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

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. The doctrine is undermined, he argues, by inadequacies in the way McDowell conceives what he styles the 'order of justification' connecting world, experience, and judgement. McDowell’s conception of the roles played by causation and nature in this order is threatened with vacuity; and the requirements ...