ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I show that McDowellian epistemological disjunctivism is essentially intertwined with McDowell’s interpretation of Kant. The connections run in both directions. On the one hand, the McDowellian epistemological disjunctivist must articulate a conception of perceptual experience according to which perceptually based beliefs can be understood as both entitled by, and rational responses to, perceptual experiences. In order to make this idea intelligible, McDowell argues that the epistemological disjunctivist has to develop a conception of perceptual experience according to which perceptual experience can ‘reveal’ the world in virtue of possessing non-propositional content. McDowell finds such a conception in the idea of a Kantian empirical intuition. On the other hand, the interpretation of Kantian empirical intuition which emerges is rich enough to sustain the claim that McDowell’s Kant was an epistemological disjunctivist.
