Description
Book SynopsisModern philosophy finds it difficult to give a satisfactory picture of the place of minds in the world. In
Mind and World, one of the most distinguished philosophers writing today offers his diagnosis of this difficulty and points to a cure.
Trade ReviewEver since Descartes, a lot of the very best philosophers have thought of science as an invading army from whose depredations safe havens have somehow to be constructed. Philosophy patrols the borders, keeping the sciences ‘intellectually respectable’ by keeping them ‘within…proper bounds.’ But you have to look outside these bounds if what you care about is the life of the spirit or the life of the mind. McDowell’s is as good a contemporary representative of this kind of philosophical sensibility as you could hope to find. -- Jerry Fodor * London Review of Books *
Mind and World is, above all, a work of therapy; and, like every good talking cure, it is hard work. But the diagnosis is penetrating, deeply persuasive, and expressed with that ear for the right phrase precisely placed which is the literary equivalent of perfect pitch. -- Max de Gaynesford * Australasian Journal of Philosophy *
McDowell locates an important tension in our thinking about thought, suggests an attractive way of easing the tension, and offers a plausible diagnosis of why the tension is acute…
Mind and World is a genuinely provocative book that should be discussed. -- Paul M. Pietroski * Canadian Journal of Philosophy *
A powerfully impressive book which simply towers over the more routine contributions of current analytical philosophy. -- Simon Glendinning * Radical Philosophy *
Table of ContentsPreface Introduction Lecture I. Concepts and Intuitions Lecture II. The Unboundedness of the Conceptual Lecture III. Non-conceptual Content Lecture IV. Reason and Nature Lecture V. Action, Meaning, and the Self Lecture VI. Rational and Other Animals Afterword Part I. Davidson in Context Part II. Postscript to Lecture III Part III. Postscript to Lecture V Part IV. Postscript to Lecture VI Index
