Document type
ArticleVersion
Accepted versionPublication date
All rights reserved
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/161922
Nonconceptualism and the Cognitive Impenetrability of Early Vision
Journal Title
Authors
Director/Tutor
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Related resource
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between cognitive impenetrability and perceptual nonconceptualism. I argue against the view, recently defended by Raftopoulos, that the (alleged) cognitive impenetrability of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for states of early vision and their content to be nonconceptual. I show that that view, here dubbed 'the mutually entailing thesis', admits two different standard interpretations depending on how we understand the property of being nonconceptual corresponding to the distinction between the state and the content views of perceptual nonconceptualism. I first argue for the falsity of the state-nonconceptualist reading of the mutually entailing thesis, on the grounds that it mistakenly takes being nonconceptual to be a causal instead of a constitutive relationship. The content-nonconceptualist understanding of the thesis, I then argue, is disproved by plausible views regarding the content of experience. The mutually entailing thesis could only be true, I conclude, on a non-standard, causal interpretation of the notion of nonconceptual content. Yet, on that reading, the thesis would either be trivially true or would entirely fail to engage with the contemporary literature on perceptual nonconceptualism.
Subject (English)
Citation
Collections
Citation
TORIBIO MATEAS, Josefa. Nonconceptualism and the Cognitive Impenetrability of Early Vision. Philosophical Psychology. 2014. Vol. 27, num. 5, pags. 621-642. ISSN 0951-5089. [consulted: 12 of June of 2026]. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/161922