Experience and the World's Own Language: A Critique of John McDowell's Empiricism

by Richard Gaskin

Overview

John McDowell's "minimal empiricism" is one of the most influential and widely discussed doctrines in contemporary philosophy. Richard Gaskin subjects it to careful examination and criticism, arguing that it has unacceptable consequences, and in particular that it mistakenly rules out something we all know to be the case: that infants and non-human animals experience a world. Gaskin traces the errors in McDowell's empiricism to their source, and presents his own, still more minimal, version of empiricism, suggesting that a correct philosophy of language requires us to recognize a sense in which the world we experience speaks its own language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199287253
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/13/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

University of Liverpool

Table of Contents

1. Minimal empiricism and the 'order of justification'2. Experience and causation3. Experience and judgement4. The mental lives of infants and animals5. Diagnosis and treatment6. The world's own language

Editorial Reviews

"Gaskin has thought hard about a range of challenging topics—perception, content, knowledge, singular thought, reference—and he has insightful and suggestive things to say about them. The book repays close reading."—Jason Bridges, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher