Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology can be interpreted as presenting an alternative to the division between the space of reasons and the space of nature as John McDowell defends it. It discusses in detail the various layers of perception Husserl distinguishes, how they bring a world into view for the subject independently of any conceptual operations, and how they make conceptual thought possible in the first place. The chapter outlines McDowell’s conceptualism as a response to a problem regarding our responsiveness to reasons and answerability to reality. It considers McDowell’s distinction between the space of reasons and the space of nature, which forms the background to his conceptualism. The book shows that his conceptualism is tied into a broader picture of how the human mind fits into natural reality.