysis of our moods cannot remain confined to some purely internal mental content. Yet while not to be confused with conceptual or even proto-conceptual mindedness, our moods and feelings, insofar as they co-constitute our being-in-the-world, are also not to be confused with mindless coping. Dreyfus’ emphasis on the mindlessness of coping bodies and their sensorimotor intentionality seems to be a knee-jerk reaction against any account of intentionality that allows for its privacy, as though such accounts inevitably succumb to the shortcomings of a Cartesian model of the mind. Yet while perception may well be fundamentally sensori-motor, it has the character of intentionality, i.e., it transcends the perceiver, putting her in touch with an object, because it is also felt, a part of the fabric of her desires and fears.
- 28.
“The Return of the Myth of the Mental,” 356.
- 29.
At times Dreyfus notes this reciprocity but for the most part he neglects the self-directedness of much of the activity; perhaps running scared in the face of Cartesianism, he equally understates, as noted, the emotive and at least proto-emotive character of absorbed coping. These shortcomings of his analysis are significant since the forms of disposed self-directedness – mindful but non-conceptual human behavior – may well provide the key to articulating bridges between mindless and conceptually minded coping.
- 30.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, II, Aristotle characterizes human excellence as a hexis proairetike, a disposition, induced by practice, to choose in the way that a prudent person, a phronimos would (1107a1-5); and choosing, Aristotle further tells us, is accompanied by reasoning and thought (meta logou kai dianoias) (1112a16).
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Dahlstrom, D.O. (2015). Thinking Fast: Freedom, Expertise, and Solicitation. In: Bloechl, J., de Warren, N. (eds) Phenomenology in a New Key: Between Analysis and History. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 72. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02018-1_10
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