Nonconceptual Content: From Perceptual Experience to Subpersonal Computational States

Abstract

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 processes 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 eneral account of representation-driven behaviour that is neutral on the question ofconcept possession. It is also argued that creatures can be in states with nonconceptual content even though they possess no conceptual abilities at all.How distinctive are the cognitive processes, such as beliefs, desires, hopes and fears, which constitutively involve the possession of concepts? Recent work in philosophy, psychology and cognitive science has suggested that there might be various types of cognitive state that possess content although they do not require possession of the concepts needed to specify that content.

An ecological approach to cognitive (im)penetrability

“…Moreover, there is good evidence for double dissociations in the neuropsychological disorders that Pylyshyn discusses in section 7.3.2 -visual disorientation and the associative agnosias. In visual disorientation (Holmes 1918) we see the conceptual content of perception preserved in the absence of the nonconceptual content, whereas the nonconceptual content is preserved at the expense of the conceptual content in the associative agnosias (Bermúdez 1998b). More significant, though, is evidence from developmental psychology.…”

“…It is becoming clear that the perceptual experience of even the youngest infants is organised and structured in a way that reflects perceptual sensitivity to precisely those properties whose representation is the function of the early vision system (Spelke 1990). It is misleading to suggest, as many workers in the area do, that this aspect of infant cognition reflects infant mastery of the concept of an object (Bermúdez 1995). Information is being processed nonsemantically.…”

“…This can be done in terms of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content (Bermúdez 1998a;Evans 1982;Peacocke 1992). The distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content is a function of concept possession.…”

Out-of-Body, Out-of-Time. Abnormal Unity of Body and Self in Space and Time

“…Moreover, humans experience themselves to be located in a specific moment ("the present moment") and in a specific place ("the present place") [2]. Bermudez [3,4] suggested to define such a fundamental behaviour [5] in space and time as "non-conceptual", proposing that the behaving agent does not possess the concepts required to be aware of the contents of space and time.…”

Machery’s Alternative to Concepts and the Problem of Content

“…19 An interesting consequence of understanding BoKs within a subpersonal information-processing framework is that their contents could then be regarded as nonconceptual. 20 A view of this sort has been developed by Bermudez (1995). He gives the example of representations at different stages of early visual processing 18 Say, e.g., if that property of our cognitive capacities is not part of the explananda of a scientific theory of concepts, then whose explanandum is it?…”