Reply to Guy Longworth

Starting in about 2004 John McDowell and I have engaged in a debate. There have been a number of public exchanges, and quite a few more private ones. In my view, some progress has been made (though the debate continues). Others may disagree (the ‘law of diminishing fleas’). I, at any rate, think I have learned from him. Guy Longworth does us both the honour of comparing our debate to one a half century earlier between J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson. Honours apart, I think he has pointed to an illuminating connection between what I have long thought the main issue and another. If I had been asked what question McDowell and I had been (most centrally) debating, I would have said: it is the question how enjoying an experience of perceiving (e.g., of seeing) can make judging one thing or another intelligibly rational (that last term lifted from McDowell). I have a story to tell which is, in one key respect, sparser than his. To telegraph, he thinks such experience must have (representational) content. I think, not just that it needn’t, but that if it did, we would be cut off from ...