What is Conceptual Activity? On the McDowell-Dreyfus (Hegel-Heidegger) Debate
Robert Pippin (University of Chicago)
Abstract: One of John McDowell’s most controversial claims in Mind and World and in much later work has been his case against non-conceptual content in experience. He argued (with Hegel, he often says) that we should not think that in judgments of experience, “conceptual capacities are exercised on non-conceptual deliverances of sensibility.” Rather, “Conceptual capacities are already operative in the deliverances of sensibility themselves.” Among the many critics of this position, Hubert Dreyfus has argued against it by appeal to an issue central to the work of the early Heidegger and of Merleau-Ponty: what Dreyfus calls everyday expertise or skillful coping. I argue that the basic issue between the two (and between Hegel and Heidegger) turns on how to understand the non-discursive actualization of conceptual capacities in experience and, relying on some claims by Hegel about experience, defend an interpretation of that possibility.