The Battle of Myths: A Phenomenological Foray Into the Dreyfus-McDowell Debate

5 JETHRO MASÍS The Battle of Myths: A Phenomenological Foray Into the Dreyfus-McDowell Debate Jethro Masís Universidad de Costa Rica Abstract In this paper I take stock of the Dreyfus-McDowell debate regarding the classical conceptualism-nonconceptualism distinction. At stake is the fundamental relationship between pre-theoretical experience and the conceptual rendering of it. Can pure intuitive experience be investigated in its immediacy, or is it always pervaded with conceptual mindedness? Is Kant right that intuitions without concepts are blind? If so, isn’t phenomenological philosophy —given its intuitionistic leanings— a fatally flawed endeavor? I shall defend the thesis that phenomenology is both feasible and fundamental as a theory of pre-theoretical experience. However, Dreyfus’s idea that “absorbed coping” is somehow ineffable and mindless altogether will be criticized as nonphenomenological in the final analysis.