Naturalizing the space of reasons

Given the Sellarsian distinction between the space of causes and the space of reasons, the naturalist seeks to articulate how these two spaces are unproblematically related. In Mind and World (Citation1996) John McDowell suggests that such a naturalism can be achieved by pointing out that we work our way into the space of reasons by the process of upbringing he calls Bildung. ‘The resulting habits of thought and action’, writes McDowell, ‘are second nature’ (p. 84). In this paper I expose one implication of this remark, namely, that Bildung naturalism requires a conception of a type of action which is at once rational and habitual. Current orthodoxies in the philosophy of action prevent these two features from easily co‐existing. Whilst various reconciliations are possible, I argue that only one keeps Bildung naturalism intact. This, however, commits the naturalist to a conception of reasons more radically external than any to be found in current literature, according to which the agent need have no conception of what her reasons are at the time of acting. This is what I call acting in the dark of reasons. One upshot for McDowell is that this conception of reasons may be in tension with some of his other claims. Keywords: actionhabitMcDowellnaturalismreasonsexternalism Notes See also McDowell, Citation1995a. See McDowell, Citation1978, Citation1995b. ‘What distinguishes actions which are intentional from actions which are not? The answer I shall suggest is that they are the actions to which a certain sense of the question “Why?” is given application; the sense is of course that in which the answer, if positive, gives a reason for acting’ (Anscombe, Citation1957: p. 9). This would not, I think, be an implausible reading, since Davidson (Citation1980: p. 4) allows that ‘social conventions’ and ‘character traits’ fall under his blanket term. E.g. McDowell, (Citation1980: p. 49). McDowell’s phrasing is in places unfortunate in this respect: ‘we cannot make sense of logos as manifesting itself in agency without seeing it as selecting between options, rather than simply going along with what is going to happen anyway’ (1995a: p. 170). The unwanted implication is that even in normal cases acting habitually requires an operation of reasoning, which would, by my definition, disqualify it from being habitual. I do not think that any such operation is evident in these cases, and to posit it is an intellectualist error (see §5 below). See, for instance, Dancy, Citation2000. McDowell (Citation1978) writes: ‘a conception of how things are might constitute, on its own, a reason for virtuous action’ (pp. 81–2). Dancy (Citation2000) writes: ‘[the] features [must] be present to the agent’s consciousness – indeed that they be somehow conceived as favouring the action’ (p. 129). See, e.g., his reference to ‘selecting between options’, n. 6. See especially McDowell, Citation1996: pp. xx–xxiv

Action (physics · Bildung · Epistemology · Linguistics · Naturalism · Physics · Sociology · Free Will and Agency · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Philosophy

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