Abstract
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.
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Notes
- 1.
The term ‘content view’ is due to Brewer (2006, 165).
- 2.
In the hope that this will make my argumentation easier to follow, especially where I directly contrast the two views, I will assign the male pronoun to the conceptualist and the female pronoun to the nonconceptualist throughout the book.
- 3.
A note on terminology: It is more precise to speak of ‘perceptual experience’ and of ‘undergoing a perceptual experience’ rather than speaking of ‘perception’ and ‘perceiving’. For I am trying to defend claims about perceptual experience in general, independent of whether it is veridical or not, while ‘perception’ and ‘perceiving’ are often taken to be factive. To keep things shorter, I will sometimes ignore this terminological issue here and use the expressions ‘perception’/‘perceptual state’/‘perceptual experience’ and ‘perceive’/‘undergo a perceptual experience’ interchangeably.
- 4.
Nonetheless, my defense will be relevant for the success of nonconceptualism generally. Where my arguments concern my particular proposal, I will make this clear by speaking of Modest Nonconceptualism; otherwise, I will pit nonconceptualism (more broadly) against conceptualism.
- 5.
This corresponds to (General NC-ism\(_{min}\)) in Sect. 3.3
- 6.
- 7.
Note that the debate is usually framed as being concerned with the (non)conceptuality of perceptual content only, but that some of the arguments exchanged in the debate also raise the question of whether it is propositional or non-propositional.
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Schmidt, E. (2015). Introduction. In: Modest Nonconceptualism. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18902-4_1
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