Naturalism, normativity, and the space of reasons

The dissertation focuses upon the issues of naturalism and perception. I offer a critical examination of John McDowell's conception of experience, and the conception of the natural world that it requires.;Chapter One presents background information on McDowell's concerns, and the conception of experience he advocates. McDowell is concerned with an apparent philosophical problem regarding empirical content. After explaining this problem, and the conception of experience McDowell offers in response to it, I explain McDowell's recent changes to his account of experience.;In Chapter Two I pit my reading of McDowell's Mind and World against a prominent alternative reading. I focus upon the centrality of McDowell's incompatibilist approach to freedom to the action of Mind and World. My reading of the latter half of that book allows one to understand the role played by Bildung and second nature, and additionally allows one to make sense of McDowell's influential papers on Wittgenstein's rule following considerations.;Chapter Three offers a defense of McDowell's conception of experience against those of his critics who focus upon his conceptualism. I engage with Arthur Collins, Crispin Wright, and Hubert Dreyfus. I show that a principled (albeit radically Wittgensteinian) line of response to these critics is available, and that it is indeed the line of thought that underlies McDowell's cryptic defensive remarks on the topic.;McDowell's recommended conception of experience cannot be adopted without rejecting our common conception of the natural world (the world as a cosmos in which all things conform to natural law). Chapter Four argues in favor of this conception of the natural world, and argues that McDowell fails to adequately recognize that this sort of naturalism is a deeply compelling philosophical idea. This creates problems because of the quietistic, diagnostic approach McDowell adopts. I argue that its dependence on an unacceptable and counter-intuitive conception of the natural world undermines the plausibility of McDowell's conception of experience. I argue that the account of perception articulated by Wilfrid Sellars, which does not require any radical refashioning of our views regarding the natural world, is therefore preferable.