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Perception :: The Contents of Perception :: Conceptual and Nonconceptual Content

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Ablondi, Frederick R. (2002). Kelly and McDowell on perceptual content. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 7.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: [0] In a recent issue of _EJAP_, Sean Kelly [1998] defended the position that perceptual content is non-conceptual. More specifically, he claimed that John McDowell's view that concepts involved in perception can be understood as expressible through the use of demonstratives is ultimately untenable. In what follows, I want to look more closely at Kelly's position, as well as suggest possible responses one could make on McDowell's behalf
Alston, William P. (1998). Perception and conception. In Pragmatism, Reason, and Norms: A Realistic Assessment. New York: Fordham University Press.   (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)
Ayers, Michael R. (2002). Is perceptual content ever conceptual? Philosophical Books 43 (1):5-17.   (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)
Bermudez, Jose Luis & Macpherson, Fiona (1998). Nonconceptual content and the nature of perceptual experience. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6.   (Cited by 11 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: [1] Recent philosophy of mind and epistemology has seen an important and influential trend towards accounting for at least some features of experiences in content-involving terms. It is a contested point whether ascribing content to experiences can account for all the intrinsic properties of experiences, but on many theories of experiences there are close links between the ascription of content and the ways in which experiences are ascribed and typed. The issues here have both epistemological and psychological dimensions. On the one hand, a theory of experiential content has a fundamental role in explaining how knowledge of the world can be acquired through experience. On the other hand, there are important psychological questions about the phenomenology of experiences and the conditions under which content ascriptions are made
Bermudez, Jose Luis (1995). Nonconceptual content: From perceptual experience to subpersonal computational states. Mind and Language 10 (4):333-69.   (Cited by 75 | Google | Edit)
Bermudez, Jose Luis (online). Nonconceptual mental content. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.   (Cited by 9 | Google | Edit)
Bermudez, Jose Luis (1994). Peacocke's argument against the autonomy of nonconceptual representational content. Mind and Language 9 (4):402-18.   (Cited by 20 | Google | Edit)
Brewer, Bill (2005). Perceptual experience has conceptual content. In Ernest Sosa & Matthias Steup (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Blackwell.   (Cited by 7 | Google | Edit)
Abstract: I take it for granted that sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs; indeed this claim forms the first premise of my central argument for (CC). 1 The subsequent stages of the argument are intended to establish that a person has such a reason for believing something about the way things are in the world around him only if he is in some mental state or other with a conceptual content: a conceptual state. Thus, given that sense experiential states do provide reasons for empirical beliefs, they must have conceptual content
Byrne, Alex (2003). Consciousness and nonconceptual content. Philosophical Studies 113 (3):261-274.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Byrne, Alex (2005). Perception and conceptual content. In Ernest Sosa & Matthias Steup (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Blackwell.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links | Edit)
Chakrabarti, Arindam (2003). Perception, apperception and non-conceptual content. In Perspectives on Consciousness. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.   (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)
Chrisley, Ron & Parthemore, J. (2007). Synthetic phenomenology:Exploiting embodiment to specify the non-conceptual content of visual experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (7):44-58.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Not all research in machine consciousness aims to instantiate phenomenal states in artefacts. For example, one can use artefacts that do not themselves have phenomenal states, merely to simulate or model organisms that do. Nevertheless, one might refer to all of these pursuits -- instantiating, simulating or modelling phenomenal states in an artefact -- as 'synthetic phenomenality'. But there is another way in which artificial agents (be they simulated or real) may play a crucial role in understanding or creating consciousness: 'synthetic phenomenology'. Explanations involving specific experiential events require a means of specifying the contents of experience; not all of them can be specified linguistically. One alternative, at least for the case of visual experience, is to use depictions that either evoke or refer to the content of the experience. Practical considerations concerning the generation and integration of such depictions argue in favour of a synthetic approach: the generation of depictions through the use of an embodied, perceiving and acting agent, either virtual or real. Synthetic phenomenology, then, is the attempt to use the states, interactions and capacities of an artificial agent for the purpose of specifying the contents of conscious experience. This paper takes the first steps toward seeing how one might use a robot to specify the non- conceptual content of the visual experience of an (hypothetical) organism that the robot models
Chuard, Philippe (2006). Demonstrative concepts without reidentification. Philosophical Studies 130 (2):153-201.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Conceptualist accounts of the representational content of perceptual experiences have it that a subject _S_ can experience no object, property, relation, etc., unless _S_ "i# possesses and "ii# exercises concepts for such object, property, or relation. Perceptual experiences, on such a view, represent the world in a way that is conceptual “through and through” "McDowell, 1994: 46; see also McDowell, 1998; Brewer, 1999:ch.5#
Chuard, Philippe (2007). The Riches of experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (s 9-10):20-42.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Suppose you see a red ball. Unless you happen to be in a psychologist’s lab, you are unlikely to see_ just_ the red ball against, say, a white background. Rather, a myriad of objects is _simultaneously_ presented to you. For instance, you see the cricket bat beside the red ball, the table upon which they both lie, as well as what’s in the background of the table: the wall, the lamp, the bookshelf on the right, etc. Needless to say, you also see the shapes of these objects, together with the manifold of spatial relations connecting them. And for some of these objects at least, you see their particular shade$s" of colour; even the texture of their surface$s"
Coliva, Annalisa (2003). The argument from the finer-grained content of colour experiences: A redefinition of its role within the debate between McDowell and non-conceptual theorists. Dialectica 57 (1):57-70.   (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)
Crane, Tim (1988). Concepts in perception. Analysis 48 (June):150-53.   (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)
Crane, Tim (1992). The nonconceptual content of experience. In Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience. Cambridge University Press.   (Cited by 110 | Google | Edit)
Crane, Tim (1988). The waterfall illusion. Analysis 48 (June):142-47.   (Cited by 18 | Google | Edit)
Crowther, T. M. (2006). Two conceptions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism. Erkenntnis 65 (2):245-276.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Though it enjoys widespread support, the claim that perceptual experiences possess nonconceptual content has been vigorously disputed in the recent literature by those who argue that the content of perceptual experience must be conceptual content. Nonconceptualism and conceptualism are often assumed to be well-defined theoretical approaches that each constitute unitary claims about the contents of experience. In this paper I try to show that this implicit assumption is mistaken, and what consequences this has for the debate about perceptual experience. I distinguish between two different ways that nonconceptualist (and conceptualist) proposals about perceptual content can be understood: as claims about the constituents that compose perceptual contents or as claims about whether a subject’s undergoing experiences with those contents requires them to possess the concepts that characterize those contents. I maintain that these ways of understanding conceptualism and nonconceptualism are orthogonal to one another. This is revealed by the conceptual coherence of positions in which the contents of experiences have both conceptual and nonconceptual features; positions which possess their own distinctive sources of philosophical motivation. I argue that the fact that there is a place in conceptual space for such positions, and that there may be good reason for theorists to adopt them, creates difficulties for both the central argument for nonconceptualism and the central argument for conceptualism. I set out each of these arguments; the Argument from Possession-Independence and the Epistemically-Driven Argument. I then try to show how the existence of mixed positions about perceptual content derived from a clear distinction between compositional and possessional considerations constitutes a significant obstacle for those arguments as they stand. The takehome message of the paper is that unless one clearly acknowledges the distinction between issues about the composition of perceptual content and issues about how subject’s capacities to undergo certain experiences relates to their possession of concepts one runs the risk of embracing unsatisfying philosophical arguments in which conclusions relevant to one conception of nonconceptual and conceptual content are grounded on arguments that concern only the other; arguments that cannot, in themselves, sustain them
Cunningham, Suzanne (1989). Perception, meaning, and mind. Synthese 80 (August):223-241.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Cussins, Adrian (2003). Content, conceptual content, and nonconceptual content. In York H. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content. MIT Press.   (Cited by 5 | Google | Edit)
Cussins, Adrian (1993). Nonconceptual content and the elimination of misonceived composites. Mind and Language 8 (2):234-52.   (Google | Edit)
Cussins, Adrian (1990). The connectionist construction of concepts. In Margaret A. Boden (ed.), The Philosophy of AI. Oxford University Press.   (Cited by 107 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: The character of computational modelling of cognition depends on an underlying theory of representation. Classical cognitive science has exploited the syntax/semantics theory of representation that derives from logic. But this has had the consequence that the kind of psychological explanation supported by classical cognitive science is
_conceptualist_:
psychological phenomena are modelled in terms of relations that hold between concepts, and between the sensors/effectors and concepts. This kind of explanation is inappropriate for the Proper Treatment of Connectionism (Smolensky 1988)
Dokic, Jérôme & Pacherie, Elisabeth (2001). Shades and concepts. Analysis 61 (3):193-201.   (Cited by 8 | Google | More links | Edit)
Dretske, Fred (2003). Sensation and perception (1981). In Essays on Nonconceptual Content. Cambridge MA: Bradford Book/MIT Press.   (Google | Edit)
Forman, David (2006). Learning and the necessity of non-conceptual content in Sellars's "empiricism and the philosophy of mind". In Michael P. Wolf (ed.), The Self-Correcting Enterprise: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars. Rodopi.   (Google | Edit)
Ginsborg, Hannah (2006). Empirical concepts and the content of experience. European Journal of Philosophy 14 (3):349-372.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Gonzalez Arnal, Stella (2006). Non-articulable content and the realm of reasons. Teorema 25 (1):121-131.   (Google | Edit)
Gunther, York H. (2001). Content, illusion, partition. Philosophical Studies 102 (2):185-202.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Philosophers of mind have recently sought to establish a theoret- ical use for nonconceptual content. Although there is disagreement about what nonconceptual content is supposed to be, this much is clear. A state with nonconceptual content is mental. Hence, while one may deny that refrigerators and messy rooms have conceptual capacities, their states, as physical and not mental, do not have nonconceptual content. A state with nonconceptual content is also intentional, which is to say that it represents a feature of the world for a subject. It may be tempting to think of qualitative states as having nonconceptual content since they can be experienced by indi- viduals independently of their possession of the requisite concepts, e.g. someone could experience pains, itches or tingles without possessing the concept pain, itch or tingle. But on such a view, one would have to assume that qualitative states are representational since mental states cannot be candidates for nonconceptuality unless they have intentional properties.2
Gunther, York H. (ed.) (2003). Essays on Nonconceptual Content. MIT Press.   (Cited by 28 | Google | More links | Edit)
Gómez-Torrente, Mario (1998). Report of an unsuccessful search for nonconceptual content. Philosophical Issues 9:369-379.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Hamlyn, David W. (1994). Perception, sensation, and non-conceptual content. Philosophical Quarterly 44 (175):139-53.   (Google | Edit)
Hanna, Robert (2005). Kant and nonconceptual content. European Journal Of Philosophy 13 (2):247-290.   (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)
Hanna, Robert (forthcoming). Kantian non-conceptualism. Philosophical Studies.   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: There are perceptual states whose representational content cannot even in principle be conceptual. If that claim is true, then at least some perceptual states have content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content. Furthermore the intrinsically “orientable” spatial character of essentially non-conceptual content entails not only that all perceptual states contain non-conceptual content in this essentially distinct sense, but also that consciousness goes all the way down into so-called unconscious or subpersonal mental states. Both my argument for the existence of essentially non-conceptual content and my theory of its structure and function have a Kantian provenance
Heck, Richard G. (2007). Are there different kinds of content? In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell.   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: In an earlier paper, "Non-conceptual Content and the 'Space of Reasons'", I distinguished two forms of the view that perceptual content is non-conceptual, which I called the 'state view' and the 'content view'. On the latter, but not the former, perceptual states have a different kind of content than do cognitive states. Many have found it puzzling why anyone would want to make this claim and, indeed, what it might mean. This paper attempts to address these questions
Heck, Richard G. (2000). Nonconceptual content and the space of reasons. Philosophical Review 109 (4):483-523.   (Cited by 69 | Google | More links | Edit)
Heil, John (1991). Perceptual experience. In Dretske and His Critics. Cambridge: Blackwell.   (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)
Hopp, Walter (forthcoming). Conceptualism and the myth of the given. European Journal of Philosophy.   (Google | Edit)
Hutto, Daniel D. (1998). Nonconceptual content and objectivity. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Aristotle once developed the difference between man and animal in the following way: animals can understand each other by indicating to each other what excites their desire so they can seek it, and what injures them, so they can flee from it. To men alone is logos given as well, so that they can make manifest to each other what is useful and harmful, and therefore what is right and wrong. A profound thesis. -- Gadamer, "Man and Language"
Kelly, Sean D. (2001). Demonstrative concepts and experience. Philosophical Review 110 (3):397-420.   (Cited by 21 | Google | More links | Edit)
Kelly, Sean D. (2001). The non-conceptual content of perceptual experience: Situation dependence and fineness of grain. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3):601-608.   (Cited by 29 | Google | More links | Edit)
Kelly, Sean D. (2002). What makes perceptual content non-conceptual? Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy.   (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)
Abstract: the world. 1 Whereas the content of our beliefs, thoughts, and judgements necessarily involves "conceptualization" or "concept application", the content of our perceptual experiences is, according to Evans, "non-conceptual". Because Evans takes it for granted that we are often able to entertain thoughts about an object in virtue of having perceived it, a central problem in
Kjosavik, Frode (2003). Perceptual intimacy and conceptual inadequacy: A Husserlian critique of McDowell's internalism. In Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Kriegel, Uriah (2004). Perceptual experience, conscious content, and nonconceptual content. Essays in Philosophy 5 (1):1-14.   (Google | Edit)
Laurier, Daniel (2004). Nonconceptual contents vs nonconceptual states. Grazer Philosophische Studien 68 (1):23-43.   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: The question to be discussed is whether the distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual is best understood as pertaining primarily to intentional contents or to intentional states or attitudes. Some authors have suggested that it must be understood in the second way, in order to make the claim that experiences are nonconceptual compatible with the idea that one can also believe what one experiences. I argue that there is no need to do so, and that a conceptual content can be understood as being simply one which is composed of concepts, without compromising this intuitive view of the relation between beliefs and experiences
Luntley, Michael (2003). Nonconceptual content and the sound of music. Mind and Language 18 (4):402-426.   (Cited by 6 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   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 finegrainedness 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
Martin, Michael G. F. (1992). Perception, concepts, and memory. Philosophical Review 101 (4):745-63.   (Cited by 26 | Google | More links | Edit)
McDowell, John (1994). Lecture III: Non-conceptual content. In Mind and World. Harvard University Press.   (Google | Edit)
McFarland, Duncan (1998). Crane on concepts and experiential content. Analysis 58 (1):54-58.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Mellor, D. H. (1988). Crane's waterfall illusion. Analysis 48 (June):147-50.   (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)
Millar, Alan (1991). Concepts, experience, and inference. Mind 100 (399):495-505.   (Cited by 9 | Google | More links | Edit)
Pacherie, Elisabeth (2000). Levels of perceptual content. Philsophical Studies 100 (3):237-54.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Pappas, George S. (2003). On some philosophical accounts of perception. In Philosophy in America at the Turn of the Century (APA Centennial Supplement Journal of Philosophical Research). Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Peacocke, Christopher (1992). Anchoring conceptual content: Scenarios and perception. In Cognition, Semantics and Philosophy. Norwell: Kluwer.   (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)
Peacocke, Christopher (2001). Does perception have a nonconceptual content? Journal of Philosophy 98 (5):239-264.   (Cited by 51 | Google | More links | Edit)
Peacocke, Christopher (1998). Nonconceptual content defended. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2):381-388.   (Cited by 36 | Google | Edit)
Peacocke, Christopher (1994). Nonconceptual content: Kinds, rationales, and relations. Mind and Language 4 (4):419-29.   (Cited by 12 | Google | Edit)
Peacocke, Christopher (2001). Phenomenology and nonconceptual content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3):609-615.   (Cited by 14 | Google | More links | Edit)
Poellner, Peter (2003). Non-conceptual content, experience and the self. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 (2):32-57.   (Cited by 8 | Google | Edit)
Poston, Ted (online). Cognitive abilities and the conceptualist/nonconceptualist debate (long version).   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: In a recent paper “Are there different kinds of content?” Richard Heck argues for nonconceptualism, the thesis that perceptual content is different in kind than cognitive content. Heck’s argument is interesting and helps to regiment and clarify the central issue between conceptualists and nonconceptualists. I defend conceptualism against Heck’s central argument. Conceptualists can utilize a number of Heck’s points to clarify and argue for their own view. Additionally, I explain how the debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists has been misled by conceiving of cognitive abilities as involving language-like representation. Once this picture is set aside Heck’s central argument for nonconceptualism collapses and the conceptualist claim has a much more nat