In this précis, I review the main points and arguments developed at greater length in Doing without Concepts, and I explain why eliminating the notion of concept would contribute to the progress of the psychology of higher cognition.

Although cognitive scientists have learned a lot about concepts, their findings have yet to be organized in a coherent theoretical framework. In addition, after twenty years of controversy, there is little sign that philosophers and psychologists are converging toward an agreement about the very nature of concepts. Doing without Concepts (Machery 2009) attempts to remedy this state of affairs. In this article, I review the main points and arguments developed at greater length in Doing without Concepts.

I propose a counterexample to naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. The counterexample is generated by experiences of novel colours reported by Crane and Piantanida. I consider various replies that a representationalist might make, including whether novel colours could be possible colours of objects and whether one can account for novel colours as one would account for binary colours or colour mixtures. I argue that none of these strategies is successful and therefore that one cannot fully explain the nature of (...) the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences using a naturalistic conception of representation. (shrink)

In this paper I examine whether representationalism can account for various thought experiments about colour inversions. Representationalism is, at minimum, the view that, necessarily, if two experiences have the same representational content then they have the same phenomenal character. I argue that representationalism ought to be rejected if one holds externalist views about experiential content and one holds traditional exter- nalist views about the nature of the content of propositional attitudes. Thus, colour inver- sion scenarios are more damaging to externalist (...) representationalist views than have been previously thought. More specifically, I argue that representationalists who endorse externalism about experiential content either have to become internalists about the content of propositional attitudes or they have to adopt a novel variety of externalism about the content of propositional attitudes. This novel type of propositional attitude externalism is investigated. It can be seen that adopting it forces one to reject Putnam. (shrink)

Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counterexample to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judgements to account for Gestalt switching. (...) I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that the structure of intentionality is fundamentally the structure of a practice, not the structure of a language, or some quasi-linguistic system of representational entities. I show how and why neo-Fregean theory of content is committed to this practical turn. Mis-representation is often thought to be problematic for the neo-Fregean, but I show not only that it accommodates the phenomena better than the representationalist position, but also that the idea of error that the representationalist wants (...) with empty singular terms is redundant, for it has no role to play in explaining the systematicity of thought. (shrink)

: I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational content. The argument is compatible with McDowell's defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine‐grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subject's reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best (...) achieved with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music. (shrink)

I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational content. The argument is compatible with McDowell's defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine‐grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subject's reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best achieved (...) with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music. (shrink)

What is perception doing in mathematical reasoning? To address this question, I discuss the role of perception in geometric reasoning. Perception of the shape properties of concrete diagrams provides, I argue, a surrogate consciousness of the shape properties of the abstract geometric objects depicted in the diagrams. Some of what perception is not doing in mathematical reasoning is also discussed. I take issue with both Parsons and Maddy. Parsons claims that we perceive a certain type of abstract object. Maddy claims (...) (at least at one time claimed) that perception provides the basis for intuition of mathematical sets. 1 Mathematical reasoning with diagrams 2 Do we perceive abstract objects? 3 Do we perceive mathematical sets? (shrink)

The information processing that constitutes accessconsciousness is not sufficient to make a representational state conscious in any sense. Standard examples of computation without consciousness undermine A-consciousness, and Block's cases seem to derive their plausibility from a lurking phenomenal awareness. That is, people and other minded systems seem to have access-consciousness only insofar as the state accessed is a phenomenal one, or the state resulting from access is phenomenal, or both.

An explanation of how we acquire concepts of kinds if they are socially constructed is a desideratum both for a successful account of concept acquisition and a successful account of social constructionism. Both face the so-called “mismatch problem” that is based on the observation that that there is often a mismatch between the descriptions proficient speakers associate with a word and the properties that its referents have in common. I argue that externalist theories of reference provide a plausible and attractive (...) account of concept acquisition, including the acquisition of concepts of social constructs, that avoids the mismatch problem. However, externalist theories are ontologically and psychologically highly demanding, which places strong constraints on accounts of the metaphysics of socially constructed kinds. In particular, they require a rather strong form of realism that is incompatible with some but not all theories of social constructionism. Finally, I show that these demands can be met by means of adopting a homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds. (shrink)

I discuss Edouard Machery’s claim that philosophers and psychologists when using the term ‘concept’ are really theorizing about different things. This view is not new, but it has never been developed or defended in detail. Once spelled out, we can see that Machery is right that the psychological literature uses a different notion of concept. However, Machery fails to acknowledge that the two notions are not only compatible but complementary. This fits more with the traditional view according to which philosophers (...) and psychologists are merely interested in different aspects of the same kind. The main aim of this paper is then to show how precisely the two notions of ‘concept’ relate. Distinguishing them resolves the long-standing debate on whether concepts can be prototypes and allows me to formulate success conditions of a theory of categorization that are independent of the success conditions of a theory of concepts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: physicalism about the non‐mental world, consistency with what is known from color science, and transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral reflectance, subjectivism, dispositionalism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all three constraints. By (...) treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems. (shrink)

John McDowell (in Mind and World) and Bill Brewer (in Perception and Reason) argue that the content of our perceptual experience is conceptual in the following sense. It is of the type of content that could be the content of a judgement – that is, a content which results from the actualization of two (or more) conceptual abilities. Specifically, they suggest that the conceptual abilities actualized in experience are demonstrative abilities, and thus the resulting content is of the type we (...) may express by means of sentences of the form ‘this is thus’. In this paper I argue that we cannot construe experiential contents in this way. I first outline a construal of the ability to think about a thing being thus which is based on Brewer's discussion of conceptual experiential contents, and which I take to be the best construal available to the conceptualist. I then show that on this construal the demonstrative abilities that account for our experience of properties require intentional focused attention to the relevant properties. The conceptualist is thus committed to holding that we experience only the properties we are intentionally attending to, and I argue that this is implausible. The interest in examining Brewer's conceptualist construal of experiential content and pointing out its shortcoming is not limited merely to an interest in whether there is a workable conceptualist account of experiential content. I suggest that certain aspects of Brewer's construal capture important (and often neglected) aspects of our perceptual experience, and that understanding why the account fails can contribute to our understanding of both experiential content and demonstrative thought. (shrink)

We take it that Brandom’s sense of the geography is that our way of proceeding is more or less the first and his is more or less the second. But we think this way of describing the situation is both unclear and misleading, and we want to have this out right at the start. Our problem is that we don’t know what “you start with” means either in formulations like “you start with the content of words and proceed to the (...) content of sentences” or in formulations like “you start with the content of sentences and you proceed to the content of words.” Brandom’s official view seems to be that he’s talking about explanatory priorities (see the preceding quote); but we think that can’t really be what he has in mind, and we can’t find any alternative interpretation that seems plausible. Speaking just for ourselves, we’re inclined towards a relatively pragmatic view of explanation; what explanation we should “start with” depends, inter alia, on what it’s an explanation of and whom it’s an explanation for. But, in any case, we would have thought that explanatory priority is of more than heuristic interest only if it reflects a priority of some other kind: ontological, semantical, psychological, or whatever. In talking about what one “starts with”, Brandom must be claiming more than. (shrink)

The cognitive experience view of thought holds that the content of thought is determined by its cognitive-phenomenal character. Adam Pautz argues that the cognitive experience view is extensionally inadequate: it entails the possibility of mix-and-match cases, where the cognitive-phenomenal properties that determine thought content are combined with different sensory-phenomenal and functional properties. Because mix-and-match cases are metaphysically impossible, Pautz argues, the cognitive experience view should be rejected. This paper defends the cognitive experience view from Pautz’s argument. I build on resources (...) in the philosophy of mind literature to show that cognitive-phenomenal properties are modally independent from sensory-phenomenal and functional properties. The result is that mix-and-match cases, though modally remote, are metaphysically possible. The possibility of mix-and-match cases allows us to move from defensive posture to a critical one: it poses problems for any theory of content that imposes rationality constraints, including Pautz’s positive view, phenomenal functionalism. (shrink)

I propose what seems a plausible interpretation of the suggestion that the fact that someone has or lacks the capacity to make inferences of certain kinds should be taken as evidence that the contents of the states involved in these inferences are conceptual/nonconceptual. I then argue that there is no obvious way in which this line of thought could be exploited to help draw the line separating conceptual from nonconceptual contents. This will lead me to clarify in what sense perceptual (...) experiences can be taken as providing reasons for beliefs. (shrink)

Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of how new (...) primitive concepts are acquired. To achieve a fully satisfactory response to Fodor’s argument, one has to juxtapose questions about conceptual content with questions about cognitive development. To this end, we formulate a general schema for thinking about how concepts are acquired and then present a detailed illustration. (shrink)

AbstarctIn the first installment of Varieties of Skeptical Invariantism, we set the scene for subsequent discussion with Unger's (1975) modern classic of global skepticism and distinguished three varieties of skeptical invariantism in recent literature: traditional skeptical invariantism, fallibilist science-based skepticism and practical skepticism. We then presented fallibilist science-based skepticism, that is, the position that relaxes the stringency of the standard of knowledge but still questions parts of our everyday knowledge on the basis of scientific reasons. In particular, we presented Frances’ (...) (2005) ‘live’ skepticism and Hannon's (forthcoming) ‘hard-hitting’ skepticism. In this second installment, we present the two other varieties of skeptical invariantism we identified: traditional skepticism (high-standard and infallibilist) that respects all three commitments (intellectualism, invariantism, stringency) and practical skepticism that questions the intellectualist commitment. (shrink)

Maps, notes, descriptions, diagrams, flowcharts, photographs, paintings, and prints, all, in one way or another, manage to be about things or stand for them. This article looks at three ways in which philosophers have explained the way that pictures represent the world. It starts by describing some leading perceptual accounts and then surveys contemporary content and structural alternatives.

According to a popular doctrine known as "intentionalism," two experiences must have different representational contents if they have different phenomenological contents, in other words, what they represent must differ if what they feel like differs. Were this position correct, the representational significance of a given affect (or 'quale'---plural 'qualia'--to use the preferred term), e.g. a tickle, would be fixed: what it represented would not be a function of the subject's beliefs, past experiences, or other facts about his past or present (...) psychological condition. To be sure, many a quale has a significance; but it is never a quale's intrinsic properties that assign it that significance, it being quale-external facts about the subject's psychological composition that do so. (An example of such a fact would be a belief on the subject's part to the effect that relevantly similar qualia are consistent with arthritis.). (shrink)

What exactly does conceptual analysis consist in? Is it empirical or a priori? How does it support philosophical theses? and What kinds of thesis are these? There is no consensus on these questions in contemporary philosophy. This study aims to defend conceptual analysis by showing that it comprises a number of different methods and by explaining their importance in philosophy. After setting out an initial dilemma for conceptual analysis, the study outlines a minimal ecumenical account of concepts, as well as (...) an account of concept possession and concept employment. On the basis of these accounts, the study then argues that there are both empirical and a priori forms of conceptual analysis, and that each can be defended as legitimate methods. The philosophical interest of conceptual analysis, however, resides in relying on all three types of method in the service of answering philosophical concerns. This is illustrated by three sample cases. (shrink)

I show that Nietzsche's puzzling and seemingly inconsistent claims about consciousness constitute a coherent and philosophically fruitful theory. Drawing on some ideas from Schopenhauer and F.A. Lange, Nietzsche argues that conscious mental states are mental states with conceptually articulated content, whereas unconscious mental states are mental states with non-conceptually articulated content. Nietzsche's views on concepts imply that conceptually articulated mental states will be superficial and in some cases distorting analogues of non-conceptually articulated mental states. Thus, the claim that conscious states (...) have a conceptual articulation renders comprehensible Nietzsche's claim that consciousness is "superficial" and "falsifying.". (shrink)

I argue that logical understanding is not propositional knowledgebut is rather a species of practical knowledge. I further arguethat given the best explanation of logical understanding someversion or another of inferential role semantics must be the correct account of the determinants of logical content.

It is widely held that the content of perceptual experience is propositional in nature. However, in a well-known article, “Is Perception a Propositional Attitude?”, Crane has argued against this thesis. He therein assumes that experience has intentional content and indirectly argues that experience has non-propositional content by showing that from what he considers to be the main reasons in favour of “the propositional-attitude thesis”, it does not really follow that experience has propositional content. In this paper I shall discuss Crane’s (...) arguments against the propositional-attitude thesis and will try to show, in contrast, that they are unconvincing. My conclusion will be that, despite all that Crane claims, perceptual content could after all be propositional in nature. (shrink)

According to Brandom, perceptual knowledge is the product of two distinguishable capacities: the capacity to reliably discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli, and the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. However, in focusing exclusively on the entitlements and commitments of observation reports, rather than on perception itself, Brandom passes over a conception of perceptual experience as a sort of contentful mental state. In this article, I argue that this is a (...) blind spot, which makes Brandom’s account of perceptual knowledge unable to properly accommodate the phenomenon of seeing aspects. (shrink)

Stanley and Williamson (The Journal of Philosophy 98(8), 411–444 2001 ) reject the fundamental distinction between what Ryle once called ‘knowing-how’ and ‘knowing-that’. They claim that knowledge-how is just a species of knowledge-that, i.e. propositional knowledge, and try to establish their claim relying on the standard semantic analysis of ‘knowing-how’ sentences. We will undermine their strategy by arguing that ‘knowing-how’ phrases are under-determined such that there is not only one semantic analysis and by critically discussing and refuting the positive account (...) of knowing-how they offer. Furthermore, we argue for an extension of the classical ‘knowing-how’/‘knowing-that’-dichotomy by presenting a new threefold framework: Using some core-examples of the recent debate, we will show that we can analyze knowledge situations that are not captured by the Rylean dichotomy and argue that, therefore, the latter has to be displaced by a more fine-grained theory of knowledge-formats. We will distinguish three different formats of knowledge we can have of our actions, namely (1) propositional, (2) practical, and (3) image-like formats of knowledge. Furthermore, we will briefly analyze the underlying representations of each of these knowledge-formats. (shrink)

Philosophers have often argued that ascriptions of content are appropriate only to the personal level states of folk psychology. Against this, this paper defends the view that the familiar propositional attitudes and states defined over them are part of a larger set of cognitive proceses that do not make constitutive reference to concept possession. It does this by showing that states with nonconceptual content exist both in perceptual experience and in subpersonal information-processing systems. What makes these states content-involving is their (...) satisfaction of certain basic conditions deriving from a general account of representation-driven behaviour that is neutral on the question of concept possession. It is also argued that creatures can be in states with nonconceptual content even though they possess no conceptual abilities at all. (shrink)

The empirical nature of our understanding of language is explored. I first show that there are several important and different distinctions between tacit and accessible awareness. I then present empirical evidence concerning our understanding of language. The data suggests that our awareness of sentence-meanings is sometimes merely tacit according to one of these distinctions, but is accessible according to another. I present and defend an interpretation of this mixed view. The present project is shown to impact on several diverse areas, (...) including inferential role semantics and holism, the nature of learning, and the role of linguistics in the law. (shrink)

The structure of words is often thought to provide important evidence regarding the structure of concepts. At the same time, most contemporary linguists posit a great deal of structure in words. Such a trend makes some atomists about concepts uncomfortable. The details of linguistic methodology undermine several strategies for avoiding positing structure in words. I conclude by arguing that there is insufficient evidence to hold that word-structure bears any interesting relation to the structure of concepts.

This article reviews some linguistic and philosophical work in lexical semantics. In Section 1, the general methods of lexical semantics are explored, with particular attention to how semantic features of verbs are associated with grammatical patterns. In Section 2, philosophical consequences and issues arising from this sort of research is reviewed.

Inferential Role Semantics is often criticized for being incompatible with the platitude that words of different speakers can mean the same thing. While many assume that this platitude can be accommodated by understanding sameness of meaning in terms of similarity of meaning, no worked out proposal has ever been produced for Inferential Role Semantics. I rectify this important omission by giving a detailed structural account of meaning similarity in terms of graph theory. I go on to argue that this account (...) has a number of attractive features, prominent among them that it makes sameness of meaning probabilistically determine co-reference. (shrink)

In this paper, I recommend a creature-level theory of representing. On this theory, a creature represents some entity just in case the creature adapts its behavior to that entity. Adapting is analyzed in terms of establishing new patterns of behavior. The theory of representing as adapting is contrasted with traditional causal and informational theories of mental representation. Moreover, I examine the theory in light of Putnam-Burge style externalism; I show that Putnam-Burge style externalism follows from and is explained by it. (...) I also suggest that the theory of representing as adapting easily accommodates a significant causal-explanatory role for representational content. (shrink)

According to reductive intentionalism, the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is constituted by the experience's intentional (or representational) content. The goal of this article is to show that a phenomenon in visual perception called change blindness poses a problem for this doctrine. It is argued, in particular, that phenomenal character is not sensitive, as it should be if reductive intentionalism is correct, to fine-grained variations in content. The standard anti-intentionalist strategy is to adduce putative cases in which phenomenal character (...) varies despite sameness of content. This paper explores an alternative anti-intentionalist tack, arguing, by way of a specific example involving change blindness, that content can vary despite sameness of phenomenal character. (shrink)

Which properties can we visually experience? Some authors hold that we can experience only low-level properties such as color, illumination, shape, spatial location, and motion. Others believe that we can also experience high-level properties, such as being a dog or being a pine tree. On the basis of her method of phenomenal contrast, Susanna Siegel has recently defended the latter view. One of her central claims is that we can best account for certain phenomenal contrasts if we assume that we (...) can visually experience natural kind properties. In this paper, I argue that certain kinds of low-level properties, namely shape-gestalt properties, can explain these phenomenal contrasts just as well as high-level properties. If successful, this is a modest, but nevertheless significant result. Even though it does not prove the falsity of Siegel’s proposal, it nevertheless secures the existence of a plausible alternative. (shrink)

Representationalists hold that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is identical with, or supervenes on, an aspect of its representational content. As such, representationalism could be disproved by a counter-example consisting of two experiences that have the same representational content but differ in phenomenal character. In this paper, I discuss two recently proposed counter-examples to representationalism that involve ambiguous or reversible figures. I pursue two goals. My first, and most important, goal is to show that the representationalist can offer (...) plausible responses to both counter-examples. My second goal is to show the implications of these responses for the nature of the spatial representational contents of perceptual experiences. (shrink)

In this article, I link the empirical hypothesis that neural representations of sensory stimulation near the body involve a unique motor component to the idea that the perceptual field is structured by skillful bodily activity. The neurophenomenological view that emerges is illuminating in its own right, though it may also have practical consequences. I argue that recent experiments attempting to alter the scope of these near space sensorimotor representations are actually equivocal in what they show. I propose resolving this ambiguity (...) by treating these representations as responsive to the development or degeneration of know-how—which can be isolated as an appropriate object for scientific investigation. (shrink)

The view (held, e.g., by Davidson) that the having of beliefs and desires presupposes the having of reflective capacities is sometimes supported by appealing to the idea that the concept of belief is a concept of a mental state which involves a normative aspect: beliefs can be “successful” or “unsuccessful” from the perspective of their possessors, and sometimes discarded in light of their “failure.” This naturally invites the idea that believers must be capable of reflecting on their beliefs. Desires presuppose (...) reflectivity if only in virtue of their essential linkage with beliefs. This paper suggests a sense in which mental states—including those of non-reflective creatures—can have such a normative aspect. On this suggestion, the intelligible relations that obtain between cognitive states and conative states open the door for the possibility of normativity without reflectivity. Due to these relations, a creature's beliefs can be successful or unsuccessful from its own perspective even without its conceiving of them. (shrink)

The term ‘logical form’ has been called on to serve a wide range of purposes in philosophy, and it would be too ambitious to try to survey all of them in a single essay. Instead, I will focus on just one conception of logical form that has occupied a central place in the philosophy of language, and in particular in the philosophical study of linguistic meaning. This is what I will call the classical conception of logical form. The classical conception, (...) as I will present it in section 1, has (either explicitly or implicitly) shaped a great deal of important philosophical work in semantic theory. But it has come under fire in recent decades, and in sections 2 and 3 I will discuss two of the recent challenges that I take to be most interesting and significant. (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)

Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this (...) programmatic paper is to overcome this knowledge gap by providing some guidelines for developing the theories of concepts and of cognition that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices. (shrink)

Classical logic rests on the assumption that there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive truth values. This assumption has always been surrounded by philosophical controversy. Doubts have been raised about its legitimacy, and hence about the legitimacy of classical logic. Usually, the assumption is stated in the form of a general principle, namely the principle that every proposition is either true or false. Then, the philosophical controversy is often framed in terms of the question whether every proposition is either (...) true or false. The main purpose of the paper is to show that there is something wrong in this way of putting things. The point is that the common way of understanding the controversial assumption is misconceived, as it rests on a wrong picture of propositions. In the first part of the paper I outline this picture and I argue against it. In the second part I sketch a different picture of propositions and I suggest how this leads to conceive the issue of classical logic in different terms. (shrink)