zyxwvutsrqpo zyxwvutsrqp zyxwvutsrq zyxwv zyxwvutsrqp Mind & Language ISSN 0268-1064 Vol. 9 No. 4 December 1994 @ Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 l / F , UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, M A 02142, USA. Article Peacocke’s Argument Against the Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content zyxwvu JOSE LUIS BERMUDEZ The idea that there might be mental states with nonconceptual representational content is receiving an increasing amount of discussion among philosophers of mind, and it is potentially of considerable theoretical importance to psychologists. This paper considers an argument that has been put forward by Christopher Peacocke against the suggestion that nonconceptual content is autonomous-that is, against the possibility of a creature being in states with nonconceptual representational content although not possessing any concepts at all. Peacocke’s argument, if sound, would circumscribe the theoretical uses to which the notion of nonconceptual representational content could be put. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first section I outline some of the motivations that philosophers and psychologists might have for endorsing a notion of autonomous nonconceptual representational content. In the second section I give a more specific characterization of the notion, together with a sketch of the specific form of nonconceptual content that Peacocke puts forward. In the third Peacocke‘s argument against the autonomy of nonconceptual content is presented. In the fourth section it is argued that Peacocke’s argument effectively destroys the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content, while the last section considers two possible responses that a defender of Peacocke’s position might make. I am very grateful to Julie Jack and an anonymous reader for comments on earlier versions. Address for correspondence: Faculty of Philosophy, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UK zyxwvu zy zy zyxwv zyxwv The Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content 403 1. Theoretical Uses for the Notion of Nonconceptual Representational Content The general idea underlying the notion of nonconceptual representational content is that it is theoretically legitimate to refer to mental states that represent the world but that do not require the bearer of those mental states to possess the concepts required to specify the way in which they represent the world. Alternatively put, a particular content is taken to be a nonconceptual content iff it can be attributed to a creature without thereby attributing to that creature mastery of the concepts required to specify that content.’ One very general motivation for introducing a notion of nonconceptual content is the thought that in many cases an adequate description of the content of experience will be more detailed and fine-grained than it could possibly be if given only in terms of concepts possessed by the experiencing subject (Peacocke, 1992, ch. 3). There seem good grounds, for example, for describing a perceiver as seeing something as magenta-coloured, without that requiring that he possess the concept of magenta. He can perceive the particular colour even though he has no conceptual grip on it. The same applies to shape. Many would hold that it is legitimate to describe someone as seeing a chiliagon or a rhombus, even though he has no conceptual understanding of what a chiliagon or a rhombus might be. The suggestion is even more pertinent in the case of the modalities for which very few people have a developed descriptive vocabulary, such as taste and smell. Here it seems clear that restricting the characterization of experience to concepts actually possessed by a perceiver will often succeed only in picking out a range of possible perceptual experiences, rather than fixing uniquely on the particular perceptual experience in question. Another very general reflection on the nature of perceptual experience that might make the notion of nonconceptual content seem tempting is that it offers a way of accommodating the insight that the nature of perceptual experience is partly determined by the concepts brought to bear in that experience without falling into the extremes of perceptual relativism. S o , even if one holds that two observers with different conceptual abilities in the same situation (say, a young child and an ecclesiatic confronting a religious painting) will have relevantly different perceptual It should be noted that this paper is concerned only with ascriptions of content at what might be termed the personal level. The notion of nonconceptual content is also employed in the context of subpersonal computational states, the idea being, for example, that early visual processing involves representations of the environment that do not implicate mastery of the relevant concepts (e.g. the concept of binocular disparity). Although I do think that the notion of nonconceptual content can be legitimately employed in the subpersonal context, my interest, and that of Peacocke in the argument under discussion, is with the content of experience. 0Basil zyx zyxwvutsrq Blackwell Lfd. 1994 404 zyxwvutsrq zyxwvut zyxwvu Mind & Language experiences, one can do justice to the intuition that at a basic level they both represent the world in similar ways by placing the similarities at the level of nonconceptual content and the divergences at the level of conceptual content.2 By the same token, the notion of nonconceptual content also allows one to capture any continuity one might think there is in the way the world is represented in experience before and after the acquisition of a concept. Perhaps the most obvious advantage of the notion of nonconceptual content is the promise it offers for explaining what it is to possess concepts and to be in states with conceptual content. It is important to distinguish, however, between two broad forms that such an explanation might take. The first form is what one might term a developmental explanation of conceptual content. In such an explanation the acquisition of the capacity for being in states with conceptual content is explained in terms of a developmental progression over time from being in states possessing nonconceptual content. On this sort of view, nonconceptual content comes first and conceptual content emerges from it. Cussins (1990) gives an account of conceptual content along these lines, suggesting that the gradual development of a conception of objectivity should be understood in terms of the progressive construction of concepts from a basis of structured nonconceptual content-what he describes as ’the transition from a preobjective stage where no concepts are possessed to an objective conceptexercising stage’ (p. 409). The possibility of a developmental explanation of conceptual content has obvious relevance to developmental psychologists studying the ontogeny of concept development, as well as to evolutionary biologists considering the phylogeny of conceptual abilities. A different way in which conceptual content can be grounded in nonconceptual contents is offered by Christopher Peacocke in various writings (most comprehensively in Peacocke, 1992). He suggests that what it is to possess a particular concept (i.e. an explanation of the possession conditions for that concept) can in certain fundamental cases be explained in terms of more primitive representational contents, which are egocentric and nonconceptual. The general idea is that the possession conditions of some basic concepts involve the subject’s being willing to apply the concept when in a perceptual state with the appropriate nonconceptual content. Using the notion of nonconceptual content in this way allows non-circular characterization of the possession conditions for the relevant concept, because the subject’s possession of the concept is not mentioned in specifying the content of the appropriate perceptual experience. These two proposed forms of explanation involve differing degrees of zyx zyxwv zyxwv zyxwvutsr zyxwvutsrq Of course, there are other ways of accommodating this point. One could maintain, as McGinn does (1989, pp 59ff), that the similarities in perceptual experience are a function of the basic observational concepts they have in common. Alternatively, one could hold that the similarities are qualitative features of the experience, rather than representational features. 0Basil Blackweil Lfd. 2994 zyxwvu zyx zyx The Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content 405 commitment to what we can, following Peacocke (1992, p. 90), term the Autonomy Thesis (AT): The Autonomy Thesis (AT) It is possible for a creature to be in states with nonconceptual content, even though that creature possesses no concepts at all. A philosopher who holds that the notion of nonconceptual content can provide a developmental explanation of conceptual content is likely to be sympathetic to AT, to the extent that his project is one of explaining how a creature possessing only states with nonconceptual content can develop into a fully-fledged concept-user.3 A philosopher committed only to possession conditions explanation, however, does not have to accept AT (although there is no requirement to deny it). He can, for example, maintain that the nonconceptual content of experience will yield a non-circular account of possession conditions for certain primitive concepts, even if AT is denied. What makes this possible is, of course, that nonconceptual content is defined as content that does not require mastery of any of the concepts required to specify it-it is not defined as content that requires mastery of no concepts whatsoever. Indeed, one can be in a state with nonconceptual content despite possessing the relevant concepts. The point is that being in such a state is not dependent on possession of the concepts required to specify it. On the other hand, however, if AT is rejected, then it will be ips0 fucto impossible to give at least one type of developmental explanation of conceptual content in terms of nonconceptual content-namely, the type of developmental explanation that involves explaining how a creature in states with only nonconceptual content, such as for example a newborn human infant, can develop into a fully-fledged concept-user. By the same token, it will also rule out an account of the phylogenetic development of conceptual content of the sort required by any account of conceptual content that sees it as appearing at a far later state of evolution than nonconceptual content. In addition to this, moreover, it should be clear that rejecting AT rules out a further potential theoretical use for the notion of nonconceptual content. Some philosophers and psychologists have been struck by the thought that a primitive form of intentional explanation is required to account for the behaviour of creatures one might not want to describe as concept-using, and obviously any form of intentional explanation requires attributing to such a creature representations of its environment. One area in which this emerges is animal learning theory (see, for example, zyx There seem, however, to be possible versions of developmental explanation that are compatible with denying AT. For example, it could be argued that, although in general nonconceptual and conceptual contents form a holism, there are certain conceptual contents that develop out of nonconceptual contents. @ B u d BIackweii Ltd. 1994 406 zyxwvutsrq zyxwvut zyxwvu z Mind b Language Dickinson, 1988, where it is argued that certain cases of instrumental conditioning in rats support an intentional interpretation; see also Premack 1988), but it also seems highly relevant to the study of infant cognition. The suggestion that there are experiential states that represent the world but that do not implicate mastery of the concepts required to specify them is potentially very important here. Clearly, however, it can only be of theoretical use if AT is accepted. zyxwv zyxw 2. Peacocke’s Scenario Content as a Form of Nonconceptual Content In giving a more detailed characterization of nonconceptual content it is useful to start from Cussins’ (1990) discussion. He begins with a distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual properties. A property is a conceptual property iff it is canonically characterized, relative to a theory, by means of concepts which are such that a creature must have those concepts in order to instantiate the property. As Cussins points out, properties are characterized relative to a theory, and by ’canonical characterization relative to a theory’ he means characterization in terms of properties that that theory takes to be essential to it. The notion of a nonconceptual property follows easily. A property is nonconceptual iff it is canonically characterized, relative to a theory, by means of concepts that a creature need not have in order to instantiate the property. The ‘need not have’ is important here. Even if the creature acquires the relevant concepts, that will not transform the property into a conceptual property. The specification of a nonconceptual property requires only that possession of the relevant concepts is not necessary. The difference between conceptual and nonconceptual properties is straightforward. Consider the two different properties of (a) having a central nervous system, and (b) understanding the functioning of the central nervous system. Clearly, the first is instantiated by innumerable creatures that lack the concept central nervous system. Equally clearly, it is hard to see how a creature could be ascribed the second unless it had the concepts of understanding, functioning and central nervous system. Much depends, however, on the theory relative to which the property is being canonically characterized. There are certain theories on which possession of those concepts would be sufficient-perhaps ’naive biology’ would be an example here. On the other hand, there are other theories (physiology, for example) on which possession of those concepts would be necessary, but far from sufficient. Once the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual properties is granted, it is only a short move to Cussins’ distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. Conceptual content is ’content that consists of conceptual properties’, and by the same token, nonconceptual content is ’content that consists of nonconceptual properties’. In both cases 0 Basil Blackwell Lld. 1994 zyxwvu zy zy The Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content 407 the properties are being canonically characterized relative to the theory of content. This is how Cussins fleshes out the basic idea that nonconceptual content is content that can be ascribed to a creature without thereby ascribing to it possession of the concepts involved in specifying that content.4 So, a particular content is nonconceptual iff it can be specified wholly in terms of nonconceptual properties, where a nonconceptual property is a property that can be canonically characterized relative to a theory by means of concepts none of which need to be possessed by a creature satisfying that property. With the general notion of nonconceptual content sharpened up we can move on to a specific proposal that has been put forward for understanding the nonconceptual content of perceptual experience. Christopher Peacocke’s conception of scenario content explains the nonconceptual representational content of an experience in terms of a spatial type (1989, pp. 8-9): zyxw The idea is that specifying the content of a perceptual experience involves saying what ways of filling out a space around the origin with surfaces, solids, textures, light and so forth, are consistent with the correctness or veridicality of the experience. Such contents are not built from propositions, concepts, senses, or continuant material objects. Such spatial types are specified in terms of a labelled origin and axis egocentrically centred on the perceiver. Within the framework yielded by the origin and axis, specifying how space is ’filled out’ is done in terms of points (pp. 9-10). We need, for each point (strictly one should say point-type) identified by its distance and direction from the origin, to specify whether there is a surface there, and if so what texture, hue, saturation, brightness, and temperature it has at that point, together with its degree of resistance to touch. The orientation of the surface must be included. There remains an ambiguity of scope. Should the definition of a nonconceptual property be taken in a strong or weak sense, where the strong reading means that the subject is not required to possess any of the concepts involved in characterizing the property, and the weak reading means that the subject is not required to possess all of the concepts involved in the characterization. I take it that the strong reading is correct, and that requiring the possession of even one of the concepts involved in the canonical characterization of a property is sufficient to make that property count as a conceptual property. I also take it that the strong reading is equally appropriate at the level of content. If the specification of a content involves just one conceptual property, it will ips0 facto count as a conceptual content. 0Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 zyx 408 zyxwvuts zyx zyx z Mind 6 Language The conceptual resources with which such a specification of the spatial type is carried out are not, of course, attributed to the perceiver, and this is what makes it an account of nonconceptual content. The account is completed as follows. This spatial type, which Peacocke terms a scenario, yields the nonconceptual content of the experience when its axes and origins have been assigned places and directions in the real world, and a time has been all~cated.~ This content is correct iff the volume of the real world around the perceiver, specified according to the same constraints as the scenario, instantiates the type specified by the scenario. The specific use to which Peacocke puts his notion of scenario content is in specifying the possession conditions of concepts. Such a specification takes two parts. The first part of the specification for a particular concept yields the constraint that the subject be in a perceptual state with the appropriate scenario content, and that he be willing to apply the concept when in that state. The second part is a version of the Generality Constraint first suggested by Evans (1982, §4.3)-namely, that the subject be capable of a generalized concept application. Broadly speaking, the thought is that if a creature is properly to be credited with the thought a is F, then that creature must be capable both of thinking a is G for any property of being G of which he has a conception, and of thinking b is F for any object b of which he has a conception. 3. Peacocke’s Argument Against AT From the description in the previous section it should be clear that Peacocke is committed neither to accepting nor denying AT. Nonetheless he does deny it, in favour of the claim that ’conceptual and nonconceptual content must be elucidated simultaneously. The most basic elements of the scheme form a local holism’ (1992, p. 91). I will take the liberty of schematizing his argument, which is presented in a very condensed form (1992; p. 90): (1) Scenario content is genuine spatial representational content. (2) The attribution of genuine spatial representational content to a creature is only justified if that creature is capable of identifying places over time. (3) Identifying places over time involves reidentifying places. zyxw zyxwvutsr Or rather: it does so in conjunction with a further level of nonconceptual representational content, which Peacocke terms ’protopropositional content’ (1992, ch. 3). The protopropositionalcontent of experience specifies the relational aspects of experience. I am not mentioning it specifically because it does not affect the argument of this paper. However, when the term ‘scenario content’ is employed below, this should not be taken to exclude protopropositional content. @ Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 zyxwvuts zyxwvu zyx zyxwv zyxw The Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content 409 (4) Reidentifying places requires the capacity to identify one's current location with a location previously encountered. (5) Reidentifying places in this way involves building up an integrated spatial representation of the environment over time. (6) Neither (4) nor (5) would be possible unless the subject possesses at least a primitive form of the first-person concept. (7) Therefore, nonconceptual content cannot be autonomous. Several of the stages in this argument seem relatively unproblematic. (1) can be provisionally accepted, although it would be helpful to have a clearer sense of what is to count as spatial representational content, given the claim in (2). (3) is a familiar claim, associated in particular with Strawson (1959). However, (4) and (5) could do with further discussion. It is important to realize that (4) is making a substantive claim, rather than just explaining what it is to be capable of reidentifying places. Peacocke is claiming that genuine spatial content rests on a particular type of place reidentification, and, conversely, that there are capacities that some theorists might describe as capacities for place reidentification but that a creature could have without it being appropriate to attribute genuine spatial content to that creature. As he stresses, 'spatial content involves more than just a sensitivity to higher-order properties of stimulation patterns' (1992, p. 90), and the type of place reidentification implicated in genuine spatial content is precisely one that cannot be explained in terms of such sensitivity. Of course, this all depends upon how sensitivity to higher-order stimulation patterns is understood, but a plausible suggestion here would be that behaving in a way that merely reflects such a sensitivity is behaving in a way that could be explained in terms of stimulus-response (S-R) theory. (4)should be read as claiming that there is more to the sort of place reidentification implicated in genuinely spatial content than a minimal capacity to find one's way back to a given place, because an SR account could be given of such a minimal capacity (as it often is in accounts of the spatial abilities of animals). Place reidentification requires the exercise of certain cognitive as well as navigational abilities. It involves something like a conscious registering of particular locations as locations that have been previously encountered. It is because so much is built into the idea of place reidentification that Peacocke claims in (5) that an integrated representation of the environment over time is also involved. An argument from Sense and Content (Peacocke, 1983) can shed light here. In Sense and Content his argument against genuine spatial content being attributable to a creature whose behaviour is explainable in S-R terms is that, however complicated and apparently purposeful S-R behavioural response might be, allowing genuine content to be ascribed on the basis of those responses would be to admit the possibility that a creature might bear propositional attitudes to just one place in their environment, while not bearing propositional attitudes to any others (1983, p. 65). This Peacocke holds to be unintelligible because zyxwvu @ Basil B h c k w e / / Ltd. 1994 410 zyxwvuts zyxwvu zy zyxw Mind 6 Language places are essentially related to other places and place identification is a holistic phenomenon. Genuine spatial content involves a grasp of the connectedness of space and that is why it involves some form of integrated representation of the world over time. The crucial step in the argument is (6), the claim that place reidentification involves a primitive grasp of the first-person concept. There seem to be two ways in which this could be argued. The first would be that the conscious registration of places requires the capacity to entertain thoughts or proto-thoughts of the sort 'I have been to this place before'. It is in virtue of this capacity that place reidentification is to be distinguished from simply finding one's way back to a place, and it seems plausible that entertaining such proto-thoughts requires possessing the first-person concept. A second line of argument here would be that one can build up an integrated representation of the environment over time only if one has a grip on one's own location in it. An integrated representation of the environment is only possible if one is capable of a representation of one's actual and previous locations, as well as of understanding the role that changes in one's own location contribute to one's changing perceptual experience. None of these would be possible, Peacocke would argue, in the absence of some form of the first-person concept. There might seem to be a difficulty here, however. The defence of (4) that has been attributed to Peacocke rests on a claim about propositional attitudes-namely, that it is impossible to bear propositional attitudes to just one place. But why, one might ask, should this be thought relevant to a discussion of scenario content? Scenario content is supposed to be nonconceptual content, and it is often thought (surely correctly) that one of the distinctive features of nonconceptual content is that the constraints appropriate at the level of conceptual content just do not apply.6 There seems to be no contradiction in granting that one cannot have attitudes to just one place, without this carrying any implications for the possibility of ascribing genuinely spatial scenario content.' In which case, then, there zy zyxwvut zyxwvu ' This is certainly the way that Evans saw the matter in his seminal discussion of nonconceptual content in The Vurieties of Reference. 'It is one of the fundamental differences between human thought and the information-processing that takes place in our brains that the Generality Constraint applies to the former but not the latter. When we attribute to the brain computations whereby it localises the sounds it hears, we ips0 fucto ascribe to it representations of the speed of sound and of the distance between the ears, without any commitment to the idea that it should be able to represent the speed of light or the distance between anything else.' (Evans, 1982, p. 104, n.22) Admittedly, Evans is discussing subpersonal nonconceptual content, whereas Peacocke's nonconceptual content is a personal-level notion, but the point holds in virtue of the type of content, rather than the level of processing. The Generality Constraint is a condition upon concept possession, not upon any type of mental representation-but see Davies, 1986, pp. 145-6. Although the traditional notion of content holds it to be whatever is specified in a 'that' clause when attributing a propositional attitude (from which it would seem to follow that constraints on propositional attitudes are ips0 fucto constraints on content), Peacocke characterizes content in terms of states that have 'correctness conditions'- Q Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 zyxw The Autonomy of Nonconceptuai Representational Confenf zyx 411 seems to be a confusion of levels involved in the argument against ATa constraint appropriate to the level of conceptual content is being applied at the level of nonconceptual content. Why does this not amount to making nonconceptual content into a form of conceptual content? I suspect that Peacocke would respond that this is not a confusion of levels at all. Rather, it is precisely a sign of how conceptual and nonconceptual content need to be elucidated simultaneously. Because scenario content is genuine spatial content, its conditions of possibility involve the perceiver’s being capable of holding propositional attitudes to more than one place. In the absence of this capacity there can be no genuine spatial content at all. And that, Peacocke would claim, is a further reason why AT is unacceptable. Rejecting AT in this way, he would stress, does not involve tacitly transforming scenario content into a type of conceptual content. The explanatory distinctiveness of nonconceptual scenario content is preserved, even though its autonomy is denied. I think, however, that although this objection does not work, it is on the right lines, and that a successful response to Peacocke’s argument against AT will proceed by showing that Peacocke’s argument obliterates the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. In the next section I would like to outline such a response. zyxw zyxwvut 4. Is Scenario Content Nonconceptual Content? NonconceptuaI content is a type of content that can be attributed to a creature without thereby attributing to that creature a mastery of any of the concepts involved in specifying that content (I will henceforth abbreviate this to ’relevant concept mastery’). What I would like to suggest, however, is that Peacocke’s argument against AT effectively makes it a condition of attributing scenario content to a creature that that creature should have mastery of at least one of the concepts involved in canonically specifying any possible scenario content. In which case, then, there can be no nonconceptual scenario contents. Consider stage ( 6 ) in the argument against AT. The claim there is that the reidentification of places requires a rudimentary form of first-person thought. The conscious registration of places as places that have already been encountered requires the capacity to entertain thoughts or protothoughts of the form ‘I have been to this place before’, and this is conditional upon mastery of the first-person concept, as is the reasoning about one’s own location involved in building up an integrated representation of the environment. It might initially seem tempting to assume that this mastery of the first-person is itself sufficient to contravene the requirement zyxwvu zyxwvutsrqp where having correctness conditions is a sufficient condition for representing the world in a particular way. 0B o d Blackwell Lid. 1994 412 zyxwvuts zyxwvu Mind 6 Language that scenario content attribution not involve attribution of relevant concept mastery. If scenario content is specified in terms of an egocentrically centred origin and axis, then, it might appear, the first-person concept will be involved in that specification. If so, however, scenario content would be conceptual rather than nonconceptual content, because it would only be available to creatures on the condition that they possessed one of the concepts involved in the specification of any possible scenario content. This would not be quite right, however. The fact that the origin and axis are egocentrically centred on the perceiver does not mean that they have to be specified egocentrically. It is perfectly possible to specify an egocentric spatial framework without employing any first-person notions. As Evans puts it, an egocentric spatial vocabulary refers to points in public space (1982, p. 157). The distinction between egocentric and public space is at the level of sense rather than of reference, and so it remains possible to give a specification of egocentric space that does not involve first-person notions. It might, for example, proceed with reference to impersonally specified body parts. This does suggest a further line of argument, however. Suppose, for example, that we stress other aspects of the putative proto-thoughts involved in place reidentification. It has been suggested that such a protothought will be of the form ‘I have been to this place before’. Clearly, the possibility of this type of thought requires attributing to the subject not just the capacity for primitive first-person thought, but also a mastery of the concept of ‘place’. The first-person component here is relatively innocuous, but the notion of a place seems more problematic. The concept of a place is part of a family of related concepts, such as ’location’, ’point’, ‘position’, etc. Mastery of any one of them cannot be divorced from mastery of the others, so that attributing to a thinker the concept of one of them is effectively to attribute to him the concept of any of them. Any specification of scenario content will employ at least one of these concepts, most prominently the concept of a point, as should be clear from the outline of scenario content given in Section 2. This creates a significant tension within Peacocke’s characterization of scenario content. According to the argument against AT, if a subject is to have experiences with scenario content he must be capable of place reidentification, and that requires possessing the concept of a place, or one of the related concepts in the family. At the same time, however, it follows from Peacocke’s description of how scenarios are fixed that one or more of these concepts must feature in any specification of a scenario content. This makes scenario content into a form of conceptual rather than nonconceptual content, because any subject who is in a state with scenario content will be required to possess at least one of the concepts required to specify that content. If this is so, then the rejection of AT creates problems for Peacocke’s position. On the one hand we have the general requirement on nonconceptual content that it can be attributed to a creature without thereby attribu0 Basil Bfackwell Lid. 1994 z zy zyxwvu zy zyxwv The Autonomy of Nonconceptuaf Representational Content 413 ting to that creature mastery of any of the concepts required to specify that content. On the other hand, however, we have the specific requirements for scenario content to be genuine spatial content, and these specific requirements entail that the subject possess at least one concept involved in specifying any possible scenario content. This tension will not be an easy one to resolve. Nonetheless, there are several lines of defence available here, which need to be considered before the conclusion is drawn that Peacocke’s rejection of AT effectively transforms scenario content into a form of conceptual content. 5. Objections Considered (1) An initial response might be to deny that place reidentification requires the concept of a place. The sort of proto-thoughts implicated in place reidentification do not, the defence might run, necessarily involve mastery of a concept from the relevant family. It is worth pointing out, however, that this strategy is a dangerous one for anybody concerned with denying AT, because what must at all costs be avoided is making the proto-thoughts so innocuous that they no longer require possession of a primitive form of the first-person content, and hence do not permit the move to (6) in the argument against AT. This certainly rules out the option of construing place reidentification as a practical capacity manifested in sufficiently sophisticated navigational abilities. Bearing this in mind, then, it would seem that the only way of construing the protothoughts would be via some sort of demonstrative-perhaps of the form ’I have been here before’. The difficulty with this, however, is that it seems to contravene Peacocke’s claims about the holistic nature of place identification. The argument against AT has depended crucially upon the idea that it is unintelligible that a subject should have thoughts about just one place in his environment, because places are essentially spatially related to other places. Consider, however, a subject only capable of demonstrative thought about places of the form ‘I have been here before’. That subject would be incapable of having thoughts about more than one place in his environment at any given moment, thereby falling foul of the intelligibility requirement. (2) It was argued in Section 4 that Peacocke’s argument against AT made the possibility of being in states with scenario content dependent upon possession of a concept necessarily involved in the specification of any possible scenario content. The conclusion drawn from this was that that was sufficient to make scenario content conceptual content. The previous reply attacked the initial claim. It could also be objected, however, that the conclusion rests upon a crucial equivocation in the conception of conceptual content. zyxw zyxwvu zyxwvutsr When it was argued in Section 7 that scenario content was conceptual @ Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 414 zyxwvuts zyxwvutsr zyxwvu zyx Mind 6 Language content, the operative notion of conceptual content was this: a given content is conceptual just in case that content can only be canonically specified by means of concepts at least one of which must be possessed by any subject who is in a state with that content. The notion of possession here is ambiguous, however. On one reading the requirement could just be that the subject has to possess the concept, irrespective of whether or not it is employed in the relevant experience. Alternatively, it could mean not only that the subject has to possess the concept, but also that his possession of the concept must play an explanatory role in that experience being the experience that it is. With this distinction in mind, then, it could be pointed out that the argument in Section 4 depends upon the first reading-whereas if the second reading is adopted it fails to go through. The point is this. The necessity of possessing the concept of a place for scenario content to be possible should not be taken to imply that any experience with scenario content will involve the subject’s employing the concept of place. Rather, the thesis is much more general. What it amounts to is the idea that experiences with scenario content are only available to creatures capable of more general forms of spatial representation (including, for example, thought about places). Although these more general forms of spatial representation involve the concept of place, this does not entail that the concept of place is involved in scenario contents. Because of this scenario content remains nonconceptual content. The following passage seems to suggest that Peacocke does not clearly distinguish between these two readings (1992, p. 68): [I]t is crucial to observe that the fact that a concept is used in fixing the scenario does not entail that the concept itself is somehow a component of the representational content of the experience, nor that the concept must be possessed by the experiencer.8 What makes content conceptual on this account (as opposed, for example, to Cussins’ 1990, p. 383) is that its appearance in a specification of the scenario entails its possession by the subject. This is neutral, however, on the issue raised by the second reading, which makes the stronger demand that the possession of the relevant concept play an explanatory role in the representational content of the experience being as it is. We can begin by considering Peacocke’s position as specified in the passage quoted. As it stands, Peacocke‘s position does not rule out my argument for scenario content being conceptual content. Consider the following reformulation of the argument in Section 4. The fact that the zyxw zyxwvutsrq And also the following: ’There is no requirement at this point that the conceptual apparatus used in specifying a way of filling out the space be an apparatus of concepts used by the perceiver himself. Any apparatus we want to use, however sophisticated, may be employed in fixing the spatial type, however primitive the conceptual resources of the perceiver with whom we are concerned.’ (1992, p. 63). @ Basil Blackweti Lid. 2994 zyxwvutsr zyxwvu zy zy The Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content 415 concept of a place/point can be employed in fixing a scenario entails that the scenario content is genuine spatial content. The fact that a perceiver is in states with genuine spatial content entails that the perceiver possesses the concept of a place/point. This argument certainly seems to satisfy his conditions upon a content being conceptual content. But the question remains: can Peacocke retreat to the second reading of conceptual content in the manner suggested earlier? The additional requirement that this second reading imposes is that the possession of the relevant content should play an explanatory role in that content’s being the content that it is. It would seem, however, that this requirement is also met by the argument in the previous paragraph. Presumably it is part of what it is for a given scenario content to be the scenario content that it is that it should be genuinely spatial content.’ But the central claim of Peacocke’s argument against AT was that a given scenario content was genuinely spatial content in virtue of the perceiver’s being capable of place reidentification, and hence in virtue of their possessing the concept of place. If so, it seems clear that possession of the concept of point/place is playing the sort of genuine explanatory role required for conceptual content. (3) This last response suggests a final defence that a defender of Peacocke might adopt. It is open to him to modify the first premise of his argument against AT. That premise, it will be remembered, was that scenario content is genuine spatial content. This could be modified to the claim that, although scenario content itself does not qualify as genuine spatial content, only creatures that are capable of being in states with genuine spatial content can be in states with scenario content. What might make this move seem appealing is the idea that, once it is denied that scenario content is genuine spatial content, the argument that scenario content is conceptual content could be defused along the following lines. Certainly, it might be argued, scenario content is only available to creatures capable of being in states with genuine spatial content, and, moreover, creatures capable of being in such states must possess the concept of a place. But it is nonetheless important to distinguish between the levels of scenario content and genuine spatial content. Although the level of genuine spatial content does indeed require the possession of certain concepts, this does not entail that the level of scenario content requires And presumably part of what it is for something to be genuinely spatial content is that there should be a determinate answer to the question Peacocke poses in Transcendental Arguments and the Theory of Content: ’Why is it correct to take an experience as representing the existence of various features, surfaces and solids as at various distances and directions, rather than as representing the same features etc. as at angles rotated around the direction of straight by a certain quantity?’ (1989, p. 13) Clearly, however, the existence of an answer to this question is part of what it is for the scenario content to be the content that it is. 0 Basil zyxwvutsr Blackwell Ltd. I994 416 zyxwvuts zyxwvut zyxwvuts Mind b Language the possession of those concepts. In which case, the argument that scenario content effectively becomes conceptual content fails to go through. One question that anybody arguing in this direction must answer, however, is precisely what the connection is between the two levels of content: why, that is, should experiences with scenario content only be available to creatures capable of experiences with genuine spatial content? What is needed is a substantive reason for the interdependence of scenario content and genuine spatial content. And it would seem that the only non-question-begging way of doing this would be to argue that scenario content would be impossible in the absence of genuine spatial content. This, however, amounts to the claim that there are aspects of scenario content that are made possible by genuine spatial content. Or, in other words, that certain features of genuine spatial content make possible certain features of scenario content.l0 Amongst those features of genuine spatial content will presumably be some that implicate grasp of the concept of place/point. If this is granted, however, then it becomes possible to run the earlier argument that possession of the concept of point/place is playing the sort of genuine explanatory role required for conceptual content. 6. Conclusion This places Peacocke in a difficult position. His argument against the Autonomy Thesis places such strong conditions of possibility upon scenario content that it effectively transforms scenario content into conceptual content. Apart from making AT rather nugatory, this endangers the project of grounding the possession conditions of certain primitive concepts in nonconceptual scenario content. He seems to have a choice between giving up his attack on AT, on the one hand, and giving up his suggestion that scenario content is nonconceptual, on the other. Given the crucial role that nonconceptual scenario content plays in his account of possession conditions, as well as the more general theoretical uses it has in both philosophy and psychology, the wisest course of action would seem to be to abandon his attack on the Autonomy Thesis and admit the possibility of a creature being in states with nonconceptual content even though not possessing any concepts at all. Rejecting the argument against AT, however, means rethinking some of the issues opened up by that argument. In particular, the existing account of place reidentification will have to be modified. There seem to be two theoretical options open to Peacocke here. The first would be to lighten the constraints that he places upon genuine place reidentification. lo Perhaps the answer to the question mooted in n. 11. 0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994 zyxw zyxwvu zy zyxw The Autonomy of Nonconceptual Representational Content 417 It is the reflective and disengaged elements in his understanding of spatial representation that are creating difficulties, and so it might seem sensible to get rid of them. He could do this by withdrawing the requirement that any creature capable of genuine place reidentification be capable of spatial reasoning, and placing much more stress on the importance of navigational abilities and practical capacities." In terms of his argument against AT, this would be to reject at least premise (S), thereby blocking the move to (6) and hence to the conclusion that a primitive form of the first-person concept is required. And clearly it would also have the effect of not making possession of the concept of a place a necessary condition of being capable of genuine place reidentification, thus keeping nonconceptual content independent of conceptual content. One problem with this approach, however, is that it might be thought to beg the question of why we are talking here about content at all. Certainly some sort of account would have to be given of the correctness conditions of spatial representation. What would it be to reidentify a place correctly as opposed to incorrectly, if the connection between spatial representation and spatial reasoning is severed? The second general strategy open here would be to try to preserve this connection between spatial representation and spatial reasoning, but without making it dependent upon possession of the appropriate concepts. This would require developing a theory that would allow for a nonconceptual analogue of proto-thoughts like 'I have been to this place before', and that would explain how such nonconceptual proto-thoughts could feature in primitive forms of spatial reasoning to build up an integrated representation of the environment over time. In particular such a theory would have to explain how a creature can represent itself first-personally without that requiring possession of even a primitive form of the first-person concept.12 It would also have to explain the possibility of a creature's reasoning and reflecting about places even though it did not possess the concept of a place, or any of the associated concepts. In terms of the argument against AT, if this could be done then it would be possible to preserve all the steps except for the last two. Although adopting this strategy would concede the autonomy of nonconceptual content, it would nonetheless preserve the nonconceptual nature of scenario content. What both these strategies have in common, however, is that they leave open the possibility that a creature might be in states with content despite not possessing any concepts at all, and this, as pointed out earlier, greatly widens the explanatory scope of the notion of nonconceptual content within both psychology and philosophy. Peacocke's notion of scenario content has a vital role to play in the (relatively) narrow project of zyxwvutsrq zyxwvutsr This would be in the spirit of the notion of causal indexicality developed in Campbell, l2 1993. I have attempted to make some headway on this problem in my forthcoming 'Ecological Perception and the Notion of a Nonconceptual Point of View'. @ Basil Blackwell Ltd. 2994 418 zyxwvutsr zyxwvut Mind 6 Language zyx zy explaining what it is to possess a concept. But if its potential autonomy is conceded then it can have a n equally important role to play elsewhere in the philosophy and psychology of conceptual content. Faculty of Philosophy Sidgwick A v e n u e Cambridge CB3 9DA Bibliography Bermudez, J.L. (forthcoming): Ecological Perception and the Notion of a Point of View. In J.L. Bermudez, A.J. Marcel and N. Eilan (eds), The Body and fhe Self. Cambridge MA.: MIT Press. Campbell, J. 1993: The Role of Physical Objects in Spatial Thinking. In N. Eilan, R.A. McCarthy and M.W. Brewer (eds), Spatial Representation: Problems in Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cussins, A. 1990: The Connectionist Construction of Concepts. In M. Boden (ed.), The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Oxford University Press. Davies, M. 1986: Tacit Knowledge and the Structure of Thought and Language. In C. Travis (ed.), Meaning and Interpretation. Oxford University Press. Dickinson, A. 1988: Intentionality in Animal Conditioning. In L. Weiskrantz (ed.), Thought Without Language. Oxford University Press. Evans, G. 1982: The Varieties of Reference. Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. 1989: Mental Content. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Peacocke, C. 1983: Sense and Content. Oxford University Press. Peacocke, C. 1989: Transcendental Arguments in the Theory of Content. Inaugural Lecture. Oxford University Press. Peacocke, C. 1992: The Study of Concepts. Cambridge MA.: MIT Press. Premack, D. 1988: Minds With and Without Language. In L. Weiskrantz (ed.), Thought Without Language. Oxford University Press. Strawson. P.F. 1959: Individuals. London: Methuen. zyx 0Basil zyxwvutsr Blackwell Ltd. 1994