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Conceptualism and the Problem of Illusory Experience

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Abstract

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we possess concepts for all the objects, properties, and relations which feature in our experiences. Richard Heck has recently argued that the phenomenon of illusory experience provides us with conclusive reasons to reject this view. In this paper, I examine Heck’s argument, I explain why I think that Bill Brewer’s conceptualist response to it is ineffective, and I then outline an alternative conceptualist response which I myself endorse. My argument turns on the fact that both Heck, in constructing his objection to conceptualism, and Brewer, in responding to it, miss a crucial distinction between perceptual demonstrative concepts of objects, on the one hand, and perceptual demonstrative concepts of properties, on the other.

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Notes

  1. From now on, I will talk simply of ‘demonstrative concepts’ instead of ‘perceptual demonstrative concepts’: I will not be concerned with demonstrative concepts of any other sorts.

  2. See McDowell 1994, pp. 56–7, and Brewer 1999, pp. 170–4.

  3. See Heck 2000, pp. 494–5.

  4. See Brewer 2005, pp. 222–3, Steup and Sosa 2005.

  5. I.e. — a Fregean ‘Thought’.

  6. Heck 2000, p.495.

  7. In a case where no table is perceived, we might want to say that the expression ‘that shade’ does not refer to any shade.

  8. Ibid., p.496.

  9. I should note here that I am conceiving of colour shades as universal-like entities that exist independently of their instances.

  10. See Evans 1982, chapters 4 & 6.

  11. Ibid, p. 107.

  12. See McDowell 1990, and Peacocke 1991, for different interpretations.

  13. Evans himself would, I think, hold that there is another (not necessarily competing) explanation of my inability to acquire a demonstrative concept of ‘that can’ on the basis of my hallucinatory experience. Cf. note 16 below.

  14. Evans 1982, p. 106.

  15. We would also have to establish that the metaphysics presupposed by the appeal to fundamental grounds of difference is unproblematic. Cf. Peacocke 1992, pp. 234–5.

  16. I take this to be the view that Evans himself adopts, at least with respect to possession of demonstrative concepts of objects (see ibid., pp. 132–5, and pp. 145–51). See also Peacocke 1991, and Campbell 2002, ch. 5, for expressions of this kind of view.

  17. Many thanks to Emma Borg, Bill Brewer, Jonathan Dancy, Phil Goff, Hemdat Lerman, Anders Nes, Ram Neta, and Galen Strawson.

References

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AA, England, UK

    Charlie Pelling

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Pelling, C. Conceptualism and the Problem of Illusory Experience. Acta Anal 22, 169–182 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-007-0001-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-007-0001-1

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