Perceptual experience: both relational and contentful

We are pleased to invite you to the 2012 Mark Sacks lecture:
Perceptual experience: both relational and contentful
John McDowell

It seems right to say that perceptual experience puts experiencing subjects in (direct or immediate) relation with items in their environments. It is increasingly widely held that there is an inconsistency between that claim and the idea that perceptual experience has content. John McDowell will argue that there is no such inconsistency.

The paper from this lecture will be published in an upcoming issue of the European Journal of Philosophy and the lecture will be recorded and made available as a free podcast.

Date and time: 5.30pm, Friday 15th June 2012
Venue: Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 34 Gell Street, S3 7QY, UK

All are welcome to attend the lecture which will be followed by a drinks reception hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.

The texts of previous lectures in this series (formerly known as the EJP Annual Lectures) have been published as follows:

2011: Identity, Individuation and Substance, David Wiggins

2010: Why Are You Betraying Your Class?, Avishai Margalit

2009: Danish Ethical Demands and French Common Goods: Two Moral Philosophies, Alasdair MacIntyre

2008: Ethics for Communication, Onora O’Neill

> View the full list.

Neglecting the philosophical baby

Have philosophers neglected the mind of the child? Yes they have, if we are to believe psychologist, Alison Gopnik. In her latest book The Philosophical Baby, she presents a raft of examples aimed to show that babies’ minds are more sophisticated than has (she says) been supposed.

One contemporary philosopher who has been attacked on just this basis is John McDowell. He has put forward the thesis that animals and young infants do not perceive or indeed think….