Abstract
In this article we question the utility of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content in cognitive science, and in particular, in the empirical study of visual perception. First, we individuate some difficulties in characterizing the notion of “concept” itself both in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Then we stress the heterogeneous nature of the notion of nonconceptual content and outline the complex and ambiguous relations that exist between the conceptual/nonconceptual duality and other pairs of notions, such as top–down/bottom-up and modular/nonmodular. Finally we look in greater detail at the proposal developed by Jacob and Jeannerod (Ways of seeing. The scopes and limits of visual cognition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), who apply the notion of nonconceptual content to empirical research on visual perception. After reconstructing their point of view on concepts, we try to reject their major arguments in support of the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction, i.e. the compositionality of thought and the fineness of grain of percepts.
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Notes
Things are made more complex by the fact that also within the two fields considered separately this notion is used in a heterogeneous way, as we shall see in the following of this section.
E. Spelke does not posit a sharp distinction between perceptual and conceptual knowledge, see e.g. Shutts and Spelke (2004).
It should be noted that, according to Bermudez (1995), all nonconceptual content would have compositional structure, even if in a rather generic sense: “representational states must be structured so that they can be decomposed into their constituent elements which can then be recombined with the constituent elements of other representational states” (in Gunther 2003, p. 199).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Marco Mazzone, Carlo Penco, Pietro Perconti and Alessio Plebe for reading earlier versions of this paper and for discussing the theses presented in it.
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Dell’Anna, A., Frixione, M. On the Advantage (If Any) and Disadvantage of the Conceptual/Nonconceptual Distinction for Cognitive Science. Minds & Machines 20, 29–45 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-010-9182-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-010-9182-2