John McDowell interview: Avoiding the Myth of the Given and other philosophical thoughts

This interview was recorded while Professor John McDowell was in Dublin to receive an honorary degree award from University College Dublin in April 2013. Full story: Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy in the Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences, John H. McDowell has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and Princeton University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (elected in 1983), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected in 1992), and a recipient of the Andrew Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award (2010). Before taking up his current post at the University of Pittsburgh in 1986, Professor McDowell taught at University College Oxford. His book, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), originally delivered as John Locke Lectures at Oxford, is seen by many philosophers as one of the finest philosophical works of the past-half century. For the past two decades, through his works and writings professor McDowell has argued that human rationality shapes not just our beliefs but our very perceptual experiences which are assumed to be the interface between nature and reason.