An Aesthetic Grounding for the Role of Concepts in Experience in Kant, Wittgenstein and Mcdowell

Tim Thornton

An Aesthetic Grounding for the Role of Concepts in Experience in Kant, Wittgenstein and Mcdowell

Article

12/2 - Fall 2007, pages 227-245

Date of online publication: 15 novembre 2007

Date of publication: 01 novembre 2007

Abstract

The paper begins by asking, in the context of McDowell's Mind and World, what guides empirical judgement. It then critically examines David Bell's account of the role of aesthetic judgement, or experience, in Kant and Wittgenstein, in shedding light on empirical judgement. Bell's suggestion that a Wittgensteinian account of aesthetic experience can guide the application of empirical concepts is criticised: neither the discussion of aesthetic judgement nor aesthetic experience helps underpin empirical judgement. But attention to the parallel between Wittgenstein's discussion of understanding rules and the question of how empirical concepts can be applied to particulars suggests how to dissolve the felt need for an answer. This in turn helps shed light on McDowell's conceptualist account of experience.

Keywords

Cite this article

Thornton, Tim. “An Aesthetic Grounding for the Role of Concepts in Experience in Kant, Wittgenstein and Mcdowell.” Forum Philosophicum 12, no. 2 (2007): 227–45. doi:10.35765/forphil.2007.1202.18.

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Copyright

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