The mechanism—the secret—of the given

Abstract

There is, of course, The Given: what is given in experience. The ‘Myth Of The Given’ (‘the Myth’) is just a wrong answer to the question ‘What is given?’ This paper offers a brief sketch of three possible right answers. (1) It examines an early account by Charles Augustus Strong of why The Myth is a myth. (2) It maintains that a natural and naturalistic version of empiricism is compatible with the fact that the Myth is a myth. (3) It gives proper place to enactivist (physiological, motor) considerations. (4) It is (in spite of (3)) broadly in line with the Sellarsian view as refined by John McDowell. (5) It meets an important constraint: acknowledging the reality of something that seems at first to lend support to The Myth—i.e. the fact that we can engage in ‘non-inferential self-attribution of … sensations’ (McDowell in ‘Having the World in View’, In Having the World in View Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998/2009: p. 20)—without in any way succumbing to the Myth.