John McDowell (second edition)

Abstract

John McDowell is one of the most widely read philosophers in recent years. His engagement with a philosophy of language, mind and ethics and with philosophers ranging from Aristotle and Wittgenstein to Hegel and Gadamer make him one of the most original and outstanding philosophical thinkers of the post-war period.

In this clear and engaging book Tim Thornton introduces and examines the full range of McDowell's thought. After a helpful introduction setting out McDowell's general view of philosophy Thornton introduces and explains the following topics:

• Wittgenstein on philosophy, normativity and understanding
• value judgements
• theories of meaning and sense
• singular thought and Cartesianism
• experience, knowledge and openness to the world
• Mind and World and idealism
• action and the debate with Hubert Dreyfus on conceptual content and skilled coping.

This second edition has been significantly revised and expanded to include new sections on: McDowell's work on disjunctivism and criticisms of it; a new chapter on McDowell's modification of his account of perceptual experience and conceptual content and criticisms by Charles Travis; and a new chapter on action and McDowell's engagement with Hubert Dreyfus and the debate concerning skilled coping and mindedness.

The addition of a glossary makes John McDowell, second edition essential reading for those studying McDowell, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics and epistemology, as well as for students of the recent history of analytical philosophy generally.

Tim Thornton is Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health at University of Central Lancashire, UK. He is author of Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry (2007), Wittgenstein on Language and Thought (1998), co-author of the Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (2006), and Tacit Knowledge (2013) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry (2013).