Philosophers of perception frequently assume that we see actual states of affairs, or facts. Call this claim factualism. In his book, William Fish suggests that factualism is supported by phenomenological observation as well as by experimental studies on multiple object tracking and dynamic feature-object integration. In this paper, I examine the alleged evidence for factualism, focusing mainly on object detection and tracking. I argue that there is no scientific evidence for factualism. This conclusion has implications for studies on the phenomenology (...) and epistemology of visual perception. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the question of whether mature human experience is thoroughly conceptual, or whether it involves non-conceptual elements or layers. It has two central goals. The first goal is methodological. It aims to establish that that question is, to a large extent, an empirical question. The question cannot be answered by appealing to purely a priori and transcendental considerations. The second goal is to argue, inter alia by relying on empirical findings, that the view known as ‘state-conceptualism’ (...) is false. We will argue that our experiences do involve non-conceptual elements. That is, a subject may enjoy an experience with a particular phenomenal aspect, without possessing the concept needed for the specification of the content of that aspect, and moreover, without being able to acquire that concept upon having that experience. (shrink)

I argue that the debate about the reason-giving character of perception, and, derivatively, the contemporary debate about the nature of the conceptual content of perception, is best viewed as a confrontation with refined versions of the following three independently plausible, yet mutually inconsistent, propositions: Perceptual apprehension Some perceptions provide reasons directly Exclusivity Only beliefs provide reasons directly Bifurcation No perception is a belief I begin with an evaluation and refinement of each proposition so as to crystallize the source of the (...) difficulties that dominate our thinking about the reason-giving character of perception. I argue that the contemporary literature is broadly split between those denying Bifurcation and those denying Perceptual apprehension. Though Exclusivity, too, has been target to criticism, its grip on our thinking has all too often been underestimated. As a result, a proper denial or modification of Exclusivity is yet wanting. Overcoming Exclusivity involves a considerable challenge that has not been adequately acknowledged or met—to develop a substantive account of nonconceptual apprehension. Getting a clearer understanding of the nature, the source, and possible resolution of this challenge is the primary aim of this paper. (shrink)

In this chapter, I clarify the notions of mental content and of concept. I present competing views on these notions and indicate my own position. I introduce content in terms of correctness conditions and distinguish several kinds of propositions, as well as non-propositional scenario content, with which perceptual content might be identified. I relate this discussion to a wide-spread commitment in philosophy of perception to respect the subject’s perceptual perspective in ascriptions of perceptual content. Then I compare views of concepts (...) as Fregean senses, as mental representations, and as cognitive abilities and investigate how they relate to the central idea that concepts are possessed by subjects. I suggest that our talk of concept possession and exercise is anchored in subjects’ abilities for re-identification and for general thought and in their inferential abilities. I clarify how possession and exercise of these three conceptual abilities relate. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of the structure and purpose of the book. It introduces the philosophical context and motivations of the debate between conceptualism and nonconceptualism. The book is a defense of the nonconceptualist claim that experience is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content. In particular, it defends what I call ‘Modest Nonconceptualism,’ which is briefly introduced in this chapter. On this view, all perceptual experiences are at least partly nonconceptual, i.e., involve the exercise of at least some concepts. It (...) involves an argument that enables the Modest Nonconceptualist to bridge the gap between the state view and the content view of nonconceptualism. ‘Concept’ talk is taken to be anchored in conceptual abilities that the subject possesses and exercises. Nonconceptual perceptual content is taken to consist in scenario content (see Peacocke, A study of concepts. MIT, Cambridge, 1992), which is both nonconceptual and non-propositional; externally conceived, the content of an experience consists in the worldly states of affairs it represents. The latter content is needed for the Modest Nonconceptualist’s account of perceptual justification. The view claims that the Autonomy Thesis is correct: A perceiver’s experiences may have nonconceptual content even if she possesses no concepts whatsoever. The Modest Nonconceptualist account of the representational content of perceptual experience is based on the subpersonal-level organization of the underlying representational states. (shrink)

Michael Ayers’s Knowing and Seeing: Groundwork for a New Empiricism is a rich and detailed development of two ideas. The first is that perception presents reality to us directly in a perspicuous way. We thus acquire primary knowledge of the world: “knowledge gained by being evidently, self-consciously, in direct cognitive contact with the object of the knowledge.” (Ayers 2019, 63) The second idea is that concepts are not needed in perception. In this article, the author examines Ayers’s view. The author (...) proceeds as follows: In the first section, he identifies the target of Ayers’s attacks, conceptualism. He then describes why many philosophers have felt this conceptualist view to be attractive. In the next section, he discusses Ayers’s criticisms of conceptualism in an attempt to disentangle these criticisms from the statement of his positive view, which the author discusses in the following section. He ends by describing some problems for Ayers’s positive position that are, so he argues, the result of his vehement opposition to conceptualism. (shrink)

Casey O’Callaghan has argued that rather than hearing meanings, we hear phonemes. In this note I argue that valuable though they are in an account of speech perception – depending on how we define ‘hearing’ – phonemes either don’t explain enough or they go too far. So, they are not the right tool for his criticism of the semantic perceptual account (SPA).

I argue that at least some nonlinguistic animals have conceptual capabilities. First, I show that positions that take linguistic capabilities to be necessary for conceptual capabilities are unable to explain the possibility of concept acquisition. Second, I argue that awareness of abstract relations requires conceptual capabilities and success at relational matching-to-sample tasks requires awareness of the abstract relations of same and different. Crows and amazons are able to succeed at relational matching-to-sample tasks, so we should attribute conceptual capabilities to them. (...) Third, I argue that at least some nonlinguistic animals are able to have and present reasons by making and having explicit content. Fourth, I argue for an externalist account of inference that takes epistemic responsibility to be a deontic status. Fifth, and finally, I argue that at least some nonlinguistic animals should be regarded as living in normative communities because their communications meet the conditions for assertions. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss arguments for the claim that a subject can both have an experience with a certain content and not be in possession of all the concepts needed to specify this content. If she does not possess all the relevant concepts, then she cannot exercise them. So, she can undergo such an experience without being required to exercise all the concepts needed to specify its content. The argument from memory experience goes back to Martin (Philos Rev 101:745763, (...) 1992). Since we can extract new information from memories of previous experiences when we acquire new concepts, the content of these previous experiences cannot have been fully conceptual. The argument from animal and infant perception presupposes that some subjects who lack concepts of any kind nonetheless have perceptual experiences with the same kind of content as human perception. So, the content of human perception must be nonconceptual just like the perceptual contents of these subjects. The third argument, the argument from concept acquisition (Roskies, Philos Phenomenol Res 76:633659, 2008; Noûs 44:112134, 2010), shows that we cannot explain how subjects acquire some of their first concepts, particularly perceptual-demonstrative concepts, unless we assume that experience content is nonconceptual. The question of whether a subject can have a conscious perceptual experience only if she is able to cognitively appreciate its content is a recurrent theme in the chapter; it is answered in the negative by Modest Nonconceptualism. (shrink)

I examine two arguments for nonconceptualism from the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. The idea is that only the assumption that experience content is nonconceptual does justice to the phenomenology of experience. In particular, if experience content is conceptual, we cannot account for its finely grained representational content. The problem is that visual color experience makes differences between shades of a color that are much more fine-grained than our conceptual repertoire allows. Further, conceptualism is incompatible with the situation-dependence of perceptual (...) content Kelly (Philos Phenomenol Res 62:601–608, 2001b). For instance, it is hard if not impossible to make room, in purely conceptual terms, for the difference between perceiving a certain shade of purple instantiated by a steel ball as compared to seeing it instantiated by a wool carpet. As to the argument from fineness of grain, I concede that the conceptualist’s demonstrative strategy against the argument is initially successful. However, it fails in the end because of problems with the phenomenal character of hallucination, which cannot be accounted for by appeal to only demonstrative concepts. As to the argument from situation-dependence, I point out that the conceptualist cannot convincingly account for the perceived presence, at the same time and in the same place, of situation-dependent and independent properties in experience. (shrink)

This chapter contains the results of my discussion in the book. I first review the success of the respective arguments for nonconceptualism and defenses against conceptualist objections. Five of the six arguments presented in favor of nonconceptualism are successful, and three of them are strong enough to support the claim endorsed by Modest Nonconceptualism that every perceptual experience has at least some nonconceptual content. On the other hand, none of the conceptualist objections to nonconceptualism is fatal. So, nonconceptualism is victorious (...) against conceptualism. Finally, I provide a brief sketch of the Modest Nonconceptualist view that has emerged. (shrink)

I defend both conceptualists and nonconceptualists against an attack which has been leveled at them by critics such as Byrne (Perception and conceptual content In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, Malden, pp 231-250, 2005), Speaks (Philos Rev 114:359–398, 2005), and Crowther (Erkenntnis 65:5–276, 2006). They distinguish a ‘state’ reading and a ‘content’ reading of ‘(non)conceptual’ and argue that many arguments on either side support only the respective state views, not the respective content views. To prepare (...) the ground for my defense, I argue for an understanding of the state view in terms of concept exercise rather than concept possession and provide an overview of versions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism of different strengths. I then argue that conceptualists and nonconceptualists tacitly accept a so-called ‘state-to-content’ principle, show that existing defenses of this principle fail, and provide a new defense of it. It draws on the sources of the nonconceptualism debate, viz. the need to do justice both to the phenomenology of experience and to its epistemological role and to account for the existence of perceptual content and thought content. I argue that epistemological considerations together with considerations from the subject’s perspective support the claim that conceptual thought has conceptual and propositional content, whereas nonconceptual experience has nonconceptual and non-propositional content. (shrink)

The argument from contradictory contents presented here is based directly on observations about the content of experience. It claims that experience content, if conceptual, allows for contradictions within one and the same content. There are at least two examples of this, the waterfall illusion and the visual experiences of some grapheme-color synesthetes. However, due to a Fregean principle of content individuation, no conceptual contents are contradictory. So experience content is nonconceptual. I motivate a particular version of the argument and defend (...) it against two central objections: First, the objection that there is more than one content involved in apparently self-contradictory experiences and second, the claim that conceptual contents are sometimes contradictory, as is true of some desires. In reaction to the second objection, I argue that we need an explanation of why subjects are not irrational if they do not revise their self-contradictory perceptual experiences, and that the conceptualist has no good account of this. For on his view, just as in thought, conceptual abilities are involved in experience and we are dealing with the same Fregean propositional contents. By contrast, nonconceptualism provides such an explanation, for no conceptual abilities are involved in experience itself, and scenario content is not the kind of content that can be revised under rational pressure. (shrink)

In this chapter, I rebut three incarnations of the epistemological objection put forth by McDowell (Mind and World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994a) and Brewer (Perception and Reason, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1999). According to them, only the assumption that perceptual experiences have conceptual content can account for the fact that perception plays a crucial role in justifying belief about the external world. I begin by providing some context to the objections, viz. by presenting the myth of the given that (...) threatens the foundationalist (Sellars, 1:253–329, 1956). Next, I respond to the objection from the logical space of reasons. I argue that nonconceptual content and nonconceptual mental states are themselves elements of the normative space of reasons and thus fit to enter normative justificatory relations with belief. In response to the second objection, the objection from the inferential nature of justification, I argue that nonconceptual and non-propositional scenario contents can be involved in justification, for experiences with such contents can be the starting points of content-sensitive correctness-truth transitions that have beliefs with Fregean propositional contents as their endpoints. In this Modest Nonconceptualist account of perceptual justification, I rely on the external content of perception and belief, which consists in the states of affairs represented. I defend the account against several conceptualist objections. In my defense against the third objection, an objection from cognitive access, I show that nonconceptual states and their contents can be the subject’s own reasons on a mentalism-inspired picture of perceptual justification. Modest Nonconceptualism can thus respect some of the internalist motivations of the conceptualist. (shrink)

In this chapter, I turn to the 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. I start out by presenting the objection from objectivity as it can be found in McDowell (Mind and world, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1994a). I then discuss the following replies: First, even if objective perceptual experience requires the perceiver to have an objective world-view, the (...) experience’s own content may be nonconceptual; second, perceptual objectivity can be had in virtue of mere nonconceptual personal-level abilities; third, a weaker kind of perceptual objectivity that does not even require personal-level capacities is substantial enough to provide for genuine perceptual content. The last reply is the one championed by Modest Nonconceptualism. All that genuine perceptual content presupposes is that the world is perceptually presented to the subject. This requirement can be elucidated via a subpersonal account of how the perceptual systems generate representations underlying her experiences that are poised to influence her central behavior-guiding system. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to analyse Hegel’s theory of cognitive reference to the world and, in particular, Hegel’s theory of sensation, in order to verify whether it implies metaphysical commitments. I will pursue my goal by investigating the problem of sensation in Hegel’s philosophy starting from McDowell’s conception of the relation between mind and world and from his theory of perception. In my view, this strategy offers a threefold advantage that will enable us to do the following: (...) i) persuasively interpret the Hegelian theory of sensation; ii) better understand the authenticity and the limits of McDowell’s ‘Hegelianism’; iii) place the Hegelian theory of sensation within the complex contemporary debate on the status of sensible experience. (shrink)