SPAH Seminar Series: Conformity and Second Nature

This seminar, hosted by Dr Matteo Falomi, University of Essex, discusses the natural and social necessitation in McDowell’s Mind and World.

An abstract from Mind and World by John McDowell

In Mind and World, McDowell aims at dissolving a philosophical anxiety about the place of reason in nature. His dissolution hinges upon a Wittgensteinian “reminder of the obvious”: reason is second nature to us, as we become rational through social habituation. I will argue that the content of this “reminder”, if thought through, turns out to be anything but obvious: if self-determination is acquired through habituation, then we must, but also must not, rely on the authority of our educators in order to acquire it. From this perspective, what habituation can deliver is at best a capacity to rely on external authority. This indicates that McDowell’s therapeutic attempt is incomplete, as it does not dissolve the reader’s anxiety, but rather leaves her with an anxiety of a different form: the attempt transforms an anxiety about natural necessitation into an anxiety about social necessitation, or conformity. To bring Mind and World’s project to completion, one would need to dissolve this anxiety. I will conclude by suggesting that Stanley Cavell’s work on Perfectionism may be a good starting place for approaching this task.