Ch. 2 || A Critical View of John McDowell\'s Naturalism

In the last chapter we saw how McDowell's non-traditional empiricism is divided into two arguments, the epistemological and the metaphysical. We saw how McDowell's epistemological argument makes good on many of the elements of the Sellarsian philosophical legacy. McDowell's metaphysical argument is added to make good on one of the elements of the Sellarsian legacy the epistemological argument doesn't deal with: adherence to naturalism. Naturalism is usually taken to mean an identification of the space of nature with the realm of law, the realm of natural-scientific intelligibility. On this usual account, the space of nature is devoid of meaning. The realm of human meaning, the space of reasons, can be treated in a few ways after this position has been taken. It can be excluded from the space of nature, and therefore be considered in some sense supernatural. The space of reasons can then be considered either benign or damaging to conceptions of truth that adhere to the austere conception of nature. Another route is to reduce the space of reasons to the realm of law, and deny that the space of reasons is a sui generis conceptual meta-framework. On this account, one should attempt to construct the realm of human meaning out of disenchanted, value-free natural scientific concepts and explanations. The metaphysical argument's naturalism, however, does hold a place for meaning within the space of nature. The naturalism that the metaphysical argument espouses is not the traditional, austere kind. McDowell asserts that humans possess two " natures " : a first nature and a second nature. On this account, both the space of nature and the realm of law inhabit the space of nature. While McDowell holds respect for the explanations of the natural sciences, [once] it is acknowledged that nature must not be identified with the realm of law (which McDowell in turn identifies with first nature), one gets conceptual room for an understanding of human potentialities [such as rationality] as thoroughly natural: An active exercise of conceptual capacities is as much part of the natural development of human beings as the natural capacity for intentional action. On such a concept of nature the fact that the notion of spontaneity can only be made intelligible within a framework that differs from that appropriate for the realm of law is no longer incompatible with understanding it as part of the natural powers of [a human]—it is part of [a person's] second nature.1 MCDOWELL'S ARGUMENT FOR DIVIDING NATURE IN TWO In the last chapter we summarised McDowell's metaphysical argument, but we did not go into much depth about the reasons he provides for it. The first part of this chapter will examine more fully the argument McDowell provides in the metaphysical component of Mind and World. The second part of this chapter will discuss and evaluate the criticism that the metaphysical argument has met in the literature. Performing a brief but more careful overview of McDowell's metaphysical argument should help better inform our discussion of its criticism. McDowell provides an in-depth discussion of his Mind and World metaphysical argument in his article Two Sorts of Naturalism. In Two Sorts, McDowell explains more fully the particular picture of Aristotle to which he adheres. This was relevant for his discussion because the paper was written for a festschrift for Philippa Foot, a towering figure in analytic philosophy who was famous for turning to Aristotle in order to intervene in moral philosophy. McDowell argues against what he claims is the familiar picture of Aristotle, made famous by figures such as Bernard Williams. On this conception, Aristotle can only be read two ways when filling out his picture of human morality. He is either advancing an austere conception of nature, or an unacceptably pre-modern enchanted picture of nature,: And by my lights, Williams's reading is a historical monstrosity; it attributes to Aristotle a felt need for foundations, and a conception of nature as where the foundations must be, that