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DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00492.x

Perceptual Nonconceptualism:
Disentangling the Debate Between Content
and State Nonconceptualism
Laura Duhau

Abstract: In this paper I argue, against recent claims by Bermdez (2007) and
Toribio (2008), that within the debate about whether perceptual experiences are
nonconceptual, state nonconceptualism (or the state view) can be a coherent
and plausible position. In particular, I explain that state nonconceptualism and
content nonconceptualism, when understood in their most plausible and moti-
vated form, presuppose different notions of content. I argue that state noncon-
ceptualism can present a plausible way of unpacking the claim that perceptual
experiences are nonconceptual once the notion of content it should presuppose
is taken into account; and once this notion of content is clearly distinguished
from the one usually presupposed by content nonconceptualism, the criticisms
that Bermdez and Toribio place against state nonconceptualism become
ineffective.

It has been almost 30 years since the debate about whether perceptual experi-
ences1 are in some sense wholly or partly nonconceptual started. The issue is
whether perceptual experiences are independent (and to what extent) of the
perceiving subjects conceptual capacities (if any). A few years ago, philosophers
started distinguishing between two different ways of understanding the claim
that perceptual experiences are nonconceptual: in terms of the kind of content
they have and in terms of the kind of states they are2 (Byrne 2005; Crowther
2006; Heck 2000, 2007; Speaks 2005). Thus, what has come to be known as
content nonconceptualism (or the content view) is the view that perceptual
experiences have nonconceptual content, which is a different kind of content than
the sort that conceptual states (such as beliefs, desires and other propositional
attitudes) have. In contrast, what has come to be known as state nonconcep-
tualism (or the state view) is the view that perceptual experiences and con-
ceptual states have the same kind of content, but are different kinds of states.
What is usually understood by the claim that perceptual experiences and
conceptual states are different kinds of states is that instantiating the latter
requires the possession of concepts while instantiating the former does not. In
particular, according to state nonconceptualism, instantiating conceptual states
requires subjects to possess the concepts we use in accurately characterizing the
content of such states, while instantiating perceptual experiences does not

European Journal of Philosophy 22:3 ISSN 0966-8373 pp. 358370 2011 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
 Perceptual Nonconceptualism 359

require subjects to possess the concepts we use in accurately characterizing the

content of such experiences. So, for example, we can accurately describe
someone as having a perceptual experience that grass is green, without there-
fore implying that she possesses the concepts GRASS and GREEN. By contrast,
if we accurately describe someone as having a belief that grass is green, we
therefore imply that she possesses the concepts GRASS and GREEN. However,
the belief and the perceptual experience have the same contentthe content
that grass is green.3
Recently, state nonconceptualism (SNC from now on) has come under fire. In
a recent paper, Toribio argues that the consistency of SNC requires a notion of
content that leaves perceptual content attribution unsupported, and it becomes
incoherent if it deploys a characterization of content along the relevant (neo-
Fregean) lines (Toribio 2008: 351). Bermdez also disregards SNC, by arguing
that it is unmotivated and fails to address the issues that the theory of
nonconceptual content is intended to address (Bermdez 2007: 67), and there-
fore does not bear serious scrutiny (Bermdez 2007: 69). I will argue that
content nonconceptualism (CNC, from now on) and SNC have to presuppose
different notions of content, and because of this, the two views are in tension.
Once the notions of content that the views should presuppose are brought to
light, it becomes clear that one should not assess SNC with the notion of content
presupposed by CNC in mind, which is what both Toribio and Bermdez are
trying to do. Nor should one assess CNC with the notion of content presupposed
by SNC in mind. As I will show, both CNC and SNC can give plausible and
coherent explanations of what it would be for perceptual experiences to be
nonconceptual, but they do it at different levels, because the notion of content
that they deploy is different.
In this paper I will proceed as follows. In Section 1, I will present Toribios
argument for the claim that on the only version of SNC that characterizes
content along the relevant neo-Fregean lines, it is either incoherent or false. In
Section 2, I will present Bermdezs reasons for claiming that SNC does not
bear serious scrutiny. In Section 3, I will explain that both Toribios argument
and Bermdezs reasoning presuppose a particular notion of content that has
very specific explanatory purposes, and I will contrast this notion of content
with another notion that is used for different explanatory purposes. Finally, in
Section 4, I will explain that SNC is a perfectly plausible position under one
of the notions of content, and show that Toribios and Bermdezs arguments
are ineffective when SNC is seen in the light of this notion of content. I will
conclude that once the two different notions of content are disentangled, we
can get a new perspective on the debate between CNC and SNC, and appre-
ciate that both Toribio and Bermdez are wrong in thinking that SNC is not
worthy of consideration. Both CNC and SNC can be plausible versions of the
thesis that perceptual experiences are nonconceptual; it all depends on what
one takes content to be. Since what one takes content to be depends on ones
explanatory interests, whether one prefers SNC over CNC will depend on such
interests as well.

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1. Toribios Argument Against State Nonconceptualism

I will first present what I think is Toribios argument for the claim that SNC is
either incoherent or false,4 and then will explain how she defends its premises.
The argument goes like this:

(1) Content has to capture the way the subject grasps the world as being.
(2) The content of beliefs satisfies (1) by being composed of concepts.
(3) The content of perceptual experiences satisfies (1) either by (i) being com-
posed of concepts, or by (ii) having some other kind of content.
(4) If (i), then perceptual experiences are conceptual, against the assumption of
SNC that they are nonconceptual.
(5) If (ii), then CNC obtains.

Thus,

(6) Given (1), SNC is either incoherent (4), or false (5).

In favour of premise (1), Toribio claims that, for all contenders in the debate,
[t]he two main concerns are to elucidate the justificatory relation in
which perceptual experiences stand to perceptual beliefs and the
explanatory relation in which they stand to perceptual discriminative
abilities. But for both perceptual conceptualists and nonconceptualists,
only facts about how a subject grasps the world in experience can justify
a subjects perceptual beliefs and explain the subjects intentional behav-
ior. (Toribio 2008: 352)

Premise (2) results from Toribios commitment to a Neo-Fregean framework.

Within this framework, which as Toribio claims is the framework accepted/
assumed by most of the contenders in the debate, to claim that beliefs are
conceptual is to claim that their content is composed of Fregean senses, and
Fregean senses are psychologized by taking them as short specifications of
abilities of a certain sort. As Toribio herself puts it:
The claim that conceptual content has Fregean concepts as constituents
entails the idea that grasping a concept F is to exercise an abilitythe
ability to think of a thing as F. Possessing such an ability, in turn,
partially explains the subjects ability to entertain thoughts in which F
occurs. (ibid.)
Fregean content specified in this way is of course a kind of content that captures
how the subject grasps the world as being, since its attribution implies that the
subject possesses certain concepts, and how the subject grasps the world as being
depends, at least partly, on the concepts she possesses. In Toribios words how
the subject takes the world to be is constrained by her conceptual abilities (ibid.:
360).

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Premise (3) is just a statement of the ways in which the content of perceptual
experiences could satisfy (1). Since Fregean content is a kind of content that
satisfies (1), a way for perceptual experiences to satisfy (1) would be to have
Fregean content. This is part (i) of premise (3). But of course, the possibility is
open for the content of perceptual experiences to satisfy (1) by having some
other kind of content (part (ii) of the premise).
Premise (4) states that SNC cannot consistently claim that the content of
perceptual experiences is Fregean, since understood in neo-Fregean terms, this
would imply that in perceptual experiences the subject possesses the concepts
that compose their contents, which is precisely what SNC denies. Therefore,
Fregean content cannot be the common currency among beliefs and perceptual
experiences.
Premise (5) is a consequence of (2) and (4) together. If the content of beliefs
is Fregean (1), but the content of perceptual experiences cannot be Fregean (4),
then the content of perceptual experiences has to be of some other kind. But then
CNC obtains, since beliefs and perceptual experiences have different kinds of
content. The only way to try to make SNC consistent, claims Toribio, would be
to deny (2) and claim that the kind of content that is the common currency
between beliefs and perceptual experiences is some kind of non-Fregean content,
such as Russellian or possible world content. However, claims Toribio, none of
these kinds of content capture the way the subject grasps the world as being, so
they are inadequate as characterizations of both the contents of beliefs and the
contents of perceptual experiences.

2. Bermdezs Reasons Against State Nonconceptualism

Bermdez (2007) gives us three reasons for thinking that state nonconceptu-
alism should not be taken seriously. The first one is related closely to Toribios
argument. On the one hand, like Toribio, Bermdez understands Fregean
content in Neo-Fregean terms, and thinks that one cannot really make sense of
the idea that perception has Fregean content but nonetheless being in a per-
ceptual state does not require one to possess the concepts that constitute the
content of that state. On the other hand, also like Toribio, he believes that the
notion of perceptual content is supposed to reflect how the distal environment
perceptually appears to the perceiving subject (ibid.: 67), and believes possible
world content is inadequate to fulfil this role (he does not talk about Russellian
content, but it is likely that he agrees with Toribio in thinking that it is also
unfit to account for how the distal environment appears to the perceiving
subject).
Bermdezs second reason to reject SNC has to do with what he thinks is the
most powerful motivation for thinking that perceptual experiences have non-
conceptual content. He says that this motivation is a claim about the direction of
explanation between accounts of what it is to possess an observational concept,
and what is to be perceptually capable of discriminating objects and properties

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in the distal environment. What we need is to be able to explain a perceivers

ability to discriminate objects and properties of the distal environment in a way
that is independent of her conceptual abilities. This, he claims, is because we
need to appeal to those discriminative abilities in order to explain the possession
conditions of the relevant observational concepts. What explains those discrimi-
native abilities of a subject is how things look to her, so they are a function of
what she perceives, of the content of her perception. But under SNC, says
Bermdez, it is hard to see where these explanations are going to bottom out. He
asks: How can the fact that the subject stands in a certain relation to a complex
of concepts or a set of possible worlds explain her ability to make perceptual
discriminations?
Finally, Bermdezs third reason to reject SNC is that, according to him, it
does not have an explanation to offer as to why perceptual experiences are
concept-independent states and conceptual states are concept-dependent states.
He claims that the defenders of SNC have two possible lines of response. On the
one hand, they can appeal to functional roles, but this, thinks Bermdez, restates
the problem rather than providing an explanation. He says:
Since it is part of the functional role of belief that it is concept-dependent
(so that, for example, one cannot form beliefs about matters that are
beyond ones conceptual grasp), and part of the functional role of
perception that it is concept-independent (so that one can react to objects
that one perceives even though one cannot conceptualize them), there
seems to be no prospect of explaining concept (in)dependence in terms
of functional role. (ibid.: 68)
On the other hand, Bermdez claims that defenders of SNC could appeal to
phenomenology, since there are significant differences between beliefs and
perceptions. But, claims Bermdez, it is unclear that the phenomenological
distinctiveness of perception does not have ramifications at the level of content,
and if it did not have ramifications at the level of content, it is unclear why
phenomenological distinctiveness would make perception concept-independent
and belief concept-dependent.

3. Two Notions of Content

Both Toribio and Bermdez have a specific understanding of what the notion of
content is supposed to do. In particular, they both think that our attributions of
content should reflect how things appear to the subject, or the way that the
subject grasps the world as being. This is why they are particularly fond of a
Fregean notion of content. They think that only a Fregean notion of content
makes content fine-grained enough to allow for the explanation of certain
particular pieces of intentional behaviour. They are motivated by what I call,
following Schiffer (1992), Freges Constraint. According to Freges Constraint,
our notion of content has to serve to explain Frege Cases.

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Frege Cases are cases in which a subject believes or desires Fa but not Fb
despite a and b referring to the same thing. The subject does not know that a and
b refer to the same thing, and this affects her behaviour (or her inferences
involving a/b), in such a way that the subjects behaviour does not conform to
our intentional generalizations.
A classical example is the famous case of Oedipus, who wanted to marry
Jocasta but did not want to marry his mother, despite Jocasta and his mother
being the same person. Oedipuss problem is that he has two ways to represent
the same person and he does not realize that they refer to the same thing. This
makes Oedipuss behaviour to constitute an apparent counter-example to the
following generalization:
(M) Ceteris paribus, if people believe that they should not marry their
mothers and wish not to marry their mothers, they avoid marrying their
mothers.
Oedipus satisfies the antecedent of (M), but he does not satisfy the consequent
because he marries Jocasta, who is his mother.
According to both Toribio and Bermdez, the notion of content has to serve
to explain what is going on in Frege Cases.5 Content has to be individuated in
such a way that Oedipuss desire to marry Jocasta has a different content than
a desire to marry his mother. Frege Cases are taken as one of the main
motivations to claim that contents should be individuated by something more
than truth conditions, and that the constituents of contents should be something
like modes of presentation, and not just referents. If one were to individuate
contents only by truth conditions, then one would have to accept that Oedipuss
belief that he wants to marry Jocasta has the same content than a belief that he
wants to marry his mother, in which case we would be right to attribute to
Oedipus the belief that he wishes to marry his mother. But if we did this, then
we would have to claim that Oedipus is being irrational, since he both believes
that he wishes to marry his mother and believes that he does not wish to marry
his mother. But, since it is agreed that, though Oedipus is making a mistake, he
is not being irrational, it seems that we should claim that Oedipuss belief that
he wishes to marry his mother and Oedipuss belief that he wishes to marry
Jocasta are beliefs with different contents, and that the reason Oedipus fails to act
according to (M) is that he has beliefs with the same truth conditions (or
conditions of satisfaction), but different contents, since the contents are consti-
tuted partly by two different modes of presentation. Oedipus fails to associate
his two modes of presentation; he does not realize that they have the same
referent, and this explains his behaviour. But in order to be able to explain his
behaviour in this way, we need to individuate content by more than referents
and more than truth conditions. Fregean propositions, constituted by modes of
presentation or senses, are considered, therefore, to give us the finely individu-
ated content we need to meet Freges Constraint. If we take content to be Fregean
content, we can claim that two contents with the same truth conditions are
nonetheless different contents. Therefore, under this view of content and its

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explanatory role, content and truth conditions are separated. A representational

state (be it a belief, desire or perceptual state) is thus a state that involves a
three-part relation between a subject, a Fregean proposition and the propositions
truth conditions.
Notice that under this view of content, what it is supposed to do is to serve
to explain particular cases of behaviour. It is the content of his beliefs (and
desires, etc.), what explains Oedipuss behaviour, and not any other aspect of his
beliefs (and desires, etc.). Under this view it thus makes sense to distinguish
representational states with the same truth conditions by claiming that they are
states with different contents (involving relations of the subject towards different
Fregean propositions).
However, there is another explanatory role that the notion of content is
supposed to fit. This has to do with what I call the Publicity Constraint. First,
it is widely agreed that the notion of content plays an extremely important role
in the explanation of successful linguistic communication. The idea is that people
understand what other people say because they associate the same (or almost the
same) content with the same words. It is argued that if no two people associated
the same content with their words, communication would be impossible. Second,
content figures in our intentional generalizations of behaviour, that is, in our
explanations of behaviour that appeal to the mental states of the person whose
behaviour we are trying to explain. Although they are not laws, intentional
explanations often generalize, i.e. they can subsume many different people.
Actions are often motivated by the same propositional attitudes; for example,
different people may go to the sandwich store for the same reason, namely that
they are hungry and believe they will find sandwiches in the sandwich store. But
actions can be motivated by the same propositional attitudes only if those
attitudes involve contents that are shared. Thus, the fact that intentional expla-
nations often generalize indicates that content must be shared. So, when our
focus is on the commonalities among peoples behaviour, and not on particular
cases in which someones behaviour departs from the usual, an explanation in
terms of shared content is called for.
Now, many philosophers (e.g., Fodor 1998, Millikan 2000) believe that, to fit
this explanatory role, the notion of content has to be coarse. In particular, they
believe that Fregean notions of content are too fine-grained to fit the role. They
believe that Fregean notions of content, that individuate content by more than
truth conditions, end up individuating content holistically and, therefore, make
content something that varies from head to head and at different times in the
same head. The view of these philosophers is that the coarser content is, the
easier it is to account for publicity and for the truth of folk-psychological
generalizations. They believe that only truth conditions are adequately coarse-
grained. Facts about successful linguistic communication can be explained by
appealing to them. Most of the time people communicate, in the sense that they
arrive at successful communicative interactions, because they share content in
this coarse sense. If we were to look at something finer-grained to explain
communication we probably could not make sense of it. People represent their

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world in many different ways, they grasp it in many different ways, but despite
this, they succeed both in their interaction with the world and in their interaction
with others, and it seems that for this to happen it is enough, in general, that
people have representational states with the same truth conditions as those of
other people.
We can see that the two explanatory roles, the one associated with Freges
Constraint and the one associated with the Publicity Constraint can be in
tension, since they pull in different directions with respect to how content
should be individuated. Freges Constraint seems to require a notion of content
that is individuated finer than truth conditions, while the Publicity Constraint
seems to require a notion of content that is individuated as coarse as truth
conditions. The two explanatory roles assigned to content result on two differ-
ent ways of individuating content: one that slices contents finer than truth
conditions, the other that does not. But many have thought that we somehow
need them both. For some the solution has been to accept the existence of two
different kinds of content for every representational state (see Fodor 1990, Block
1986), while others have tried to meet one of the two constraints by appealing
to something other than content. What Fregeans usually do, for example, is
claim that content has truth conditions. They just place content at a different
level than truth conditions and use it to distinguish representational states with
the same truth conditions. This allows them to explain Frege Cases at the level
of content. But they still need to explain publicity, and it seems that they will
have to do it at the level of truth conditions. Conversely, those worried about
the Publicity Constraint place content at the level of truth conditions, thus
explaining publicity at the level of content. But they have to explain Frege Cases
at another level (for example, by claiming that holding two beliefs with the
same content may result in a Frege Case when the subject has different
representational states towards them, since she grasps the same content in
different ways).
One needs to have an account of both conceptual and perceptual states that
can explain both Frege Cases and publicity, but it seems that one does not
have to, and from certain perspectives one in fact cannot, explain both Frege
Cases and publicity at the level of content, since there is no one notion of
content that can fit both explanatory roles. There is no one notion of content
that can be individuated finely and coarsely at the same timealthough one
can, as indeed some philosophers have done, postulate that all representa-
tional states have two different kinds of content, one coarsely individuated,
one finely individuated.

4. Disentangling the Debate

Although it is true that the debate between perceptual conceptualists and

perceptual nonconceptualists was first set within the Fregean (and Neo-Fregean)
notion of content in mind, and so with Freges Constraint in mind, I see no

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reason to avoid trying to see the plausibility of SNC from the framework given
by the other, coarse-grained, notion of content. And from this other perspective,
things may look quite different for the defender of SNC.
So, how does SNC explain the difference between perceptual experiences
and conceptual states? SNC claims that perceptual experiences and conceptual
states have the same kind of content. Under the framework given by the
coarse-grained notion of content, SNC has to be understood as claiming that
both perceptual experiences and conceptual states have truth-conditional
content. Therefore, for the defender of SNC, the difference between the two
kinds of states has to be explained by appealing to something other than kinds
of content. While CNC explains the difference between conceptual states and
perceptual experiences at the level of content, SNC can explain it at the level
of mental representations. This involves claiming that what determines whether
a state is conceptual or nonconceptual is the kinds of representations that are
deployed in it. This explanation assumes that conceptual and nonconceptual
representations are not constituents of contents, but instead are entities that have
content. Therefore, under this understanding of SNC, conceptual and noncon-
ceptual states can have the same kind of content, viz. coarse-grained truth-
conditional content. The way the subject grasps the world as being is
accounted for at the level of representations of content, not at the level of
content itself. But it is accounted for. This strategy is familiar from other
debates. Fodor (1998, 2009), for example, uses this strategy to explain Frege
Cases under his theory of concepts. He claims that what explains the failure of
Oedipus to realize that he has two representations with the same content is
that these two representations are different in form. Hence, his explanation of
Frege Cases uses a coarse notion of content, individuated in terms of referents
and truth conditions, together with a fine-grained individuation of represen-
tations, which includes both the content of the representations and their non-
semantic properties.
What I am suggesting is that SNC is a plausible and consistent position under
a coarse-grained notion of content. What SNC does is account for the way the
subject grasps the world as being i.e., satisfy Freges Constraint, at the level of
representations, claiming that the same content can be represented in different
ways. SNC amounts to the claim that while propositional attitudes represent
content via conceptual representations, perceptual experiences represent content
via nonconceptual representations. The difference between these two kinds of
representations is accounted for in terms of the formal or syntactic properties
that they have, and not in terms of the contents they represent. SNC can then be
defended by explaining the differences between propositional attitudes and
perceptual experiences in terms of a difference among the kind of representa-
tions that they involve, instead of a difference in the kind of content that they
have. Propositional attitudes involve concepts, and perceptual experiences do
not. Concepts are a kind of representation of content, not a kind of constituent
of content.6
So, summarizing, this is the difference between CNC and SNC:

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CNC claims:
(1) Perceptual experiences are nonconceptual, propositional attitudes are
conceptual.
(2) The conceptual/nonconceptual distinction is a distinction at the level of
content, so (1) implies that perceptual experiences have a different kind of
content than do propositional attitudes.
(3) The content of propositional attitudes is conceptual (or Neo-Fregean), so the
content of perceptual experiences must be something different.
(4) Both the content of propositional attitudes and the content of perceptual
experiences have to be fine-grained (have to meet Freges Constraint).

SNC claims:
(1) Perceptual experiences are nonconceptual, propositional attitudes are
conceptual.
(2) The conceptual/nonconceptual distinction is a distinction at the level of
states, so (1) implies that perceptual experiences are different kinds of states
than propositional attitudes. They are different kinds of states because they
involve different kinds of mental representations. The conceptual/
nonconceptual distinction applies at the level of mental representations, not
at the level of content. Two mental representations can be of different kinds
(because they are syntactically or formally different) while having the same
content.
(3) Propositional attitudes are conceptual mental representations, while percep-
tual experiences are nonconceptual mental representations, but they share
the same kind of content, because they can have the same truth conditions.
In other words, you can represent the same content in two different ways: via
concepts and via nonconceptual mental representations.
(4) Both the content of propositional attitudes and the content of perceptual
experiences have to be coarse-grained (have to meet the Publicity
Constraint).

We can see that, when the notion of content in use is made explicit, SNC and
CNC are very different theses. Both make sense of the claim that perceptual
states are nonconceptual, but they do it in different ways, because they rely on
different notions of content.
From the perspective of someone working with the notion of content that SNC
presupposes, Toribios argument and Bermdezs reasons for disregarding SNC
become ineffective. Let us look at Toribios argument first. Premise (1) is denied
by the defender of SNC, since it is not the case that content has to capture the
way the subject grasps the world as being; the way the subject grasps the world
as being can be accounted for by appealing to other (non-semantic) properties of
representations. It is not the content of beliefs that is composed of concepts, as
Toribios premise (2) claims, but beliefs themselves. Beliefs are conceptual mental
representations, and are thus composed of concepts. Perceptual experiences are
mental representations that are not conceptual, and therefore not composed of

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concepts. Thus, SNC is a perfectly coherent position, against Toribios argument.

What SNC claims is that beliefs and perceptual experiences are constituted by
different kinds of mental representations, although they share the same kind of
content. Since mental representations have content, and are not constituents of
content, there is nothing incoherent in this claim.
Bermdezs first reason against SNC is similar to Toribios argument, and so
can be dealt with in the same way. His second reason against SNC has to do with
the explanatory relation between discriminative abilities and the possession of
observational concepts. From the perspective of SNC, this relation can be
accounted for. When we come to possess an observational concept, we come to
represent a content that we could already discriminate (perceptually represent)
via a different kind of representation (a concept). Bermdezs third reason to
reject SNC is that he believes that it does not have an explanation to offer as to
why perceptual experiences are concept-independent states while conceptual
states are concept-dependent states. But from the perspective of SNC the
explanation is straightforward: conceptual states are constituted by conceptual
representations, while perceptual experiences are not. These different kinds of
representations have different functional roles, but the differences in functional
roles are explained by the differences among these kinds of representations, so
the defender of SNC does not need to appeal to differences in functional roles
to explain the differences between concept-dependent and concept-independent
states, as Bermdez claims. The defender of SNC also does not have to appeal
to differences in phenomenology to account for the differences between percep-
tion and belief, since there are likely to be other more significant differences
between concepts and perceptual representations, for example, that the latter are
iconic, and therefore not compositional in the same general way as concepts are.7
I hope this assessment of Toribios and Bermdezs arguments against SNC
shows that they only work when they are considered with a particular notion of
content in mind, but are ineffective when the notion of content in mind is the one
deployed in SNC. In conclusion, I believe that both Toribio and Bermdez are
wrong in claiming that only CNC is a plausible consistent position. Both SNC
and CNC can be, from the perspective of the explanatory interests that each one
is serving.

Laura Duhau
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosficas
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico
Mxico
lauraduhau@yahoo.com.mx

NOTES
1
Perceptual experiences are supposed to be perceptual states at the personal level, as
opposed to subpersonal perceptual states, such as images in the retina, to which the
subject has no conscious access.

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2
Although the difference is sometimes put in other terms, as a difference between
possessional and compositional senses of conceptual/nonconceptual content (Crowther
2006), or as a difference between absolute and relative senses of conceptual/
nonconceptual content (Speaks 2005).
3
Throughout this paper I will assume that conceptual states and perceptual expe-
riences are alike in that they both have propositional contents, i.e., they represent that
such and such is the case (for example, that grass is green). Not everybody accepts this,
though. Recently McDowell (2009) has claimed that perceptual experiences do not have
propositional content, but something he calls intuitional content, which he claims is
composed of concepts of common sensibles such as shape, size, position, postures, etc.
McDowell claims that intuitional content is not propositional because it is not articulated
(it does not predicate characteristics of objects), but is conceptual because every aspect
of the content of an intuition is present in a form in which it is already suitable to be
the content associated with a discursive capacity (ibid.: 7). An anonymous referee points
out that it may be possible to understand SNC in such a way that it is compatible with
the type of conceptualism defended by McDowell. This is true. But, since I assume that
for both CNC and SNC conceptual states and perceptual experiences have propositional
contents, the reading of SNC that I consider is not compatible with McDowells
conceptualism.
4
I am departing somehow from Toribio in the presentation of her argument, since she
claims that her conclusion is that SNC is either incoherent or it entails CNC. However, I
think this is not really the conclusion she can get, since she cannot get the entailment part
of this claim. If CNC is true, SNC is false (given that SNC denies that there are two kinds
of content, which CNC affirms). But if CNC entails the falsity of SNC, then SNC cannot
entail the truth of CNC.
5
Toribio is explicit about this, when she says:
Part of the attraction of the Fregean distinction between sense and reference is
that it helps explain why a subject may be able to think that Fa but not Fb even
when a is b. The notion of sense thus captures the way a subject grasps the world
as being. (Toribio 2008: 357)
6
The fact that we use concepts in our characterizations of contents should not
mislead us into thinking that such concepts are constituents of the contents we are
characterizing. We represent contents via conceptual representations, and this does not
need entail anything about how those contents are constituted (although there are those
who, like Heck, believe that we can infer things about contents from characteristics about
our representations of those contents (see his 2007, and Duhau 2009 for a criticism of his
argument)).
7
See Fodor 2007 and Heck 2007 for an explanation of the difference between iconic
and discursive (conceptual) representations.

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