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This chapter puts forth and defends three related claims about visual experience. First, it is argued that visual experiences have nonconceptual contents. Second, an explanation and defence is offered for the view that visual experience is representationally rich. This defence includes a discussion of several psychological experiments relating to sensory memory and change blindness. Finally, there is a discussion of how the thesis of richness relates to the thesis of fineness of grain, held most often in connection with our experiences of shades of colour. This discussion spells out the connection between the previously defended claims and the thesis that visual experiences have nonconceptual contents. In conclusion, the example of shape in visual experience is taken up as a potential problem for the thesis about nonconceptual content.

This chapter addresses some of the central issues raised by Evans's paper ‘Molyneux's question’, exploring how Evans's approach to Molyneux's question is informed by his account of the content of conscious perceptual experience, as developed in The Varieties of Reference. It takes issue with Evans's account of the content of perceptual experience, and in particular with what he sees as its conflation of subpersonal information processing content and personal-level experiential content.

This chapter seeks to establish whether the cognitive penetration of experience is compatible with experience having nonconceptual content. Cognitive penetration occurs when one’s beliefs or desires affect one’s perceptual experience in a particular way. This chapter examines two different models of cognitive penetration and four different accounts of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. It argues that one model of cognitive penetration—‘classic’ cognitive penetration—is compatible with only one of the accounts of nonconceptual content that It identifys. The chapter then considers the other model of cognitive penetration—cognitive penetration ‘lite’. It provides reasons to think that this is compatible with three accounts of nonconceptual content. Moreover, it argues that the account of nonconceptual content that it is not compatible with is a spurious notion of nonconceptual content that ought to be abandoned. Thus, it claims that cognitive penetration lite is compatible with all reasonable specifications of nonconceptual content.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content and presents several arguments in favour of nonconceptual content. It argues that the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content should be understood as a difference in contents, rather than states. Following Cussins, it further proposes that nonconceptual content is best understood in terms of procedural knowledge or “knowledge-how”.

First person or de se content features in the nonconceptual content of perception, memory and action-awareness. This de se component is individuated by the rule that it refers, de jure, to the subject of any mental event or state in which it occurs. Possession of de se content involves the possession of a subject’s mental file on itself, and an integrating apparatus that operates to generate representations in the subject’s file on itself. The subject’s file on itself has a distinctive updating mechanism as time passes. Three degrees of self-representation are distinguished: subjects who do not self-represent at all; those that employ only the nonconceptual de se; and those that employ the first person concept.

Concepts are individuated by their fundamental reference rules; the first person concept is individuated by the ‘thinker-rule’, that in any thinking it refers to the agent who produced the thinking. This thinker-rule in normal cases makes first person judgements rationally sensitive to the de se contents of the thinker’s perceptual states. It explains features of the linguistic expression and description of mental states, and explains why the first person concept is genuinely indexical. On a causal-informational conception of acquaintance, the first person is not made available by an acquaintance relation.

This chapter offers a sustained attack on what is probably the standard view in contemporary epistemology, experientialism, which maintains that basic beliefs are justified by the corresponding experiential state. The previous chapter's distinction between evidential and nonevidential justifiers is used to breathe new life into a vaguely Sellarsian, though more empirically oriented, argument against experientialism. Whether experiential states are conceived as low level states (sensations) or high level states (percepts), they cannot serve as justifying evidence for basic beliefs. They certainly cannot be necessary for the justification of these beliefs. An independent argument concludes that only beliefs can serve as justifying evidence for beliefs. Unlike most attacks on experientialism, the one offered here is aimed at defending a nonevidentialist epistemology.

This chapter addresses Nietzsche’s distinction between the conscious and the unconscious. Many philosophers assume that the unconscious is simply the conscious pushed out of view, that the difference between a conscious and an unconscious state is merely that the former is perceptible in a way that the latter is not. This chapter argues that this is inadequate. Conscious and unconscious states have different structures. Conscious states are not simply unconscious ones with awareness superadded; they are different kinds of states and exhibit different structures. For Nietzsche, conscious states are linguistically or conceptually articulated, whereas unconscious states have a form of nonconceptual content.

Dharmakīrti, Dignāga's very influential successor, expands the discussion with an impressive analysis of nonconceptual perceptual content. This chapter argues that Dharmakīrti's account should be understood as a version of the so‐called relational theory of sentience, not as a sense‐data theory. Dharmakīrti uses the theory to address the binding problem: how are flows of sensation bound into thought about robust objects with determinate identity conditions? The same question for him arises for self‐consciousness: how are flows of reflexive self‐awareness bound into I‐thoughts, thought in which the self features as subject. The key insight is that reflexivity provides a principle by which to “tie” together the subject‐aspects of experiences in the content of self‐conscious states. This is an analogue for self‐consciousness of the role performed for Dharmakīrti by presented spatial location in solving the binding problem, presented spatial location being what ties together the object‐aspects in intentional experience. Dharmakīrti argues nevertheless that binding generates only “quasi‐objects” and “quasi‐subjects”, entities which lack full criteria of identity and for which the question “Is this the same object/subject as before?” cannot be answered.

Taking as point of departure a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) that appears to block philosophical elucidation of self-consciousness, this paper illustrates how highly conceptual forms of self-consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of nonconceptual forms of self-awareness. Attention is paid in particular to the primitive forms of nonconceptual self-consciousness manifested in visual perception, somatic proprioception, spatial reasoning and interpersonal psychological interactions. The study of these primitive forms of self-consciousness is an interdisciplinary enterprise and the paper considers a range of points of contact where philosophical work can illuminate work in the cognitive sciences, and vice versa.

One of the attractions of Gibson’s concept of ecological perception is that it seems to provide a basic awareness of the bodily self that can serve as the core of a comprehensive account of full-fledged self-consciousness in thought and action. On the ecological understanding of perception, sensitivity to self-specifying information is built into the very structure of perception in such a way that, as Gibson famously put it, all perception involves co-perception of the (bodily) self and the environment. This paper shows how Gibson’s ecological account is not itself sufficient for self-awareness, even of a primitive form, but suggests what needs to be added to it in order to yield the basic awareness of the bodily self that I term possessing a nonconceptual point of view.

Raftopoulos suggests that realism can be defended only if it can be argued that perception includes nonconceptual content, to individuate objects in the perceiver’s environment. The perceptual mechanisms appealed to by Raftopoulos cannot serve to single out environmental objects uniquely; our perceptual systems must be able to exploit sortal distinctions of a very broad kind in order to achieve this task. It is further contended that Raftopoulos’ response to antirealism is question-begging, failing to tackle antirealism at its real philosophical roots. If one is to argue non-question-beggingly from nonconceptual perceptual content to realism, one needs to identify a species of nonconceptual content in perception which is introspectively accessible by the perceiver and suited by its intrinsic character to constitute good evidence for the existence of an external world conforming to the realist’s conception. This chapter sketches and defends this account of the nonconceptual content of perception.

Defending intentionalism, some argue that perceptual content is idiosyncratically nonconceptual: conceptually innocent; defiant of verbalization; or too richly fine-grained for subsumption under concepts carrying ratiocination. No: perception is conceptual in a manner that fits the cognitive capacities of perceivers generally. If perception is subservient to attention, a speaker's perceptual content admits of relatively simple reports implying rudimentary conceptualization. Perception's content is neither too rich nor fine-grained for expression or conceptualization. Intentionalism's temptation towards the contrary be may be urged by memory’s misguided tendency towards constructive confabulation. So, perceptual content may be neither so rich, dense, nor determinate as post-perceptual consideration and testimony may suggest. Finally, Sperling’s early important empirical work on perceptual memory cuts against intentionalism's conjecture of perception's nonconceptual content. Sperling discovered that perceptual memory can completely rehearse its recollected content. Accordingly, but contrary to intentionalism, memory might echo perception's content yet shed its phenomenal character.

In his Tales of the Mighty Dead, Robert B. Brandom's discussion of Sellars's two-ply account of observation and critique of Cartesian philosophies of mind makes several crucial errors that would render Sellars's analysis of ‘looks’-sentences incoherent. Brandom does not recognize the difference in ‘level’ between observation reports concerning physical objects and ‘looks’-reports, and he denies that ‘looks’-sentences are reports or even make claims. Furthermore, he does not recognize the importance of the nonconceptual content of experiential states. This chapter argues that a careful reading of ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’ does not support Brandom's interpretation, and show how to read Sellars properly on the analysis of such sentences.

The essay draws a connection between the question, raised by Hume and Kant, of how aesthetic judgements can claim universal agreement, and the question, raised in recent discussions of nonconceptual content, of how concepts can be acquired on the basis of experience. It proposes that both questions can be resolved by appealing to the idea of ‘“perceptual normativity”’: perceptual experience, on this proposal, involves the awareness of its own appropriateness with respect to the object perceived, where this appropriateness is more primitive than truth or veridicality. The proposal is motivated through a criticism of Christopher Peacocke’s account of concept acquisition, which, it is argued, rests on a confusion between the notion of a way something is perceived, and a way it is perceived as being. Whereas Peacocke’s account of concept-acquisition depends on an illicit slide between these two notions, the notion of perceptual normativity allows a legitimate transition between them.

It is widely held both that having certain sorts of perceptual experiences can explain one’s ability to have certain sorts of thoughts and that we can use this fact to show that perception and thought differ in certain fundamental ways. Some hold that the explanatory role of experience shows that experiences, unlike thoughts, are not contentful states; others hold that it shows that experiences, unlike thoughts, are nonconceptual. The chapter argues that these theses can’t be established by arguments based on premises requiring experience to play certain explanatory roles. It considers three arguments of this form, which appeal, respectively, to the requirements that experience explain our capacity for singular thought, that it explain the reference of certain demonstrative concepts, and that it explain our ability to learn new concepts. In section 4, it argues that the explanatory role of experience can help decide questions about scope of perceptual representation.

Fredérique de Vignemont has argued that there is a positive quale of bodily ownership. She thinks that tactile and other forms of somatosensory phenomenology incorporate a distinctive feeling of myness and takes issue with my defense in Bermúdez of a deflationary approach to bodily ownership. That paper proposed an argument deriving from Elizabeth Anscombe’s various discussions of what she terms knowledge without observation. De Vignemont is not convinced and appeals to the Rubber Hand Illusion to undercut my appeal to Anscombe. Section 1 of this article restates the case against the putative quale of ownership. Section 2 explains why de Vignemonts’ objections miss the mark. Section 3 discusses in more detail how to draw a principled distinction between bodily awareness and ordinary perceptual awareness.

This chapter does some initial—but important—ground-clearing and foundation-building. It starts by drawing a number of distinctions, more precisely delineating the target, and setting the terms for the debates that follow. It explains some of the different things that people mean by “consciousness,” in particular, as well as some of the claims that have been made about the nature of consciousness. The chapter also argues in support of a pair of substantive theses on the topic that will be relied upon later. Specifically, it argues that phenomenal consciousness is exclusively nonconceptual in nature, and that it doesn’t admit of degrees: it is either categorically present or categorically absent. Finally, the chapter situates the topic in relation to the traditional problem of other minds.

Chapters 10–13 ask whether it is possible for distinct states of different types—for example, a visual experience and a belief—to have the same content, but differ phenomenally. It is argued that this is possible—a conclusion that rules out certain strong versions of intentionalism. This argument takes the reader (in Chapter 12) into questions about whether the contents of experience are best understood according to a Russellian view (according to which the constituents of those contents are objects, properties, and relations) or a Fregean view (according to which the constituents of those contents are modes of presentation of those objects, properties, and relations) and (in Chapter 13) into questions about whether a Fregean view of the contents of thought and language is well-supported by Frege’s puzzle. The views that the contents of experience are Russellian contents are defended, as is the view that we lack any strong argument for Fregeanism about the contents of thought and language.