Non-Conceptual Content

Mental representations of music in cognitive science (draft)

by Edoardo Acotto

Incomplete draft

That of “mental representation” is a controversial and fundamental (foundational) concept for the philosophy of mind... more That of “mental representation” is a controversial and fundamental (foundational) concept for the philosophy of mind and the cognitive science but classical cognitive science encountered a lot of problems in treating it and connexionism did a great effort for getting rid of it. In philosophy of mind MR means mental entities with a content; in cognitive science MR means information structure coded in the mind with some role in cognitive tasks. In cognitive musicology the use of the concept is quite widespread but ambiguous and vague. We discuss its use and we compare the concept of mental representation of music with that of intentional sound object.

Is the Notion of Nonconceptual Representational Content Coherent Without Truth Conditions?

by Daniel. J. Woolley

This was submitted as my dissertation/project for my final year as an undergraduate. It is now a draft in the early stages as my views have changed and I would like to modify the paper to reflect this. Any feedback would be most welcome

In what follows only consider proposals that assume nonconceptual content is representational in some sense and that... more In what follows only consider proposals that assume nonconceptual content is representational in some sense and that are offered within the naturalistic framework. I will not attempt to critique all of the possible ways for thinking about nonconceptual content. For example, this essay does not explore John McDowell’s attempt to make sense of nonrepresentational content of experience that is conceptualisable.“In the end, I restrict my investigation to examining the coherence of Fodor’s recent proposal about nonconceptual representation. I have chosen Fodor as my prime target since his proposal is one of the most carefully developed and detailed, and the difficulties it encounters serves to highlight important general problems for anyone trying to make coherent room for a notion of nonconceptual representational content within a naturalist framework. I recognize that this does not exhaust all of the possibilities.

Shades and concepts

by Elisabeth Pacherie

Dokic, J. & Pacherie, E. (2001). Shades and Concepts. Analysis, 61, 3: 193-202.

An Ecological Approach to Nonconceptual Self-Awareness

by Michael J. Braund

"Draft Only"

In this paper I will advance and defend a minimal conception of self- consciousness, which I shall call nonconceptual... more In this paper I will advance and defend a minimal conception of self- consciousness, which I shall call nonconceptual self-awareness (henceforth, NCSA). As a contrastive term, the central idea behind NCSA is that the possession of a “self- concept” is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for representing oneself as an embodied agent in the ecological and social environments. To be sure, concept- possession is needed for activities such as mastering the grammar of the first-person pronoun, constructing autobiographical narratives, and formulating long term plans. It has its place in theoretical specifications of the contents of representational states, and as John McDowell points out, it allows us to “coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgment and belief.” However, I will argue that these “higher-order” cognitive achievements are parasitic on a more primitive and already-existing form of self-awareness that operates independently of concepts. This primitive capacity is built into the very structure of perceptual experience and manifests as co-perception of the embodied self and the environment. In what follows, I will elaborate the thesis that this co-perception constitutes the foundations for full-fledged self-conscious activities (such as the capacity to maintain some form of detached perspective on oneself as the enduring subject of oneʼs own actions and mental states) precisely because these activities are experientially grounded in a unified, albeit nonconceptual, form of perspectivity. While my approach draws broadly on recent developments in ecological psychology, the debate on conceptual/nonconceptual mental content provides a convenient starting point for discussion.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses or How Not to Construe Nonconceptual Content

by Julien A. Deonna

European Review of Philosophy, Vol 6, pp.101-115.

Intuition et finitude dans la lecture heideggérienne de Kant

by Maria Hotes

Référence complète :
Maria Hotes (2012). « Intuition et finitude dans la lecture heideggérienne de Kant », in Revue Phares, vol. 12, Hiver 2012, pp. 77-101.

La version finale est disponible sur le site de la revue : [http://www.ulaval.ca/phares/vol12-hiver12/texte05.html].

The Constitution Argument Against Conceptualism

by Andre Abath

Published in Sorites, 2008.

A Note on McDowell's Response to the Fineness of Grain Argument

by Andre Abath

Published in Dialogue, 2008.

Negación Pictórica y Animal

by Axel Barceló

The Perception of Music [Electronic Resource]: An Essay on Musical Understanding, Phenomenology and the Contents of Musical Experience

by Christopher Bartel

NonConceptual Content and Objectivity

by Daniel D. Hutto

1998. Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy. Issue 6: Spring 1998 (The Philosophy of Evans)

In recent times the question of whether or not there is such a thing as nonconceptual content has been the object of... more In recent times the question of whether or not there is such a thing as nonconceptual content has been the object of much serious attention. For analytical philosophers, the locus classicus of the view that there is such a phenomena is to be found in Evans remarks about perceptual experience in Varieties of Reference.  John McDowell has taken issue with Evans over his claim that "conceptual capacities are first brought into operation only when one makes a judgement of experience, and at that point a different species of content comes into play" (McDowell 1994: 48). In contrast, he proposes that "A judgement of experience does not introduce a new kind of content, but simply endorses the conceptual content, or some of it, that is already possessed by the experience on which it is grounded" (McDowell 1994: 48-49). Ironically, in light of the ambitions of Mind and World, this sits very happily with the firmly embedded views of many traditional classical cognitivists. It has been a long-standing article of faith that, even in its most basic forms, perceptual content must be conceptual. But those who adopt this position have a heavy burden when it comes to explaining the origin and development of concepts (cf. Peacocke 1992a: 9).
In line with the proposal that at least some primitive concepts must be innate, theorists like Fodor make appeal to the intrinsic character of such concepts to explain more complex conceptual contents and their essential characteristics (Fodor 1998: 130). Primitive concepts and their properties as simply assumed because of an explanatory need despite that fact that making this assumption has a paradoxical consequence --which, in this case, is revealed by Fodor's claim that all concepts must be acquired inductively (cf. Fodor 1998: 130-132).
The good news is that if we opt for a nonconceptualist approach then we need not assume that any concepts are innate. There is a plausible programme afoot, initiated by Cussins, which hopes explain "the construction of cognitive properties out of non-cognitive properties" (Cussins 1990: 374). He encourages us to suppose "that the mind/world distinction is a phylogenetic or ontogenetic achievement" (Cussins 1990: 409). However, some advocates of nonconceptual content believe that providing this explanation will be a relatively straightforward, although clearly difficult, task given that a contentful base of nonconceptual informational states, of the kind Evans envisioned, is presupposed.
My aim is to defend Evans but if if nonconceptual content is to play the important role assigned to it of helping to explain the development of concepts then we must explicate the nature of such content in such a way that does not presuppose that it is truth-conditional. We must also be able to say exactly what part nonconceptual responses play in judgement making and conceptual development. It is the burden of this paper to provide a sketch of how both these ends might be achieved and to offer some reasons for thinking the project is a viable one. I do this in two stages. The first is to advocate a modest biosemantic theory of nonconceptual content and the second is to show how this can shore up a Davidsonian understanding of the possession conditions for concepts.