Abstract
In this paper, I discuss the conceptualist claim that we cannot speak of perceptual content unless we assume it is objective content. The conceptualist argues that only conceptual content can meet the requirement of being objective, so that the view that perceptual experience has nonconceptual content is not tenable. I start out by presenting the argument from objectivity as it can be found in McDowell (Mind and world, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1994b). I then present the following objections: First, perceptual objectivity cannot be due to the perceiver’s conception of objectivity; and second, even nonconceptual capacities of the individual cannot and need not be appealed to in order to account for objective perceptual content.
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Notes
McDowell, too, requires more than concept possession. According to him, however, conceptual abilities have to be drawn on or actualized in perceptual experience. This way, he tries to capture that it is not under the active control of the perceiver how conceptual abilities are operative in perceptual experience. I cannot discuss the fine-grained distinction between exercising and actualizing conceptual abilities here. At any rate, what is important is that McDowell and I agree that mere possession of the relevant concepts does not guarantee that a mental state has conceptual content. Rather, these concepts have to be operative in undergoing the experience.
From here on, all bare page references will be to McDowell (1994b).
He relies explicitly on phenomenological considerations in his (1994a).
Note that perceptual experience can misrepresent: Features of a mind-independent world may be represented where none are present.
While the world “is the bit of objective reality that is within her perceptual and practical reach” (116) for subjects who are able to appreciate its objectivity, it is not there at all for animals who are unable to do so. McDowell denies that such animals have experiences with representational content—instead, he ascribes mere “perceptual sensitivity” to them (121).
I will leave out the ‘as of an objective world’ from now on. For McDowell, talk of a world-view already implies that it is a view of a world as objective—otherwise, there could not be a world and a view of it. I will follow him in his use of “world-view”.
McDowell would not even grant this much, for without rational integration, our beliefs cannot have empirical content.
See footnote 8.
One might object that her urge to duck will be due to her anticipation of painful qualia, and nothing more. But I do not think that this is plausible. Just as it is beyond the subject's control that she will raise her foot reflexively when stepping into a nail, so it is not under her control that she will duck in expectation of being hit by a rock because her visual experience represents a rock to be flying at her face.
Plausibly, she will believe that it appears as though there is a rock flying at her face on the basis of her experience. This goes to show that her experiences help determine what the solipsist believes. But on the argument presented above, her beliefs should influence the content of her perceptual experiences as well—her conviction that there is no external world to be represented should prevent her experience from making it appear as though there is a rock flying in her direction in the first place.
Note that in the end, I will not endorse this view: I hold that not even this much is needed for experience to have a content. I will get to this in the next section.
Burge (2009) appears to be ambiguous on the claims that the perceptual system or, respectively, the individual, needs to have capacities such as the ability to track a body over time. I thank him for a helpful e-mail on this topic.
Note that Tye’s (1995, 7–10) explication of unilateral visual neglect is in the same spirit: He suggests that a unilateral visual neglect patient has phenomenally conscious visual experiences in the ‘neglected’ part of her visual field and that her real deficit is of a higher cognitive order—it is her inability to attend to and notice what she experiences.
These considerations naturally lead to questions of how talk of content in individual-level is related to content-talk in sub-individual-level explanations. I discuss this issue in my (forthcoming).
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Schmidt, E. Does Perceptual Content Have to Be Objective? A Defence of Nonconceptualism. J Gen Philos Sci 46, 201–214 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9289-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9289-5