Dear Eva Schmidt:

That's an interesting interpretive proposal, which I had not thought of.  If one held that perceptions have Russellian or Edenic content but denied that they had Fregean content, then, inasmuch as it is at least awkward to say that that the former are composed of concepts, it would be a reasonable use of terminology to say that perceptions have contents but lack conceptual content.

The trouble is that I don't see how this interpretation makes sense of what the nonconceptual content people actually say.  What they (Bermudez, Peacocke, Tye, Chalmers) always say is that perceptions have nonconceptual content in the sense that the perception may have the content though the perceiver does not possess "corresponding" concepts (Chalmers) or concepts "required to specify" the content (Bermudez).  It does not seem very likely to me that what they mean in denying that the perceiver "possesses corresponding concepts" is that the perceiver lacks a corresponding Fregean senses.  And that is not what Dave said when he addressed the question on February 19 above.  And I don't remember Bermudez or McDowell even making much of the distinction between Russellian propositions and Fregean senses.  I don't think they're in that game.

As for the rest of what you say, I am not sure that there is any good sense in which our nonperceptual thoughts are free and our perceptual thoughts are not.  OK, maybe if I decide to believe something, that's a "free choice".  But the process begins with hunches and hypotheses having the same sort of contents as my ultimate beliefs, and I think that those are any not more freely chosen than my perceptions.  So I am questioning your argument, but not because I want to attribute contents to perceptions; I don't.

--Chris Gauker