"Virtue and Reason" and Being and Time on the McDowell Dreyfus debate

In this paper I address the role of mind and conceptuality in absorbed and expert coping as brought forth in the McDowell/ Dreyfus debate. I aim to support McDowell's view of practical rationality and situation specific conceptual understanding by providing evidence through examples of the role that conceptuality and mind play in virtue, as presented in McDowell’s work “Virtue and Reason”. I also draw from Heidegger’s Being and Time to present evidence, via his characterization of the sui-generis nature of significance and Dasein’s pre-ontological understanding of being, that suggest that Dasein’s everyday engagement with the world relies on a fundamental conceptual understanding of the world and is pervaded with a practical rationality that aligns with McDowell’s account of minded absorbed coping.