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451The shape of a good question: McDowell, evolution, and transcendental philosophyPhilosophical Forum 42 (1): 61-78. 2011.I examine John McDowell's attitude towards naturalism in general, and evolutionary theory in particular, by distinguishing between "transcendental descriptions" and "empirical explanations". With this distinction in view we can understand why McDowell holds that there is both continuity and discontinuity between humans qua rational animals and other animals -- there is continuity with regards to empirical explanations and discontinuity with regards to transcendental descriptions. The result …Read more
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108Intentionality is one of the central problems of modern philosophy. How can a thought, action or belief be about something? Sachs draws on the work of Wilfrid Sellars, C. I. Lewis and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to build a new theory of intentionality that solves many of the problems faced by traditional conceptions. In doing so, he sheds new light on Sellars’s influential arguments concerning the ‘Myth of the Given’ and shows how we can build a productive discourse between American pragmatism, analyt…Read more
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44Response to Critics: Sapience and Sentience ReconsideredInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (4): 575-579. 2016.
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31Autonomy After Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (4): 595-599. 2015.
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33Joseph K. Schear (ed.) , Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 34 (3-4): 167-170. 2014.Here I review the essays by McDowell, Dreyfus, and many others edited by Schear for "The McDowell/Dreyfus Debate". Topics include the relation between conceptuality and "non-conceptual content", the role of embodied coping in human life, the extent of continuity and discontinuity between humans and other animals, and the legacies of German Idealism and phenomenology.
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522Resisting the Disenchantment of Nature: McDowell and the Question of Animal MindsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 55 (2): 131-147. 2012.Abstract McDowell's contributions to epistemology and philosophy of mind turn centrally on his defense of the Aristotelian concept of a ?rational animal?. I argue here that a clarification of how McDowell uses this concept can make more explicit his distance from Davidson regarding the nature of the minds of non-rational animals. Close examination of his responses to Davidson and to Dennett shows that McDowell is implicitly committed to avoiding the following ?false trichotomy?: that animals are…Read more
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32A Precis of Intentionality and the Myths of the GivenInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (4): 547-551. 2016.This precise provides an synopsis of my book "Intentionality and the Myths of the Given" (Routledge 2014). I describe the problem of intentionality in terms of the need to (1) do justice to both discursive intentionality (the intentionality of 'sapient' thought and talk) and somatic or bodily intentionality while also (2) avoiding the various Myths of the Given, including the epistemic and semantic Myths. I locate an early version to accomplish this project in C. I. Lewis. The argument shows why…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
20th Century Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
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Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
American Philosophy |
Metaphilosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |
Philosophy of the Americas |