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Holism and Horizon: Husserl and McDowell on Non-conceptual Content

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Abstract

John McDowell rejects the idea that non-conceptual content can rationally justify empirical claims—a task for which it is ill-fitted by its non-conceptual nature. This paper considers three possible objections to his views: he cannot distinguish empty conception from the perceptual experience of an object; perceptual discrimination outstrips the capacity of concepts to keep pace; and experience of the empirical world is more extensive than the conceptual focusing within it. While endorsing McDowell’s rejection of what he means by non-conceptual content, and appreciating his insight into the experiential synthesis of intuition and conception (in particular, its role in grasping objects), I will argue that Edmund Husserl presents an even more comprehensive account of perceptual experience that explains how we experience the contribution of receptivity and sensibility and how they cooperate in perceptual discrimination. Further, it reveals “horizons”—a unique kind of contents, surplus content (rather than independent non-conceptual content)—beyond the synthesis of intuitive and conceptual contents through which objects are grasped. Such horizons play a constitutive role, making experience with its conceptual dimensions and justificatory potential possible; they in no way function like a bare given that is to fulfill some independent justificatory role. Whereas McDowell focuses on how experience does not take place in isolation from the exercise of conceptual capacities, Husserl complements his view by situating experience in a more encompassing whole and by elucidating the surplus-horizons that exceed the conceptual content of experience; play an inseparable, constitutive role within it; and indicate the limits of conceptual comprehension.

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Notes

  1. McDowell in Mind and World considers a fourth objection to his rejection of non-conceptual content, namely that the experience of animals involves it. See Mind and World, pp. 63–65. The three defenses of non-conceptual content, the first of which I am constructing from other sources, and the last two of which McDowell himself entertains, are more closely related and do not require the extensive consideration that the animal objection requires. The author would like to thank Kepa Zubizarreta, James McCollum, and the anonymous reader for Husserl Studies, for their helpful comments on this paper.

  2. McDowell (1996, p. 9, see pp. 3–4, 9–10).

  3. Ibid., p. 35.

  4. Ibid., p. 31, see also p. 34.

  5. Ibid., pp. 4–7, 11, 14–18.

  6. Ibid., pp. 7–9, 46–49, 50–55.

  7. Sellars (1991, pp. 168–170, 195).

  8. McDowell (1996, p. 9, see also p. 51).

  9. Ibid., p. 12.

  10. Ibid., p. 46, see also p. 9.

  11. Ibid., pp. 4, 9, 29–30, 46, 56–57, 59, 62; McDowell (1998, pp. 439–440, 453, 459–460, 474, 476, 488–489, 491).

  12. Peacocke (2001, pp. 245–250) and Alston (2002, p. 73).

  13. Hopp (2007, p. 93).

  14. Logical Investigations, 2, pp. 119–125.

  15. Hopp (2007, pp. 90–91, 93–94). See John Drummond (1990, pp. 97, 256–258).

  16. McDowell (1996, p. 40).

  17. For a similar example of how the intuition thwarting a signitive intending itself involves conceptual content, see Hua XIX/2, (1984b, pp. 630–631); Logical Investigations, 2, p. 248.

  18. McDowell (1996, p. 111).

  19. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

  20. Husserl (1973, pp. 203–204)/Husserl (1954, pp. 239–240).

  21. Ibid., p. 60/p. 61.

  22. Husserl (1960, p. 50).

  23. Ibid., p. 79.

  24. See Steinbock (2003, p. 301), on how a static analysis can function as a clue for a genetic, constitutive analysis.

  25. Husserl (1973, p. 48)/Husserl (1954, p. 47).

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid., p. 49/p. 48.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid., p. 60/p. 61. Husserl puts scare quotes around “stimulus” no doubt to distinguish the conscious experience of something standing out from its background from mechanistic causal accounts of stimulus-response that need not involve any conscious activity at all.

    Husserl admits that in the ego’s very reception of what is pre-given to it through affecting stimuli there is to be found the lowest level of the ego’s activity, its consent to what is coming and its taking it in. See Husserl (1973, p. 79)/Husserl (1954, p. 83).

  30. Ibid, p. 60/p. 61.

  31. This is a classical definition of a “founding” relationship. See Hua XIX/1, 1984a, pp. 267–268; Logical Investigations, 2, p. 25.

  32. John McDowell (1994, pp. 199–203). Husserl, too (Hua XIX/1, 1984a, pp. 415–416; Logical Investigations, 2, p. 114), allows that the objective reference of an act built up out of partial constituent acts subsumed within it is the judged state of affairs.

  33. McDowell, (1996, pp. 60–63) and Evans (1982, pp. 123–124).

  34. Taylor, “Foundationalism and the Inner-Outer Distinction,” in Smith (2002, p. 111).

  35. McDowell, (1996, p. 62). See also McDowell (1998, p. 477).

  36. McDowell (1996, p. 10).

  37. Ibid., p. 11.

  38. John McDowell (2000, p. 11). The italics are mine.

  39. McDowell, “Response to Taylor,” in Smith (2002, p. 283); Taylor, “Foundationalism and the Inner-Outer Distinction,” pp. 113–114.

  40. McDowell, “Response to J.M. Bernstein,” in Smith (2002, pp. 299–300).

  41. Husserl (1973, pp. 76–77)/Husserl (1954, pp. 79–81).

  42. Husserl (1982, pp. 1, 107).

  43. Husserl (1973, pp. 106–107)/Husserl (1954, pp. 116–117), and see Husserl (1990, pp. 26, 69–71, 371).

  44. Husserl (2001, p. 50).

  45. Husserl (1973, p. 85)/Husserl (1954, pp. 90–91).

  46. Husserl (1973, pp. 76, 87, 149–150)/Husserl (1954, pp. 79–80, 93, 171–172) and Husserl (1960, pp. 44, 46; 2001, pp. 40–41).

  47. Husserl (2001, p. 51). Gareth Evans argues for a non-conceptual content specifiable in a vocabulary whose terms derive their meaning partly from being linked with bodily actions, which in turn pertain to an egocentric space with respect to which objective spatial locations are relative. These non-conceptual modes of identifying a place contrast with a conceptual description of the place where one is located. See Gareth Evans (1982, pp. 151–170). The body functions, as Michael Polanyi would put it, as the tacit proximal term from which the distal is given, see Polanyi (1983, p. 11).

  48. Edmund Husserl (2001, p. 18). All this flows from Husserl’s attempt to begin with ready-made propositions and proceed back “to thinking consciousness and to the broader nexus of conscious life in which these formations are constituted” (Hua XVII, 1974, p. 373/Husserl (2001, p. 31), to the “experiencing consciousness and its essential characteristics which make the experiencing accomplishment intelligible” (Hua XVII, 1974, p. 373). See also Hua III/1 (1950b, pp. 56–58)/Husserl (1982, pp. 1, 51–53); Hua XI (1966b, pp. 344–345)/Husserl (2001, pp. 633–634); Hua XVII, p. 373/Husserl (2001, p. 31), Husserl (2001, pp. xxviii–xxix); Husserl (1973, pp. 49–56, 60, 203–204)/Husserl (1954, pp. 47–57, 61, 239–240).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, St. Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63156-0907, USA

    Michael D. Barber

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Barber, M.D. Holism and Horizon: Husserl and McDowell on Non-conceptual Content. Husserl Stud 24, 79–97 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-008-9035-5

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