Why McDowell is a genius

Cited by Green/Bar-On, link in "Lionspeak". I loved that "PS" (Philosophical Subjects"), which contains the McDowell, "PS" is an acronym for "Peter Strawson", since it's a festschrift for him. Not as creative as "Philosohical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, categories, ends", PGRICE -- Grandy and Warner's edited festschrift for Grice)

Green and Bar-On write:

"McDowell turns to ―modes of behaviour that we can ascribe to creatures to which we would not think of ascribing intentional action‖ (1983: 40) continuing as follows"

"A bird, say, might instinctively emit

a characteristic sort of squawk on seeing

a predator; other birds might acquire, on

hearing such a squawk, a propensity towards

behaviour appropriate to the proximity of

a predator (flight, increased

caution in feeding, or whatever). This propensity

might match a propensity they would have

acquired if they had seen the predator

themselves … there is no risk of over-psychologizing

our account of the birds – crediting

them with an inner life – if we regard

such behaviour as effecting the transmission of information,

and hence as constituting a kind of communication."

(Ibid, p. 40)2"

"What separates linguistic behavior from ―this kind of information-transmission‖, McDowell continues, is the fact that the former is ―wholly overt."