ABSTRACT
This chapter examines John McDowell’s influential book Mind and World. It outlines one approach to turn aside the objection in the context of the account presented in Mind and World. The Mind and World begins by ascribing important insight to a Kantian slogan, but simultaneously warning that it can also prompt a characteristic philosophical dilemma. The claim that experience has to be thought of as always conceptually structured is defended against an intuitive phenomenological objection. The objection is based on the thought that experience is typically more finely grained than the concepts a subject possesses. The role that concepts play in experience and the role that experience plays for intentionality suggests lessons for a proper understanding of nature and second nature. A successful account must “make intelligible how perceptual experience imposes not merely causal, but rational constraints on thinking”.
