Conceptuality and Generality: A Criticism of an Argument for Content Dualism

Laura Duhau

doi:10.22201/iifs.18704905e.2009.918

Abstract

In this paper I discuss Heck’s (2007) new argument for content dualism. This argument is based on the claim that conceptual states, but not perceptual states, meet Evans’s Generality Constraint. Heck argues that this claim, together with the idea that the kind of content we should attribute to a mental state depends on which generalizations the state satisfies, implies that conceptual states and perceptual states have different kinds of contents. I argue, however, that it is unlikely that there is a plausible reading of the Generality Constraint under which it is non-trivially true both that conceptual states meet it and that perceptual states do not. Therefore, the soundness of Heck’s argument is dubious.

Highlights

If the argument for content dualism that Heck proposes is going to tell us something substantial about the kinds of content that conceptual states and perceptual states have, it cannot be built into the very formulation of the Generality Constraint that perceptual states do not satisfy it, on pain of trivializing everything that follows from that stipulation
Heck needs a version of the Generality Constraint that can in principle be applied to both conceptual states and perceptual states, and that makes it an empirical question whether both kinds of states satisfy it
I have examined this empirical assumption under different interpretations of the Generality Constraint

Summary

Introduction

Heck’s first premise states that conceptual states7 meet the Generality Constraint and perceptual states do not, and the second claims that this difference is sufficient for their having different kinds of content. If the argument for content dualism that Heck proposes is going to tell us something substantial about the kinds of content that conceptual states and perceptual states have, it cannot be built into the very formulation of the Generality Constraint that perceptual states do not satisfy it, on pain of trivializing everything that follows from that stipulation.

Results

Conclusion