An Aconceptual View of Mind and World

In Mind and World (1994/1996), John McDowell
follows Donald Davidson in claiming that the world is a
conceptually laden structure. A (conceptual) language and
tradition constitutes the world, and our (conceptual)
"openness to the world� (ibid, p.155). This means that the
condition for access to the world is a clear subject – object
split, and a clear split between content and the way the
content is presented. With this view as the basis he
criticizes the idea of a non-conceptual1 experience and
non-conceptual content, starting from the demand that
(conceptual) thinking must be constrained by, and
rationally answerable to the empirical world (ibid p.xii).