Christopher Peacocke

El tema del presente trabajo es la noción de contenido no conceptual.  Se toma partido en el debate entre  quienes postulan contenido no conceptual y quienes rechazan tal suposición. En el presente trabajo se elabora la idea de que, de hecho, necesitamos postular esta clase de contenido.

These are the slides for an introductory talk about modal epistemology that I was invited to give in the context of the "What's up with …?" series at our department in Graz.
For more on this series of talks see:
http://philosophie-gewi.uni-graz.at/de/veranstaltungen/detail/cal/event/tx_cal_phpicalendar/2014/11/24/whats_up_with_modal_epistemology/

Ongoing discussion of this paper here: https://www.academia.edu/s/cf13d33860?source=link
Philosophy – whether traditional or contemporary – has nothing to say about the human metaphysical predicament, and cannot even offer a basic phenomenology of the human condition. Part of the problem is the ongoing confusion as to what philosophy actually amounts to, and what it can achieve. It is necessary to demystify philosophy, and have it restricted to the discipline of critical thinking, and it should not be thought of as possessing any substantial theoretical content of its own. It is a method, a skillset, a series of techniques, not a repository of various highbrow theories, whether about mind, epistemology, ontology, cosmology, science, or anything else. Metaphysics is an entirely distinct and separate field of inquiry, and concerns the human predicament, and ultimate human fulfilment, and it is to this end that critical thinking skills can usefully be applied. The purpose of this short study is to give some help to those hoping to gain an insight into the metaphysical realms of their being, and who would like some guidance with regard to those formal and academic disciplines supposedly geared to dealing with that very subject.

Keywords: communication, semantics/pragmatics, direct reference theory, singular thoughts, Russell's Principle, Generality Constraint, Husserl, Evans, Perry, twin examples, demonstratives, demonstrative identification, perception, perceptual content

Phenomenal objectivism explains perceptual phenomenal character by reducing it to an awareness of mind-independent objects, properties, and relations. A challenge for this view is that there is a sense in which a distant tree looks smaller than a closer tree even when they are the same objective size (perceptual size variation). The dual content view is a popular objectivist account in which such experiences are explained by my objective spatial relation to the tree, in particular visual angle (perspectival size). I describe a series of first-person experiments for investigating size experience. I use a ruler as a first-person method for operationalising perspectival size (Experiment 1). I use the corridor illusion (Experiment 2), outlining one’s head in the mirror (Experiment 3), and outlining the size of objects on glass (Experiment 4) to show a phenomenal difference in size for items in different depth contexts, despite being identical in visual angle. These finding demonstrate that visual angle cannot account for these spatial experiences. Psychological evidence provides further support for the thesis that subjects do not experience visual angle when depth information is present. Together this evidence supports the hypothesis that perceptual size variation cannot be accounted for by visual angle, hence undermining a plausible version of the dual content theory. This outcome, combined with problems raised by alternative objectivist accounts of size variation, provides support for a subjectivist account of size experience.

Contemporary accounts of the possession conditions for basic logical concepts rely on either the subject being primitively compelled by transitions that are isomorphic to the introduction and elimination rules for the logical constant or the rules are an innate property of the subject’s language of thought. Drawing from Heidegger’s work in the philosophy of logic and Boghossian’s work on inference, I argue that any attempt to explain logical inference as a form of rule following will lead to arguments for the impossibility of logic or an infinite regress. An under-explored alternative to defining all inferences as instances of following a rule is to take some inferences as basic – inferences that do not follow rules and provide a starting point for our inferential practices. I propose that neural networks can provide a useful model for understanding basic inferences as a primitive ability since they show how one can infer in accordance with a logical principle without necessarily following a rule. Determining whether a subject possesses a basic logical concept is arrived at then by interpreting their inferential behaviour.

Par une sélection de six textes emblématiques traduits en français, l'enjeu du présent volume est d'introduire le lecteur francophone à l'histoire de la controverse sur le contenu conceptuel de la perception et d'interroger la pertinence des débats qu'elle a suscités.
Avec des textes de Tim Crane, Fred Dretske, Gareth Evans, John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke et Charles Travis

The essay is a study of phenomenal specificity. By ‘phenomenal’ here we mean conscious awareness, which needs to be cashed out in detail throughout the study. Intuitively, one dimension of phenomenology is along with specificity. For example it seems appropriate to say that one’s conscious awareness in the middle of the visual field is in some sense more specific than the awareness in the periphery under normal circumstances. However, it is difficult to characterise the nature of phenomenal specificity in an accurate way. This essay seeks to do just that. In the introduction, I set up the discussion by invoking a threefold Campbellian framework. Chapter 1 introduces a key notion of the analogue, its roots in sciences, and its applications in philosophy. Chapter 2 focuses on the major case study – the Sperling iconic memory paradigm – and explains how the relevant notion of the analogue can be used to explain phenomenal specificity involved in the Sperling case. Chapter 3 discusses functions of attention, as it is a crucial element in the Sperling case. Chapter 4 extends the project by explaining how visual demonstratives fit into the present picture. Finally chapter 5 discusses several directions for future researches. This essay is not an attempt to discuss all the issues concerning the Sperling case, but to provide a new angle in seeing the issue: most people agree that visual phenomenology is in some sense specific, but there are not enough attempts to model phenomenal specificity explicitly. On this occasion we use a notion of the analogue and related ideas to understand phenomenal specificity and how it applies to certain empirical cases.

We know, since Descartes (1641), that exercises of sensory imagining (S-imagining) are not purely imagistic: they possess multiple aspects. This much is agreed upon among philosophers but, when the question of the intentionality of S-imaginings arises, agreement seems to unravel.

According to the Two Content View (TCV), S-imagining “has two kinds of content, qualitative content and assigned content” (Kung, 2010:632) – e.g., my image of an apple is about both (i) shapes and colors and (ii) about the fact that it is an apple, rather than a perfect imitation thereof. Advocates of TCV claim that the imagistic content does represent something, but it is not enough to individuate the imagining of an A rather than a B (Kung, 2010; Langland-Hassan, 2015; Martin, 2002; Noordhof, 2002; Peacocke, 1985; Tooming, 2018; White, 1990).

Some, however, have expressed skepticism about TCV. As Sartre claims, “despite some prejudices […] when I produce in myself the image of Pierre, it is Pierre who is the object of my current consciousness.” (1940/2010:4) The intentional object of our S-imaginings is exhausted by a single content treated in a specific way (Currie & Ravenscroft, 2002; Goldman, 2006; Hutto, 2015; Mulligan, 1999; Soteriou, 2013; Stock, n.d.; Wiltsher, 2016,2019).

In the following, (1) I sketch one of the most efficient pleas for the TCV by Peter Langland-Hassan, (2) I give two reasons to doubt the decisiveness of his arguments, and (3) suggest that S-imagining can be captured by the attitude/content distinction.

Siguiendo la aproximación de C. Peacocke, desarrollaré una
explicación del autoconocimiento psicológico en términos de
los estados y contenidos involucrados en la transición desde un
estado mental consciente a un juicio de orden superior. Ahora
bien, parece que la mera conciencia de un estado mental no
representa explícitamente o hace manifiesto de algún modo
al sujeto de ese estado, en cuyo caso esto plantea una objeción
à la Lichtenberg a la explicación de Peacocke. Tras adoptar
una teoría auto-representacional del carácter subjetivo de la
experiencia, argumentaré que la representación mediante la
cual una experiencia consciente se representa a sí misma como sí
misma tiene un contenido de se implícito. Es así una explicación
que excluye una objeción à la Lichtenberg porque el uso de
la primera persona en un juicio de orden superior resulta ser
dependiente de contenido.

One direct case of purportedly non-conceptual content is offered up by Christopher Peacocke. A person (or animal) has an experience - and even an experience of a something (x). It's just that he (or it) doesn't have an experience “as of a sphere”. It's a sphere *to us*; though not to him (or it). In basic terms, the “content of experience” and the“judgement” don't occur at precisely the same time. Whether this temporal way of looking at things makes sense (or is acceptable) is another matter. I say that because it can argued that the experience and judgement occur at one and the same time.

To summerise Peacocke's position:

sensation ⟶ perception ⟶ judgement

Martin Davies too makes an explicit distinction between what he calls the “perceptual content of experience” and the having (or possession) of concepts. Thus, in Davies's jargon, the “perceptual content of experience” comes first, and only then are concepts applied to it. Indeed it seems possible that this perceptual content of experience may remain free (as it were) of concepts. Davies's perceptual-content idea is even more radical in that it “is not object-involving”. The basic point here seems to be that non-conceptual content can't (by definition?) be object-involving.

Michael Tye also makes a temporal division when he says that “visual sensations feed into the conceptual system, without themselves being a part of that system”. One can now ask how “visual sensations” can “feed into the conceptual system” without having some kind of vital connection to that system. And if they have such a connection, then can they still seen as non-conceptual? That is, what is the precise connection (or link) between the non-conceptual (visual sensations in this case) and the conceptual system? One is tempted to infer (as with John McDowell) that in order for these visual sensations to be able to feed into the conceptual system, then they must share something with that system. Otherwise how does that system distinguish irrelevant sensations from relevant ones?

Wilfrid Sellars lays his critical cards on the table when he said that the Given “would be a level of cognition unmediated by concepts; indeed it would be the very source of concepts”. Sellars was right to imply here that there can't be a “level of cognition” which is “unmediated by concepts”. However, we needn't also conclude (or accept) that these sensations can't be a “source of concepts”.

John McDowell too explicitly believes that the acceptance of non-conceptual content is effectively a rebirth of “the myth of the given”. McDowell is now well-known (i.e., within epistemology) for holding this position. That is, for his rejection of the idea that we have a temporal division (as I see it) between the mind being presented with a non-conceptual Given, and then a later application of concepts to that Given. So McDowell believes that we're fooled into believing that there's such a thing as non-conceptual content.

It's argued that a person can have had an experience of a particular environment which he couldn't completely describe. Or, rather, at the actual time of the experience he didn't describe it; though afterwards he may well have been able to do so. Nonetheless, even after the experience, there would still have been elements of that environment for which he has no words or concepts.

Similarly, can we say that an experience is “more determinate” even if it's not conceptualised in any way? In what sense, then, is it determinate? Here there's a hint at a kind of discrimination which doesn't involves concepts, let alone words or descriptions. So here we may have a “fineness of grain” (or “richness”) without concepts or judgements that implies a level of discrimination which occurs without concepts - or at least without words.

We can now go beyond talk of the different shades of colour and say, as Gareth Evans did, that perception itself always (or often) has a “phenomenological richness” which goes beyond the concepts used in perception. In other words, experiences or perceptions are more fine-grained than can be accounted for by (say) simple references to the many different shades of colour. Indeed, phenomenologically, an experience is almost infinitely rich (or detailed). And even if we had public words for everything within it, such words would still never be used during the actual experience itself.

The paper is a critical study of Christopher Peacocke's book _The Realm of Reason_. The content of the paper is both exegetical and critical. In its latter capacity the paper is centrally concerned to correct Peacocke's understanding of Tyler Burge's version of rationalism; and to criticize Peacocke's position from this competing perspective.