104th PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: Marie McGinn on Non-Inferential Knowledge
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
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Defending the Right to Straight Off Observational Judgments
The idea is that we need to make clear the connection between a subject's ability to make straight off observational judgements confidently and without guidance. As McDowell observes, the capacity to judge is something that human beings acquire through the sort of education which is typical for them. We should look for the source of the subject's entitlement to those judgements not in something which grounds or justifies them but in the authority which arises from his mastery of the concepts employed. This approach abandons the idea that experiential episodes are what lend our observational judgements whatever authority they possess.
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