Abstract
Firstly, I argue that Abel and John McDowell share basic assumptions about experience and the way in which we directly experience the world. Secondly, I point out a central difference: Abel thinks that the interpretive nature of experience implies that - given the plurality of interpretations at the fundamental level - our experiences cannot be of one world. McDowell believes that our experiences must be of one world. Thirdly, I argue that McDowell’s criticism of coherentism is applicable to Abel’s conception of experience: If interpretatively different experiences correlate with different worlds, then experiences are not rationally constrained by the world and are “a frictionless spinning in a void.” Fourthly, I argue that, though pluralism needs to be taken more seriously than McDowell does, the issue of pluralism can only arise against the background of the assumption of one world. I thereby offer a belated response to Abel’s reply to my criticism in a 1996 journal symposium.
