Nonconceptual content: A reply to Toribio's "Nonconceptualism and the cognitive impenetrability of early vision"

Abstract

Toribio argues against my thesis that the cognitive penetrability (CP) of the content of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for this content to be nonconceptual content (NCC)-the MET (mutually entailing thesis). Her main point is that MET presupposes a non-standard, causal interpretation of NCC that either trivializes NCC or fails to engage with the contemporary literature on NCC, in which the property of being nonconceptual is not construed in empirical but in constitutive terms. I argue that Toribio's arguments presuppose views of NCC that clash with important themes in the nonconceptualist literature, and that constitutive considerations concerning NCC are inextricably linked with causal considerations since the latter are required to address the concerns that led philosophers to postulate NCC. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.