John McDowell Part 3: Nothing Human is Artificial Or Everything We Do Is Nature

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this final episode of a three part series on John McDowell's Mind and World, I take a look at McDowell's Transcendental Argument. I feel his transcendental argument comes up a bit short in making McDowell's case and neither does it seem to hold the same gravitas as other transcendental arguments like Kant's. Basically, the conclusions sound a lot like the premises. But, McDowell makes another interesting claim namely that there is nothing unnatural about our role as conceptualizers and judgement-makers in carving out the epistemic content of our worldviews. Our normative nature is, well, natural. Natural to us anyway. And, if we acknowledge this, then we see that there is not some divorce or separation of us from the world when we apply concepts to our perception of the world. Our way of seeing is no less natural than a cat's way of seeing. It's just unique to us. And, to fill out how we might understand how the rational and social can be fully natural, we need to look at Aristotle's ethical theory. Which we will. In the episode.