Abstract

This paper concerns the notion of 'openness to reality' as a conjecture in the philosophy of knowledge. I argue that this conjecture may be found in both John McDowell's Mind and World and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, as a common response in each case to the traditional Problem of the External World. Notwithstanding this proximity, I argue there are in fundamental differences in the ways McDowell and Heidegger cash out this conjecture. In particular, for McDowell the conjecture is understood primarily in normative terms and points to the primacy of normativity in a proper conception of our relation to the world, while for Heidegger the conjecture is understood primarily in terms of ontology, and points to the need for a proper ontological conception of the sort of entities we are. One might say that an 'is-ought' divide opens up in how the Openness toReality conjecture is understood: for Heidegger, to be open to the world means simply to be or exist, in a certain sense of Being which includes Being-in-the-world as a constitutive aspect. For McDowell, to be open to the world is to be answerable to the world, to be governed by the world, so to speak, in regard to the irreducibly normative aspect of knowledge and truth. However, I seek to complicate this neat picture in two ways. First of all, by pointing to the roots of Heidegger's thinking in a strongly normative conception of knowledge, that found in Neo-Kantian value-philosophy. Secondly, I want to argue that Mind and World shows problematics signs of moving towards an ontological construal of the Openness to Reality Conjecture, which is in danger of reintroducing the sort of ontological mysticism to which Heidegger fell foul. This ontological mysticism is what results from trying to articulate in the language of 'being' or in purely ontological terms something that precisely resists such treatment -i.e., the normativity implicit in a proper understanding of what it is to be open to the way things are.