Should we be Kantians? A defence of empiricism (Part one)

In his book Mind and World (1994), John McDowell defends the Kantian positi on that the content of experiences is conceptual. Without this Kantian assu mption, he argues, it would be impossible to understand how experience may rationally constrain thought. But McDowell's Kantianism is either false or empty, and his view of the relation between mind and world cannot be stated without transcending the bounds of sense. McDowell's arguments supporting the Kantian thesis, which are very different from Kant's arguments, essenti ally involve a fallacy of ambiguity. In order to understand how thought may be rationally constrained by experience we should become empiricists.