A Case against Conceptualism about Perceptual Content: First Perception

Abstract: There are two major philosophical positions about the nature of representational content of perception; conceptualism and nonconceptualism. According to conceptualism, perceptual content is wholly conceptual, therefore, in order to be in a contentful perceptual state, a subject needs to possess all concepts that characterize the content of the experience. Nonconceptualism, on the other hand, is the view that perceptual content is nonconceptual, and that possessing relevant concepts is not necessarily required for having a perceptual experience. In this study, an argument against the conceptualist thesis will be proposed. The argument will be based on “the Molyneux problem,” and will present a more radical version of the problem in order to illustrate the possibility of nonconceptual perception