Abstract

John McDowell gave an important contribution to the debate on naturalism in the contemporary philosophy by proposing a “naturalism of the second nature”, which distinguishes itself by setting aside the conception of nature promoted by the modern science and for being based on the idea of second nature, reinterpreted in the light of the Sellarsian notion of the “logical space of reasons”, understood as the horizon of our world experience. He argues, accordingly, for the unboundedness of the conceptual sphere, which allows him to claim, in Mind and World, that experience justifies our beliefs because it is already conceptually articulated. The naturalism of the second nature extends to the domain of moral philosophy, gaining the form of a virtue ethics. The article points out some of the main problems of McDowell’s naturalism, like the difficulties underlying the experience conceptualism and the charge of idealism, offering also answers, inspired by McDowell himself, to these problems.