TAKING THOUGHT

CHARLES TRAVIS

Mind, Value and Reality by John McDowell. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. ix + 400. H/b. 21.95. Meaning, Knowledge and Reality by John McDowell. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. ix + 462. H/b. 25.95.
These two collections of essays (henceforth MVR and MKR respectively) are major additions to the literature. They are no mere convenience. The essays, though stunningly lucid, benet by juxtaposition. In the context of the whole, each individual point assumes its proper place within an overall view of rst importance. The result shows McDowell as rst rate in a sense in which there are but a few rst rate philosophers per century. These collections, read as wholes, are the best introduction to McDowells work. There is no hope of summarizing the essays here. To give an inkling of their riches, I will do two things. First, I will mention three pervasive inuences. These are one organizing factor in his view. Second, I will discuss four specic, somewhat arbitrarily chosen, topics. I hope to hint at the avour of the work. But there is a far richer lode here than the illustrations can suggest.

1. Inuences
The work of an important philosopher is not reducible to a few ideas or sources. But seeing inuences may help. I will mention three ideas, identiable as, respectively, Austinian, Wittgensteinian and Davidsonian. The rst two are fruitful. My own view is that McDowell would be better off without the third. Austin McDowells grasp of Austin, and of the tradition to which he belonged, distinguishes him from nearly all his Oxford contemporaries. The Austinian idea at issue here is best expressed in Sense and Sensibilia. There Austin says, for example,
Mind, Vol. 109 . 435 . July 2000 Oxford University Press 2000

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[T]hough the phrase deceived by our senses is a common metaphor, it is a metaphor ... In fact, of course, our senses are dumb though Descartes and others speak of the testimony of the senses, our senses do not tell us anything, true or false. (Austin 1962, p. 11) And later, To give a verdict on evidence is precisely to pronounce on some matter on which one is not a first-hand authority. So to say that statements about material things are in general like verdicts is to imply that we are never, that we cant be, in the best position to make themthat, so to speak, there is no such thing as being an eye-witness of what goes on in the material world, we can only get evidence. But to put the case in this way is to make it seem quite reasonable to suggest that we can never know, we can never be certain, of the truth of anything we say about material things; for after all, it appears, we have nothing but the evidence to go on, we have no direct access to what is really going on, and verdicts of course are notoriously fallible. But how absurd it is, really, to suggest that I am giving a verdict when I say what is going on under my own nose! (Austin 1962, p.142) Perception, Austin insists, is a binary relation between a perceiver and his surroundings, or specic features of them. It is awareness, of particular sorts, of how things are around one, including, in specic cases, awareness of things being various specic ways they are. Seeing the pig before one may be, or include, awareness of the fact of ambient porcine presence. It may be a way of knowing there is a pig there. That is a different thing from, and not effected by, seeing, or having, evidence of a pig before one. It is equally different from, and does not involve, having your surroundings represented to you as with a pig before you, or confronting some representation according to which that is so. Perception is neither of those sorts of relations to the facts, or things, perceived. Neither it, nor its objects (unless texts) represents the world as being thus and so at all. For one thing, representations would not provide us with the sorts of reasons perception does. There is no such thing as the way things are according to the senses, though there is such a thing as seeing how things are. Perception is access to the world by means which are themselves, as Austin puts it, dumb. Wittgenstein The Wittgensteinian idea I have in mind is an idea I nd in Investigations 136. I do not claim McDowell nds it there. I see it in this remark: And what a proposition (Satz) is is in one sense determined by the rules of sentence construction (in German, for example), and in another sense by the use of the sign in the language game. And the use of the words true and false may be among the constit-

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uent parts of this game; and if so it belongs to our concept proposition but does not fit it. As we might also say, check belongs to our concept of the king in chess. ... To say that check did not fit our concept of the pawns would mean that a game in which pawns were checked, in which, say, the players who lost their pawns lost, would be uninteresting or stupid or too complicated or something of the kind. Discourse may at least have its pretensions. It may, inter alia, at least purport to be about how things areso, where it says how things are, true, where it says things to be other than they are, false. It may, say, contain some expression,F, which purports to speak of a way an item might be, F; so, perhaps, a way some items are and others are not. It may also have a complex of pretensions as to what sort of thing being F is: what one may expect of something that is F; when an item would rightly be describable as F. We might think of the discourse as operating with a certain conception of being F. If, for example,F pretends to speak of a way for an object to be coloured, then it purports to speak of what is, in certain respects, a stable way for an item to be: there are certain ways to change an items colour; an item that is, or is not, F remains so unless changed in some such way. Suppose it is not too embarrassing for us to operate with the pretensions of the discourseto purport to do what it purports toin this sense: were we so to operate, we would not feel at sea, as if we were only pretending to know when, within the discourse, one might say what, when a bit of discourse should be questioned, or rejected, and so on. Suppose, more specically, that we may reasonably suppose that it is determinate enough when something would be describable as F, or as not F, given that the discourses pretensions to fact-stating are correct; given, that is, that there is at least a genuine distinction between what, by the standards of that discourseby its own ideas as to how it is to operateought to be called F, and what not. Then, Wittgensteins idea is, there is no further standard the discourse must meet to be genuinely fact-stating. The pretensions of any discourse are always open to scrutiny. Discourse cannot make itself fact-stating by decree. In an extreme case it might be shown that those engaging in the discourse were only under an illusion of knowing their way about in itof knowing how to use it if it were what it purported to be. In a less extreme, and more familiar, case, it might be shown that, while there may be such a thing as being F, it cannot be all of what was pretended; that the discourse operated with a conception that does not, in its entirety, t anything. All that, though, is criticism from within, appealing to our own sense of when, where and how we can sensibly suppose ourselves to be marking distinctions. The point is that it is the only sort of criticism that tells.

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Concepts are autonomous: each sort of concept nds its own shape in reality; the legitimacy of given concepts does not derive from a grounding in concepts of some other sort. The concept of being F, to mark a genuine distinction, need not mark one drawable in other terms. Discourse, to be genuinely fact-stating, need not really be about something other than what it purports to be about. There is no such test for genuine engagement with the notions of truth and falsity; none beyond our ordinary ways of telling when we are distinguishing between two sorts of case. Davidson The third inuence is an idea of Donald Davidsons. It is that a theory of what the expressions of a language mean might take (roughly) the form of a Tarski-style truth denition for a formalized language. That is to suppose, for example, that an English predicateis snow, sayhas a statable satisfaction condition: one can say when the predicate would be true of something. If Davidson is right, one could say that, for is snow, this way: just in case that thing is snow. Equivalently, to suppose what Davidson does is to suppose thatexcept in cases where what an expression means makes its reference depend, in some systematic and statable way, on an occasion of its utterancewhat words mean determines what (if anything) would be stated in speaking them assertively. In fact, Davidson nearly enough identies what a sentence means with what it would assert (of given referents, where relevant). The appeal of Davidsons idea for McDowell, I think, lies in the fact that it saves semanticians, apparently, from fruitless exercises in conceptual analysis. But I think Davidson is wrong about what meaning does; and that wrong idea blocks McDowells Austinian and Wittgensteinian ideas from nding their optimal expression. I will try to elaborate in what follows. These three ideas are at work in McDowells treatment of a wide range of issuesamong others, virtue, personal identity, and the nature of inner mental life, as well as the examples below. The Wittgensteinian idea, for example, is evident in McDowells persistent resistance to any form of reductionism. A note. Though McDowell clearly follows Austin on the nature and epistemic worth of our perceptual relations to the world, his commitment to the idea, crucial for Austin, that the senses are dumb (that perception does not represent the world as thus and so) may be obscured for some by his occasional talk of the content of experience. Some of us may be trained to hear content as referring exclusively to a feature of a representation: how things are according to it; in which case experience could have content only by furnishing us with representations. But in a number of places, including Mind and World (McDowell 1994, notably p. 4), and

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The Content of Experience (MVR)a brilliant attack on one line of thought that would make perception representationalhe makes it clear that that is not the notion of content he has in mind. For him, the various forms of perception are modes of openness to the features of [the] environment. (MVR, p.354) That makes the content of perceptual experience nothing other than the tract of the environment that is present to consciousness. (MVR, p.342) The content of experience, in the intended sense, is just that which is experiencedfeatures of the world. It is not a representations burden.

2. Two Views of Meaning

What is it that wordsEnglish expressions, saydo, or are, in meaning what they do? On one view, bracketing ambiguity and systematic xing of reference by context, a declarative sentence is a means for stating some one particular thing; for expressing some one thought. It is part and parcel of that view that expressions of a language effect categorizations of the world, and of the ways it might be. For a predicate, such as is white, there is that of which it is, or would be, true. For a sentence, such as Snow is white, there are those arrangements of the world that would constitute the worlds being as the sentence says, and those that would not. (It need not be decidable of every arrangement which it is.) There is, on this view, a particular way the world would be if it were as the sentence says, and we can say what way that is. For example, invoking the notion of truth, we could say it for the sentence La neige est blanche by saying that that sentence is true just in case snow is white. That idea of the sorts of properties meaningful expressions have nds one expression in, and is required by, Davidsons idea of what a semantic theory might be. McDowell endorses it in saying, for example, [T]o specify what would be asserted in the assertoric utterance of a sentence apt for such use, is to specify a condition under which the sentence (as thus uttered) would be true. The truth-conditional conception of meaning embodies a conception of truth that makes that thought truistic. (In Defence of Modesty, MKR, p. 88.) The rst six essays of MKR are devoted to defending this idea. This picture of meaning is an expression of a certain platonism that entered current philosophy with a reasonable research strategy, encapsulated in Freges injunction always to separate the logical from the psychological. It stands in direct opposition to another picture, drawn clearly by J. L. Austin, and equally present in, and central to, the Investigations. One expression of that opposing view is in Austins insistence that an English

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sentence is the wrong sort of thing to be true or false. It is easy, it seems, to hear that as a trivial grammatical remark: a sentence says something only in the sense that a vacuum cleaner picks up dirt. Any actual dirt that gets picked up is picked up by some person using the vacuum cleaner on an occasion. Similarly, where saying (stating) something is committing oneself, only speakers of a language actually say things. So, perhaps, only their utterances, or statements, can be strictly speaking either true or false. The grammatical insight would be: only commitments are right or wrong in that way; and words of a language, as such, make none. The point will seem trivial as long as we continue to think that what commitment a speaker will make in using a given sentence assertively what he will state, what there will be for him to be right or wrong about is wholly predictable from the meanings of the words he uses (again bracketing ambiguity, indexicality and the like). But it is just that that Austin means to deny. Austin insists, If you just take a bunch of sentences ... there can be no question of sorting them out into those that are true and those that are false; for ... the question of truth and falsehood does not turn only on what a sentence is, nor yet on what it means, but on, speaking very broadly, the circumstances in which it is uttered. Sentences are not as such either true or false. (Austin 1962, pp. 110111) The picture here is, in contrast to Davidsons, that expressions of a languageand notably its sentencesare tools we may exploit, on one occasion or another, for stating any of indenitely many different, or distinguishable, things. (The tools do not dictate their uses as an indexical might be thought to dictate its content on a use.) What we say in given words with given meanings depends on how we exploit them; which depends, in turn, on the opportunities and needs for exploitation that particular circumstances offer. We may exploit a scales in any of indenitely many ways. We may weigh people just after heavy eating, or heavy exercise, dressed and soaking wet or stripped and dry, many times, averaging the results, and so on. Different schemes of exploitation give us different ways of classifying people by weight, each with its own result as to who ts in the category of the two-hundred-pounders. Similarly, the idea is, we may exploit a given descriptionsay, that which words with given meanings providein any of indenitely many ways, and will say any of indefinitely many different things (and different things to be so) accordingly. (Circumstances must show how words, in them, in fact were exploited.) If that is how meaning works, then there is, across the board, no such thing as that which the sentence such and such would state, a fortiori no such thing as the condition under which that would be true. Semantics must trade in other sorts of properties.

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I think, but will not argue here, that Austins picture, and not Davidsons, is right.1 In any case the point is no mere grammatical nicety. And, as Austin clearly states, it is absolutely central to his epistemology. So it should be unsurprising if endorsement of Davidsons idea keeps McDowells Austinian idea from taking its optimal form. McDowell, I suggest, would be better off without it.

3. Singular Thoughts
If there are genuine instances of existential generalizationcorrect inferences to a conclusion that there is something that is thus and so from the fact that, anyway, such and such isthen there are singular thoughts. Some thoughts would be true provided only that there are objects which are the ways which, according to that thought, some objects are. By contrast, for a singular thought, there is some object such that for things to be as they are according to that thought is for that object to be thus and so: under no circumstances would any other objects being any way of itself make that thought true. So for each individual thought there is some object such that had it not existed there would have been no such thing to think. Plausibly, there are singular thoughts and we can sometimes think them. Equally plausibly, at least sometimes we can say what we thus think. Many ordinary statements purport to express such thoughts. An appealing view is that where words are to be understood as so aiming, that is what they do, provided only that there is a singular thought for them to have expressed. To which one might add: words so to be understood express, either a singular thought, or no thought at all. Words cannot say something as different from what they purport to say as such words would if they expressed some other sort of thought. That plausible view is McDowells. Essays 7-13 of MKR are devoted to defending it and elaborating its implications. One main aim is to reconcile the view with the idea that there may be different singular thoughts, of a given object, that it is thus and so: a way of thinking of the object may matter to what thought one thus thinks. Another aim is to insist that a singular thought cannot consist in a general thought, thought in an environment that somehow makes it singular. That is the wrong idea of how an environment can contribute to xing what is thought. Seeing words as an expression of some given singular thought is, inter alia, seeing them as about some item in the way a singular thought isa way there would not be without that item. Someone might understand
1

For some argument see Travis 1997.

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some McDowell, in some McDowell is bearded, as speaking of McDowell; an understanding he could not have were there not McDowell. That would be a way of seeing that whole as expressing a given singular thought. What would not be such a way would be an understanding as to who, according to that whole, is bearded that one could have had without thereby thinking of McDowell, or which could have been correct even if those words did not speak of him. There is no singular thought such that to see the words in that way is to see them as expressing it. It follows that words that purport to express a singular thought must purport to afford, and demand, an understanding as to who, or what, they speak of, of the former kind. For if they do what they purport to, there is no identifying what it is they saywhat, according to them, one is to thinkwithout such an understanding. Without such an understanding, one would not understand them as saying any such thing. So if they do what they purport, then some such understanding is an irreducible part of taking them to express the thought they do. Generalizing, taking a singular fact for a factor mistaking what would be a singular fact if it were so for a factare ways we may count as relating to the world. One may know that McDowell is bearded, or mistakenly suppose him to be smooth-shaven. One so relates to such a singular factor, as it were, unfactonly in thinking of a certain person as bearded (or as not) in a way one could not be thinking of someone were it not that there is that person to think of. Again, that is an irreducible part of what one is credited with in being credited with thinking some given singular thought. I am able to think of McDowell in such a way, and thus to think of him as bearded. In fact, I know he is. That exhibits one way of grasping a singular fact. Someone else, to whom he is a stranger, may, staring at McDowells back, rightly guess that he is bearded. That, too, is a way of thinking a singular thought. There is no need to count those ways of thinking of McDowell one way. Nor must we think of me and the stranger as thinking the same thing there is to think (though there is sometimes cause to do so). The above is the core view, though there is also a powerful argument that, for example, understanding some McDowell to mean McDowell is not factorable into understanding it to speak of someone in a way words might have done (under some conditions) in speaking of someone else, or of no one, plus the mere fact, whether recognized or not, that it is McDowell one would speak of in that way. The inuences of Austin and Wittgenstein in this view are clear. They stand out when one reects on the distance here between McDowell and Russell.

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Russells epistemology supplied special items for singular thoughts to be about; and seemed to require genuine singular thoughts to be about those special things. One Russellian idea is: if one is thinking in a way such that, conceivably, one might be thinking, so far as one could tell, in just that way where there was no singular thought one could be thinking, then one is not, in fact, thinking a singular thought. I may think that Socrates was strange. But things might seem the same to me were Socrates a well-done ction. So, by Russells lights, to think Socrates strange could not be to think a singular thought. Against that, Austin showed how to be rightly unimpressed, in just the way McDowell is, by possibilities for ringers (mock-pigs, say). That things might seem the same were Socrates a ction is not enough to show that as things stand I am not thinking about Socrates, and thinking singular thoughts about him. Socrates was the sort of thinga human beingthat one might see. The sort of thing one might thus be aware of is the sort of thing one might think singular thoughts about. Russell also seems to have thought that there could be discourse of a certain formgenuine expressions of thoughts about such items as Piccadilly and Augustus John (or any re-encounterable item)only if that discourse were analyzable in other terms: for any genuinely fact-stating John painted, there would have to be a criterion for being the one that John spoke of, expressible without presupposing an ability to say A and mean John, and in terms of which that John was to be understood (by which, in fact, it was to be governed). But such a criterion, Russell plausibly held, would make John painted an expression of a general thought. Investigations 79 is an attack on that idea of the need for a criterion. It is one expression of the idea that discourse may be what it purports to be in this case, apparent expressions of singular thoughtsif, supposing so, we know our way about within that discourse well enough. That general idea, applied, too, to our perceptions of the facts as to what we think, and recognize, about the world, is central to McDowells view. McDowells brief concerns singular thoughts. But for him three notions converge closely: meaning; sense (roughly, the understanding given words bear or bore); and thought (something there is to think). The rst and third are brought close by the Davidsonian idea: bracketing ambiguity and systematic (or quasi-systematic) variation in referents across uses, for (suitable2) words to mean what they do is for such and such to be that which would be asserted in using them (assertorically), that is, for such and such to be the thought they express.3 The second and third come
2

I assume the usual moves about sub-sentential parts.

3 Hearing the aspect here as one would in a claim that a certain wrench tightens hex nuts.

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together because McDowell follows one strand in Frege in identifying thoughts with senses of certain sorts. This brings the rst and second together: words, in meaning what they do, have a certain (Fregean) sensea move worth questioning in its own right. One would resist the rst identication if, following the Frege of On Concept and Object, one held that the same thought could be given many diverse linguistic garbs, so that it had a given structure only relative to a given analysis. Sense, anchored as it is in understandings words bear, is, plausibly, much less exible in that respect. Following Austin, one would reject the second identication. One would distinguish, generally, between words meaning what they do (in their language) and there being some thought which is the one they would express (of given referents); so between what words mean and any particular thoughtperhaps what would be expressed by those words as used on some occasion. On this view, how an expression of some language is to be understoodhow it is to be used in speaking that languageis one thing, and a thought of such and such being sosomething either so or notquite another. The former is but one guide to what would be said so (of given objects, times, places, etc.) on a particular speaking of the expression, and does not, alone, determine it. The crucial difference between Austins view of content and Davidsons concerns the behaviour of predicates, and the nature of what they speak of. The virtues of the one view over the other are least evident in matters of singular reference. Still, difference in conception matters. If someone says such a thing as Beardsley drew, we feel he has spoken intelligibly. We also think it conceivable, even if most unlikely, that there really was no Beardsleythe whole thing was a hoax. We also feel that such a discovery, if made, would not change our view that the above words, though, as it turns out, about no one, were, for all that, perfectly intelligible. Intuitions of that stripe are too robust and pervasive to dismiss en masse. For some, they have proved an obstacle to accepting McDowells view. The Davidsonian picture of meaning conspires to make them that. For that picture encourages us to conate speaking intelligibly with expressing a thought (that is, saying something to be so). It leaves too little room for a distinction between the rst and second thing: between speaking coherent, perfectly understandable, words of which we have at least some denite conception of what it would be like for them to have said something true, or something falsewords made thus intelligible in meaning what they do; and, on the other hand, the further accomplishment of saying something to be so that is so, or, casu quo, is not so. The Austinian picture, with its wide cleft between the one thing and the other, tempts us to no such conation.

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4. Knowledge
Knowledge may seem to come in two varieties. In one sort of case we are in a position, manifest to us, such that being in it entails what we thus know. We see the pig before us, which entails that there is one. In the contrasting case, our grounds are not quite that good. We have evidence for what we take to be so, or something like evidence in this respect: for all that it is so, it is still possible, even if just barely, for what we suppose so not to be so. The idea is: having evidence, or evidence-like grounds, up to a certain standard counts as knowledge. (Some would say that our empirical knowledge, or some important class of it, is only of this second sort.) In recent years this idea has received a thoroughly modern twist, allegedly due to Wittgenstein. The idea is that there are special cases of this second variety of knowledge (perhaps the only true cases). In these cases, that ones grounds are good enough follows from the meanings of the words that would state what one thus knows, or from the concepts they express. It is part of the concept of a pens being on the table, say, that under normal conditions (where normality admits of spelling out), if you are looking at the table and it looks to you as if there is a pen there, then you are right to take it that there is one there. Such epistemic status is what we call knowing that there is a pen on the table. Or so goes the idea. Ones grounds for saying (or thinking) so in such a case are sometimes labelled the satisfaction of criteria. So its looking to you, in normal circumstances, as if there is a pen on the table is, on the above sample view, a criterion for there being one there. Criteria for its being so that p are said to be defeasible: for all that they obtain, it is still possible that not-p. They are, in that respect, evidence-like. Unlike mere evidence, though, they owe their status, not to the way the world is arranged, but to the natures of relevant conceptsthat, say, of there being a pen on a table. Where a criterion is defeated, one does not have knowledge, despite its manifest satisfaction. But whether it is defeated or not need not be something within ones ken. Perhaps, too, special circumstances can block knowledge despite the satisfaction of criteria. (Someone has been leaving dummy pens on tables.) In an important series of articlesmost notably, Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge and Knowledge and the Internal (both in MKR) McDowell has argued (as I read him) against the idea that there is such a second variety of knowledgethat that envisioned status could be knowledgeand against the idea of that special case of it that criteria purport to be. The main argument for the wider denial is simple. Suppose that all you have is evidence (or something evidence-like) that p. Then for all that,

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there is a possibility that not-p. Since this evidence (or etc.) is all you have, for all you know, it might be that not-p. So you might be wrong as to whether p. But if you might be wrong, then you do not know that p. The positive view that goes with that denial is this. When you know, then you have proof (which might just consist in the facts being manifest to youas that your name is __, say). Proof that p rules out all possibility that not-p. So, where you know, it is not the case that, for all your grounds, it might be that not-p. I plainly see the pig. Where that is how I know there is one, it is not so that, for all I can see or tell, there could, conceivably, be none. McDowell offers an additional argument against the idea of knowledge by criteria. The core idea is that knowledge has implications for action, and for policiesfor how one ought to conduct oneself (and, recognizing the facts, would willingly). If you do not know whether you turned off the gas, then, quite possibly, you should go back and check. If you do know, you need not go back. It would be pointless. The question is settled. (And if you did go back, whatever you did could not be genuine checking.) So for any (putative) grounds for taking it that p, one can always examine their credentials by asking how one ought to act in light of them. Would we be prepared, given them, to regulate our conduct as a knower would? And the point is that how one ought to act, or conduct oneself, cannot be settled by the fact that something is criterial. It cannot be settled, that is, by convention, or by the natures of the concepts involved in expressing what one knows. Let it be part of the concept of a pens being on the table that you ought to conduct yourself as if it is settled that there is one there when it looks to you as if there is one there (in normal circumstances). Still, it makes sense to ask, But, for all that, should I so conduct myself? (We can even imagine circumstances in which the answer would be no.) We will not allow issues about our conduct to be settled in that way. The very fact that the question makes sense shows that the mere satisfaction of criteria cannot make for knowledge. The above argument is not just simple, but familiar. If it has not always been convincing, that may be because in the wrong setting it can look like scepticism, so like what must be wrong. Much of the value of McDowells work is in allowing this argument to appear in (much more nearly) the right setting. The wrong setting would be one in which it looks as if you always might be wrong; any other sort of status is unobtainable. No matter how good a cognitive position I get myself into, for all that, unbeknownst to me, there might not be a pig. In that case, If you might be wrong, then you dont know means You never know. And if it means that, then we had better reject the principle. But, as Austin reminds us, and as McDowell insists, that is the wrong setting. As Austin puts it, You might be

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wrong does not, or need not (normally) mean merely that you are a fallible human being, or that outrages of nature are conceivable. It means that there is some concrete reason for doubting whether p. In an equally Austinian vein, the simple argument might be acceptable if we were often enough in a position to enjoy knowledge of the rst variety. But, Austin, and equally McDowell, insist, so we are. We are the sorts of being equipped to see such things as that the pig is wallowing. So we may know in the rst way that the pig is wallowing. As McDowell also emphasizes, we are also the sorts of beings who can sometimes see that someone else is suffering, or hear someone state that the picnic is postponed, or express belief that the heat wave will end soon. So, accepting the simple argument, we are the sorts of being who may know, in the rst way, what someone feels, or think, or says. There are, of course conceivable cases where what we saw was not a pig wallowing; we only thought we saw that. (Someone had had a particularly trying fancy dress ball, say.) As Austin and McDowell insist, that is no reason for denying that there are cases of the mentioned kind. The points so far are pure Austin. One would expect that Austinian epistemology can assume its proper form only when Davidson is left behind. For Austins view of meaning is integral to his view of knowledge. His remark, above, about sorting sentences by truth-value continues, But it is really equally clear, ... that for much the same reasons there could be no question of picking out from ones bunch of sentences those that are evidence for others, those that are testable, or those that are incorrigible. (Austin 1962, p.111) If Austins view of meaning is in play here, it matters that it is the polar opposite of Davidsons. Epistemological notions, Austin insists, are not means for sorting sentences. Specically, we cannot sort sentences into those that state what Jones knows and those that do not. Nor, he is clear, could we even sort statements into those that state what Jones knows and those that do not. Jones himself, and the way he is, do not separate the facts into those he knows and those he does not. There is no such division to make. There is a shallow reading of Austins point about sentences: whether the sentence Clinton is president expresses (in 2000) something Jones knows of course does not depend just on what the sentence means, nor on (the rest of) Joness condition (what else she knows, can see, thinks, and so on), but also on how the world is. If the senate trial is drawing to a close, the idea is, then knowing that Clinton is (still) president is one sort of accomplishment; where no trial is on the cards, that knowledge is a different accomplishment. A sign that that is not Austins point is that it is something a Davidsonian might equally well say; whereas Austin takes

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his point to be of a piece with his view of meaning, which a Davidsonian must reject. More importantly, the point, read shallowly, does not still the qualms we naturally feel about doing away with second-grade knowledge as McDowell and Austin suggest. For example, McDowell insistsI think rightlythat there is the following sort of case. If Pia keeps up on things as many of us do, she may count as knowing that Helsinki is the capital of Finland, or that Clinton is president, even though since last she listened to the news it would have been possible for Clinton to have resigned, or for the Finns to have moved their capital to Turku, or to Faro (a literally unbounded hedonism). (See Knowledge by Hearsay, MKR.) It is easy to feel that McDowell is right: there is that kind of case; we do talk that way. But it is also easy to nd oneself with pangs of conscience, and suspicions that the view is mere fashion. For once we allow that kind of case, just where do we draw the line? How many (or which) opportunities to surprise Pia can we grant the world, while still insisting that what she has is knowledge? Does she know the Toad and Stoat serves Guinness when some pubs have been switching to other stouts, and her last visit was a week ago? Does she still know Clinton is president if we have heard a rumour that something has just happened at the White House? Austins advice is not to draw a line; for what we say in saying Pia to know, say, that Clinton is president depends, not just on the fact that we are saying her to know something, and the fact that it is that Clinton is president that we are saying her to know, nor just on that and the way that Pia is, but also on the circumstances of our saying it. Let Washington be as it is, and Pia as she is. Then there are many different things to say, some true, some false, in saying her to know that. We would say different such things on different occasions for describing her, the circumstances of a describing deciding (if anything does) what knowing that Clinton was president might, in them, come to. That is the key to our natural qualms. Suppose we must classify Pia as knowing, or not, that Clinton is president, with no knowledge of the circumstances in which, or reasons for which, we are to do so. It is easy to imagine circumstances in which we would so class her. But it is not as if we would be prepared to do so no matter what the occasion for it. So we cannot classify her at all without the feeling that we are doing something not quite righta correct feeling if the content of knowledge ascriptions is occasion-dependent in the way Austin suggests. McDowell uses the Sellarsian image of a space of reasons to cast his points: knowledge is a genuine standing in the space of reasonsthat is, a status we may actually enjoy; it contrasts with other positions in the space, notably, with merely having evidence; and it is not constructed out of rightly, or reasonably, thinking so plus some fact perhaps beyond the

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knowers kenthe space is not so structured. The Davidsonian idea makes that image take on a certain shape. With it, the space of reasons effects a determinate categorization of the world, and of its thinkers. It imposes a denite shape on the facts. For a thinker at a time, there is that which he knows, that for which he merely has evidence, for which his evidence is weak, or strong, for which he has no evidence, and so on. For any concept, after all, there are the conditions under which it is satised by such and such; and these identify what satises it. So read the image takes a shape one might understandably shy from. Austin makes the image take a different shape. The space of reasons, viewed through his idea, is a system for organizing thought, available for applying on occasion. Certain things are built into itknowing, for example, is distinct from having evidence, and a status one may enjoy. But what structure the system gives to reasons, and to thinkers epistemic statuseswhat, within it, is reason (and of what sort) for whatmust be xed by the occasion for applying it. (And occasions structure reasons locally, just where, on them, structure has some point.) What counts as evidence for p on some occasions for asking need not so count on all. Whether Pia counts as knowing that Jones is at home, or as just supposing so, may depend on the occasion on which she is so to count. That shape what a sane epistemology anyway requiresmakes the image of a space of reasons benign.

5. Antirealism
The antirealism at issue here insists there is a certain constraint on any genuine fact-stating discourse, and that the constraint bites: wide stretches of ordinary discourse cannot be merely what, on their face, they purport to be; to say that S, in such cases, must be (just) to say (do) something speciable in terms other than those manifestly part of saying so. Clearly McDowell must reject the view, since it clashes with his Wittgensteinian idea: there can be no substantive constraint on fact-stating discourse other than that we do not nd it too embarrassing, stupid, or the like, to go in for its pretensions. So either there is no such constraint, or it has no bite. That brief occupies three essays in MKR. The impression of a constraint with bite McDowell chalks up to bad epistemology. If the issue has this structure, antirealism cannot have the Wittgensteinian pedigree sometimes claimed for it. Here is antirealism in ve steps. 1. There is this constraint on meaning, and on content: an expression can only mean something grasp of which is fully manifestable, and its

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meaning which is fully manifestable in its use. Similarly for statements and their content. 2. If a statement is undecidable, grasp of when things would be the way it says is not fully manifestable. A statement is undecidable, in the present special sense, if it speaks of an undecidable way for things to be. A way for things to be is undecidable in the present sense if there is no speciable procedure always (on any occasion for applying it) guaranteed to yield, in a nite time, either proof that things are that way, or proof that they are not. 3. Many ordinary statements, if genuinely that, are undecidable. For example, statements about the dim past (Caesar had precisely eleven moles on his back, henceforthCaesar had moles), or statements about other minds (Pia is unhappy). Pia might, perhaps, exude happiness. But, as Austin said, it may be difcult to divine the thoughts of fakirs, Wykehamists and simple eccentrics. Pia could have been like one of those. So there is no procedure guaranteed to yield proof as to her happiness, no matter what the situation. 4. Nonetheless such are genuine statements. Historical discourse, for example, is not just nonsense. 5. Hence such discourse must be something other (or more, or less) than what it pretends to be. Step 5 needs lling in; not an easy task. (Though it is usual to mention truth at this juncture, it will be better not to.) There are two things one might try. The most straightforward is to deny that we (fully) grasp what it is for Caesar to have had moleswhat way for things to be that is. But that ts ill with 4. By 4, we do, or can, understand Caesar had moles. To do that is to grasp what way it says things to be. To do that is to grasp what way for things to be Caesars having had moles is. Where we make intelligible statements, we at least can know whereof we speak. The second option is to play with the notion of obtaining. Perhaps we might make sense of the idea that, while we know what it is for Caesar to have had moles, we do not (fully) grasp what it would be for that to obtain. Perhaps it is only an illusion that the notion of obtaining (full stop) makes sense. So we must eschew the notion of obtaining (equally that of truth) in saying what it is that statements state, or what expressions mean. What, then, can we say about a statement? There is a plethora of possibilities. But we need consider only one forking of our path. By antirealism we must say about a statement what an understander might manifestly know about it. But the antirealist allows that we might manifestly know when things decidably obtain. So, if we are speaking of intelligible statements, we might just scrap the notion of obtaining in favour of that of decidably

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obtaining. The result would look like this: The (a) statement, Caesar had moles states what is decidably so just in case it is decidably so that Caesar had moles. That is the rst fork. On this fork we deal only in notions grasp of which, by antirealist lights, is fully manifestable. There is a possible source of dissatisfaction with this move in that there is nothing here to which a Davidsonian need dissent. Davidson insists that the important thing in semantics is to make the right connections between statements, or expressions, and the things of which they speak. In more Davidsonian terms, suppose a semantic theory generates statements of the form _ S _ F _. Then as long as it connects the substitutes for S with the right substitutes for F, and generates truth, it does not matter what lls the blanks. If, by those standards, is true iff will do, then so, plausibly, will says what is decidably so iff it is decidably so that. If the latter lling lets someone sleep better, so be it. In less Davidsonian terms, the aim of a semantic theory of a language, in re sentences, is, for each sentence of the language, to say something true of it that would be true of a sentence just in case it meant what that one does. If it is true that the sentence Snow is white is true iff snow is white, then, plausibly, it is equally true that the sentence says what is decidably so just in case it is decidably so that snow is white. And it is equally plausible of both features that they are ones a sentence would have iff it meant what Snow is white does. The point may reverse. Suppose someone would sleep better if he took the antirealists semantics, as above, and struck out every occurrence of decidably, thus speaking, throughout, of obtaining full stop. He preserves the right connections. Given the anti-Austinian assumptions that Davidson and the antirealist share, it is difcult to see why he should have converted any truth to a falsehood. It is now hard to see what principled objection there could be to his style of doing things, or to the correlative idea that our competence with the language just does (fully) manifest grasp of the notion of obtaining. Perhaps for this reason the fork just scouted is little taken. On the second fork, we substitute for the notion of obtaining a notion of a different sort. The most popular candidate is some notion of being warranted, or warrantedly assertible. We would thus state things like The statement Caesar had moles is warranted iff _, where what lled the blank would describe a decidable state of affairs, thus one other than that of Caesars having had moles (and thus one we may freely speak of as obtaining tout court or not). This move achieves clear distance from Davidson. For by his lights we are now pairing the wrong things with the wrong things. One might also see a departure here from Saul Kripkes Bishop Butler: one thing (Cae-

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sars having moles) is beginning to be made to look like something else. So far, though, that charge might be denied on grounds that warrant is defeasible: it makes sense to suppose that one is warranted in asserting that Caesar had moles, though he did not. Warrant seems an epistemic notion. To be warranted in asserting that p is to have right to represent oneself as in a position to say so; as conveying information that one has (or rightly takes oneself to have). In that case, this fork of antirealism is at odds with Austinian epistemology, which holds that whether one counts as in such a position depends, not just on what the words of an assertion mean, nor on what was asserted, but on the circumstances in which one is to count as enjoying, or not, that epistemic status. By Austins lights there can be no question of correlating meanings, or assertoric content, with speciable circumstances that would, as such, warrant asserting that. The biggest problem with this antirealist fork, in my view, is that Austin was right. One might refer here, once again, to McDowells case against criteria. And one might lament that, apart from McDowell, this most important strand of Oxford philosophy has been so conspicuously lost. By now it should be clear what the main lines of McDowells response to antirealism will be; for antirealism is anti-Austinian and anti-Wittgensteinian at just the crucial points. It may help to add that McDowell agrees with the antirealist that facts about meaning and content must be manifest in use, and grasp of such things manifestable. Much of his case concerns what it is that can be manifest to uswhat we encounter in experience and what we thus might manifest. One main objection McDowell makes is to the deployment, in the above story, of a rather special notion of decidability. If I state that Pia is happy, then, on this notion, I have made an undecidable statement. But that Pia is happy is something I might be able to see. So it is the sort of thing for which, in favourable cases, I might have proof. What makes it undecidable, in this special sense, is that there is room for unfavourable cases, as well as for favourable ones. Similarly, that something happened in the (recent) past is, McDowell convincingly argues, sometimes something we may observe. We feel the plonk we drank last night, and recall all too vividly doing so. Seeing things to be a given way is one sort of case of grasping what way for things to be that is. It may be part of what that way is that it is a way things may sometimes undecidably be. In that case, in grasping what the way is, we grasp, manifestably, what it is for things to be undecidably that way. McDowells points about the scope of our experience are pure Austin, defended powerfully case by case. Here he places emphasis on forestalling the idea, which he nds in Dummett, that grasp of such and suchof

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someones being happy, saymust be explicable in terms of grasping something else (as if a decent scientic attitude required that), so that, correlatively, experiencing such things must be understandable as experiencing something else (behaviour, say). His case is the Wittgensteinian idea, effectively applied. An antirealist might think McDowells point here beside the point. The rough idea, I take it, would be this. Suppose there is a way for things to be such that, in certain cases, things would be decidably that way (we just see it), in other cases, decidably not, and in yet others the matter is undecidable. If there is one such way, then there are many, all agreeing on the decidable cases. So one could not fully manifest grasp of words as saying (or of someone as judging) things to be some one of these ways as opposed to any of the others. Here is an analogy. A man is locked in a room with a bunch of objects which we get him to sort, as it were, by colour. He puts the red ones in one pile, the blue ones in another, and so on. But beyond the room there is a world of novel objects. Many different principles for sorting them might agree on the objects in the room. So his performance in the room cannot fully manifest grasp of some one of these principlesof what an objects being red is, sayas opposed to any other. The analogy indicates how seriously this line should be taken. (Not very.) Such a qualm misses the force of McDowells point (equally of the Wittgensteinian, and of the Austinian idea). The sort of thing we may observe, by that point, is that Pia is happy, that last night we drank plonk, or played the fool, and so on. It is part of what it is for someone to be happy, or to have drunk plonk, that these are things that might be undecidably so. (Who knows what Caesar drank?) But, if we can see such things to be so, then it is what it is for things to be those ways that we thus manifestly grasp. Allow the point about what we can see, and it is too late to raise those sorts of qualms.4 That is one face of the Wittgensteinian idea. McDowell drives the point home by insisting on another face. We may be privy to a practice, for whatever that practice is worth: we can talk about peoples moods, or about past events, with the best of themfor what that is worth. Such competence opens up new avenues for manifesting grasp of certain ways for things to beand of words that speak of them as doing that. Namely, it offers ways of manifesting grasp of what the relevant discourse speaks of. In fact, mastering the discoursespeaking with the best of themjust is manifesting such grasp. And if the discourse is not too stupid or embar4 The point stands even without the idea that happiness may be literally seen as long as that Pia is happy is something that may sometimes be manifest to us.

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rassing, or something of the sort, there is no further question as to whether what it speaks of is the sort of thing that it purports tothe past, say.

6. Psychologism
McDowell opposes, emphatically, and often, something he calls psychologism. He offers two ideas as to what that is. On one, it is manifest in a conception according to which the significance of others utterances is a subject for guesswork or speculation as to how things are in a private sphere concealed behind their behaviour. (MKR p. 314.) It is nothing hidden, or inexpressible, that gives our words their life. The second idea concerns mechanisms. There is no merit in a conception of the mind that permits us to speculate about its states, conceived as states of a hypothesized mechanism, with a breezy lack of concern for facts about explicit awareness. (On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name, MKR, p. 180.) McDowell associates the bad idea here with one about implicit knowledge. So he says, the idea that linguistic behaviour is guided by implicit knowledge ... is nothing but a version of the psychologism that Frege denounced and Dummett officially disclaims. (MKR p. 195.) As is evident here, and explicit elsewhere, he takes his opposition to these ideas to be one with Freges insistence on separat[ing] sharply the logical from the psychological, the subjective from the objective. (Frege 1884, p.x) It is unclear (to me) just how McDowells ideas are linked to Freges. I also do not fully understand the ideas themselves, though I sympathize, to a point, with what I think I see there. I am also puzzled by what seems to me occasional psychologismby his own lightson McDowells part. I will explain my puzzlements one by one. Freges point was to insist that psychology has no place in logic. That is a point about the special content of what he called laws of truth: psychology does not investigatethough it is bound bythe ways such laws say things to be. Part of his point was that the principles of logic are obscured if the logician allows his attention to be distracted by grammar. For grammar, by contrast, is a mixture of the logical and the psychological. (Frege 1897, p.142) Logic, for Frege, concerns intrinsic relations between thoughts, which thus must be studied in splendid isolation both from language and from thinkers.

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That very limited anti-psychologism (if it is that) is not McDowells. Even if thoughts may be studied in splendid isolation, they are also what we may think and express. There comes a time for considering what might be said about how, or why, our thought thus connects with the particular thoughts it does. In virtue of what, one might ask, did given words express the thought they did? Whatever one thinks might, or could not, be said about that, a mere injunction to separate the logical from the psychological seems to rule out nothing. If McDowell thinks otherwise, I wish he had said more about why. The idea that words are not animated by hidden goings-on might put one in mind of several different things, all of which seem right. One is Wittgensteins idea that when we explain what words mean, or said, or what being such and such is, we explain no less than we know ourselves. (Every explanation I can give myself I can give another.) That is consistent with the idea that what someone said in given words is a function of sayhis intentions, though, of course, of fully manifestable ones. But intentions cannot play that role on a second right idea as to where words get their life: from the activities they are part of. On that idea, a statements content is xed by what one might have reasonably expected to be able to do with it, given where and how it occurred. Whatever a speakers intentions, beliefs and so on, might suggest might thus be cancelled by the way his words t into our lives. That is another correct take on the idea that words are not animated by hidden goings-on. I also sympathize with McDowells opposition to philosophical positing of mechanisms, or processes, or recipes for using language, or any attempt at explanation of a sort such a mechanism, or etc., might provide. A philosopher who tried that would be out of his eld, and out of his depth. What I do not understand is how any of that bears on postulation of implicit knowledge, or why such postulations should be seen as showing breezy unconcern for what we are explicitly aware of. To see how philosophers might, and might not, be legitimately interested in the mind, or in human minds, it will help, following Chomsky, to distinguish various goals a theory might have. Notably, for a given phenomenonmeaning, sayit is useful to distinguish between theories of performance, recognition theories (of two sorts), and generative theories of the target phenomenon. A performance theory, la B. F. Skinner, would make predictions about what (relevant) people will in fact do. So it must identify, non-trivially, conditions in the world such that, when they are satised, a given speaker will say Pass the salt, and so on for the other things the speaker might say. A variant on such a performance theory would be a theory of how to performwhat McDowell seems to accuse Dummett of hankering for.

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Such a theory would, similarly, make non-trivial predictions about what a speaker ought to do, or may do: when such and such conditions are satised, the/a right (appropriate thing to say is Pass the salt (or that is an appropriate thing to say only when such and such conditions are satised). Such theories bank, of course, on there being non-trivial conditions under which someone will, or may, or should, say such and such. A recognition theory deals with, on the one hand, some well-dened phenomenon, and, on the other, some other sort of fact. It aims to identify, in terms of that other sort of fact, the conditions under which there would be (an instance of) that phenomenon. So, for example, the phenomenon might be being a French sentence, or a sentence meaning pigs grunt. The other sort of fact might be the attitudes of speakers of some relevant community. Such a theory might predict that such and such form is a French sentence, or means pigs grunt, just in case relevant speakers take such and such attitude towards it, or that such and such concrete marks are an instance of a French sentence, or of such and such one, just in case relevant speakers take such and such attitude towards those marks, or towards marks of that sort. A special sort of recognition theorycall it proceduralwould link its target phenomenon to its chosen other facts by stating rules by following which one could determine, given sufcient access to the other facts, whether such and such was a French sentence, or means pigs gruntor, perhaps, work out what it does mean. The aim would be effective means for telling, within a given domain, what was what. A generative theory aims for none of the above. Such a theory aims to describe, systematically and exactly, what it is that we are prepared to recognize in some given areathe sorts of things for which a recognition theory, if possible, would provide conditions. A generative theory consists of principles that generate some well-dened set of descriptions. It is subject to these two general demands. First, for each item in its subjectdomain, it must generate some (true) description of it. Second, for each description it generates, there must be some item in the domain such that whatever ts that description is that item. So, for example, a generative theory might undertake to characterize the (or some) sentence/non-sentence distinction for English. It would do that by generating, for each English sentence, a description of it, subject to the above demands. Setting a higher goal, it might aim to assign each English sentence just that syntactic structure we competent English speakers are prepared to see in it. Its domain would then be the syntactic structures of English. Again, one might aim for a generative semantic theory of English (not necessarily socalled generative semantics). Bracketing ambiguity, such a theory would aim to assign each English expression, E, some property that E has, and that an expression would have just in case it meant what E does.

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(Davidson, we have seen, has his hunch as to what such properties might be.) Performance theories are neither the business of philosophy nor likely prospects anywhere. Nor, for many domains, are recognition theories promising. Performance theories might well postulate mechanisms where philosophy would have no right to. But it is unclear why McDowell, or anyone, should object to generative theories, even where the theorist is a philosopher. (Quine has qualms; but for reasons that should leave McDowell cold.) Whether a given domain admits of a generative theory depends on the nature of the domain, and not on any general thought about psychologism. (I think, for example, that there could be generative theories of what expressions mean, but not of the content, or sense, of statements.) A generative theory is guided by what relevant people are prepared to recognize. It is thus psychological. By the same token, it can hardly have breezy unconcern for what we are, or can come to be, aware of. It may well attribute implicit, or tacit, knowledge. For coming to be aware of what we can be may be no easy business. We (English speakers) are all prepared to recognize the ambiguity in recognize, or the non-evaluative use of progress, though it may take several moments of reection, or the right surroundings, to see the point. Such knowledge informs the sort of understanding we would have of given words. And one might say correctly: we are able to understand such words because we have such understandings to give themthe fruits of knowing what expressions mean. Such knowledge is not knowledge of how to determine, of encountered speech, say, what it means. Nor does positing such knowledgeeven where the knowledge needs to be elicitedamount to positing a mechanism for determining such things. We perceive English, and, more generally, human language, in certain ways, which a grammarian hopes to specify. Chomsky proposes that in certain respects we perceive those things because of the sort of organism we are. To put things in McDowells terms, these are not things we should expect a cosmic exile could be brought, by perception of other things, and reason alone, to see. Chomskys idea is, in some sense, psychologistic. But, as already hinted, I do not see how McDowell could get along without it. To speak as he does of the cosmic exile (Antirealism and the Epistemology of Understanding, MKR), unable to construct assertion from purely other material, if entirely bereft of the capacity to see people as asserting things, just is to make some of our perceptual capacity specic features of our human design. That Pia is happy is the sort of thing a normal mature human is sometimes able to see. An organism not naturally equipped to see the world in those terms, or to see such aspects of it,

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should not expect to gain access to them by learning some recipe for deriving them from other features of things. That is just Wittgensteins idea in psychological dress. It is unclear why McDowell should resist it. Finally, I turn to McDowells own suspect psychologism. In On The Sense and Reference of a Proper Name, McDowell contrasts someone fully ignorant of English with someone fully competent in it. Where English is spoken, the former hears just noise. The latter hears particular sentences spoken, and particular things thereby said. A theory of sense, McDowell tells us, must characterize the difference. (Given Davidson, a theory of sense is, as near as matters here, a semantic theory.) To succeed at that, he holds, it must do this: Such a theory, then, would have the following deductive power: given a suitable formulation of the information available to both the possessor and the non-possessor of the state of understanding on any of the relevant potential occasions, it would permit derivation of the information that the possessor of the state would be distinguished by having. The ability to comprehend heard speech is an information-processing capacity, and the theory would describe it by articulating in detail the relation, which defines the capacity, between input information and output information. (MKR p. 179.) Such a theory would be a recognition theory for assertions made in English; in fact, a procedural one. Here are a few of the things it would do. For utterances of Flying planes can be dangerous, it would identify the conditions (perceivable equally by the non-English speaker) under which something would be said as to the danger of the activity of ying planes, and those under which something would be said as to the dangerousness of planes when ying. For utterances of That guy did it, it will identify the conditions that determine who, if anyone, was thus spoken of. For utterances of This blood is red, it will identify the conditions under which something will have been said that is true of venous blood, those under which something false of such blood will have been said, and so on. In each case there is the supposition that there are such conditions. Perhaps McDowell thinks that there could actually be a theory like that. I do not. Knowledge of a language consists, I think, in knowledge of such things as what particular expressions in it mean. The leap from there to understanding what is said requires humanity and intelligence, in sufcient degrees, and well enough applied. There is, I think, no recipe whose unequivocal results are just what those capacities enable those who have them to achieve. To think that there must be such a recipeif McDowell really does think thatis to engage in a sort of a priorism about the mind that is psychologistic in an objectionable way. That sort of psychologism

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is clear in Davidson. (See Davidson 1986) It does not t with McDowells thought.

7. Conclusion
Once again, philosophy of McDowells calibre does not reduce to a few simple ideas. But I hope to have exhibited one pattern in it. My plan has made for casualties. I have been unable to convey the richness of these essays. I have left undiscussed many important topics. The most important of these, of course, is McDowells work on ethics, which is continuous with his other work in fascinating ways, and whichamong other thingsilluminates it. I deeply regret that omission. I have also omitted any discussion of McDowell on Wittgensteins philosophy of mind, on personal identity, and on the nature of perception, to mention just a few. As for the topics I have discussed, McDowells treatment of them is far more subtle and complex than I have given any inkling of. For those who have not read these essays, I know but one corrective: read them. If possible, read both volumes straight through. It is exciting reading. You will be confronted throughout with a first-rate mind at work.5 Department of Philosophy University of Stirling Stirling FK9 4LA REFERENCES Austin, J. L. 1962: Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, D 1986: A nice Derangement of Epitaphs, in Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives in the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, E. Le Pore (ed). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Frege, G. 1884: The Foundations of Arithmetic, translated by J. L. Austin. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (1950). Frege, G. 1897: Logic, Posthumous Writings. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (1979). McDowell, J. 1994: Mind and World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Travis, C 1997: Pragmatics, in A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Crispin Wright and Bob Hale (eds) Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
5 I want to thank Joan Weiner and James Joyce for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

CHARLES TRAVIS

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