scholarly journals Re-examining Husserl’s Non-Conceptualism in the Logical Investigations

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Logical Investigations ◽  
Hybrid View ◽  
Vicious Regress ◽  
Categorial Intuition ◽  
Conceptual Nature

Abstract A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that is also deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid an objection raised by Walter Hopp – that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress.

In Defense of Perceptual Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Schellenberg
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
The Way

Chapter 5 takes a step back and traces the way in which excessive demands on the notion of perceptual content invite an austere relationalist account of perception. It argues that any account that acknowledges the role of discriminatory, selective capacities in perception must acknowledge that perceptual states have representational content. The chapter shows that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with representationalism. Most objections to the thesis that perceptual experience has representational content apply only to austere representationalist accounts, that is, accounts on which perceptual relations to the environment play no explanatory role. By arguing that perceptual relations and perceptual content are mutually dependent the chapter shows how Fregean particularism can avoid the pitfalls of both austere representationalism and austere relationalism. With relationalists, Fregean particularism argues that perception is constitutively relational, but with representationalists it argues that it is constitutively representational.

Perceptual Experience, Conscious Content, and Non-Conceptual Content

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uriah Kriegel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
The Face ◽  
Content Of Experience ◽  
Representational Approach

One of the promising approaches to the problem of perceptual consciousness has been the representational theory, or representationalism. The idea is to reduce the phenomenal character of conscious perceptual experiences to the representational content of those experiences. Most representationalists appeal specifically to non-conceptual content in reducing phenomenal character to representational content. In this paper, I discuss a series of issues involved in this representationalist appeal to non-conceptual content. The overall argument is the following. On the face of it, conscious perceptual experience appears to be experience of a structured world, hence to be at least partly conceptual. To validate the appeal to non-conceptual content, the representationalist must therefore hold that the content of experience is partly conceptual and partly non-conceptual. But how can the conceptual and the non-conceptual combine to form a single content? The only way to make sense of this notion, I argue, leads to a surprising consequence, namely, that the representational approach to perceptual consciousness is a disguised form of functionalism.

Inferentialism and the Transcendental Deduction

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Landy
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Founding Fathers

One recent trend in Kant scholarship has been to read Kant as undertaking a project in philosophical semantics, as opposed to, say, epistemology, or transcendental metaphysics. This trend has evolved almost concurrently with a debate in contemporary philosophy of mind about the nature of concepts and their content. Inferentialism is the view that the content of our concepts is essentially inferentially articulated, that is, that the content of a concept consists entirely, or in essential part, in the role that that concept plays in a system of inferences. By contrast, relationalism is the view that this content is fixed by a mental or linguistic item's standing in a certain relation to its object. The historical picture of Kant and the contemporary debate about concepts intersect in so far as contemporary inferentialists about conceptual content often cite Immanuel Kant not only as one of the founding fathers of a tradition that leads more or less straightforwardly to contemporary inferentialism, but also as the philosopher who first saw the fatal flaws in any attempt to articulate the content of our concepts relationally.

Filling-in is for finding out

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 781-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Pessoa ◽  
Evan Thompson ◽  
Alva Noë
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
World Model ◽  
Perceptual Mapping ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Perceptual Completion ◽  
The World ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
The Brain

The following points are discussed in response to the commentaries: (1) A taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena should rely on both phenomenological and mechanistic criteria. (2) Certain forms of perceptual completion are caused by topographically organized neural processes – neural filling-in. (3) The bridge locus, understood as the final site of perceptual experience in the brain, should be replaced by the principle that each token percept has a neural substrate that is nomically sufficient for it, all else being equal. (4) Analytic isomorphism – the view that there must be a pictorial or spatial neural-perceptual isomorphism at the bridge locus – should be rejected. Although more abstract kinds of isomorphism are central to the neural-perceptual mapping, the perceptual cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of the neural, and therefore the explanation of perception cannot be reduced to uncovering neural-perceptual isomorphisms. (5) The task of vision is to guide action in the world, not to construct a detailed world-model in the head. (6) Neural filling-in facilitates the integration of information and thereby helps the animal find out about its environment. (7) Perceptual content needs to be understood at the level of the person or animal interacting in the world.

Dretske on Naturalizing Experience

Dialogue ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 561-566
Author(s):  
Irene Sonia Switankowsky
Keyword(s):  
Mental Content ◽  
External World ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Content Externalism ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
The Subject

Many theorists in epistemology and mind accept externalism with respect to content–namely, the claim that the conditions that individuate mental content are external to the occurrence of that content as a mental fact. Whatever it is that distinguishes a pain in the knee from a pain in the toe—or, alternatively, whatever it is that makes it possible for the subject to discriminate this pain as a pain in the knee from that pain as a pain in the toe—are factors and conditions located in the physical and external world. This much externalism seems to be required even if one is a thoroughly entrenched mentalist. This “content externalism” is captured, fairly effectively, by the more traditional distinction between concepts and percepts. What is then asserted by the mentalist is that concepts have their source or origin in the external world, but the perceptual content does not. Perceptual content can be identified in different ways which are: (1) the view that identifies the distinguishing feature of the perceptual with qualia, a position not far removed from the Lockean distinction between Primary and Secondary qualities; or, (2) the perceptual might also be characterized in terms of representationalism, where qualia are an essential part of the representational medium, but where the representational medium contains conceptual content as well. In either case, the perceptual is Type and/or Token distinct from whatever is the external physical conditions or states of affairs causally responsible for the occurrence of either the conceptual content or the perceptual content. An argument for the claim that percepts (colours, sounds, smells, touches, and so on) are essential and necessary is that, without such percepts, there can be no experience.

Must Conceptually Informed Perceptual Experience Involve Non-Conceptual Content?

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Sedivy
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Proper Part ◽  
Nonconceptual Content ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Empirical Thought ◽  
Mental Contents

The idea of nonconceptual contents proposes that there are mental contents at the level of the experiencing person that are individuated independently of ‘anything to do with the mind.’ Such contents are posited to meet a variety of theoretical and explanatory needs concerning concepts and conceptual mental contents which are individuated in terms having to do with the mind. So to examine the idea of nonconceptual content we need to examine whether we really need to posit such content and whether there is a coherent, viable way of doing so. I will examine the idea of nonconceptual contents by considering Christopher Peacocke's attempt, in his Study of Concepts, to posit such contents.Three principal kinds of considerations motivate positing non-conceptual content: epistemological, phenomenological, and explanatory-psychological. A theory of knowledge might posit nonconceptual content in order to show that our experience contains the justificatory base for empirical thought as its own proper part. Non-conceptual content might also be posited in order to account for the finely detailed or determinate phenomenological character of perceptual experience.

scholarly journals Nonconceptualism and content independence

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-340
Author(s):  
Sebastián Sanhueza Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Stress State ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
The State ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
Cognitive States

Abstract: State Nonconceptualism is the view that perceptual states (not perceptual content) are different in kind from cognitive states (not cognitive content), insofar as a subject could be in perceptual states even if she lacked the concepts necessary to describe those states. Although this position has recently met serious criticism, this piece aims to argue on its behalf. A point I specifically want to highlight is that, thanks to State Nonconceptualism, it is possible to characterize perceptual experiences as nonconceptual or concept-independent without relying on the notion of perceptual content - a feature I term here the content independence of State Nonconceptualism. I think one should welcome this result: for, although a nonconceptualist characterization of perceptual experience is quite plausible, nonrepresentationalist approaches to perception have persuasively challenged the thought that perceptual experiences have representational content. This brief piece is divided into three parts: (i) I introduce two versions of Perceptual Nonconceptualism, namely, Content and State Nonconceptualism; (ii) I go on to stress State Nonconceptualism’s content independence; and (iii), I briefly address three prominent objections against the state nonconceptualist.

Intentionalism and Recurrent Cognitive Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Cognitive Content ◽  
The Poor

Conscious perception carries distinctive phenomenal character. Intentionalism would account for this character by appeal to the wealth of information embedded in perceptual content while also cautioning that such opulent content exceeds the poor grasp of other types of conscious cognitive consideration. Intentionalism adds that introspective comparison of the differing phenomenal characters of contrastive perceptual episodes reveals only the episodes’ difference in content. Accordingly, intentionalism concludes that perceptual content alone determines phenomenal character. However, this conclusion fatally fails to accommodate the recalcitrant fact that the content of perceptual experience inferentially permeates reasoning, both theoretical and practical. So, the content of perception cannot be peculiar to that sensuous mode of cognition. Hence, it would seem that intentionalism is false.

The Price of Twin Earth

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (281) ◽  
pp. 689-710
Author(s):  
Brandon James Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Character ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
Content Internalism

Abstract Liberals about perceptual contents claim that perceptual experiences can represent kinds and specific, familiar individuals as such; they also claim that the representation of an individual or kind as such by a perceptual experience will be reflected in the phenomenal character of that experience. Conservatives always deny the latter and sometimes also the former claim. I argue that neither liberals nor conservatives have adequately appreciated how the content internalism/externalism debate bears on their views. I show that perceptual content internalism entails conservativism when conjoined with one other, extremely plausible premise. Hence, liberals are committed to perceptual contents externalism, yet they have failed to fully address the consequences that this has for their view. Moreover, the argument is easily adapted to perceptual experiences of Twin Earthable properties, like colour and shape. I use this last result to show why existing conservative arguments that appeal to Twin Earth plausibly overgeneralize.

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