Sellars and Nonconceptual Content

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper I take up the question of whether Wilfrid Sellars has a notion of non‐conceptual perceptual content. The question is controversial, being one of the fault lines along which so‐called left and right Sellarsians diverge. In the paper I try to make clear what it is in Sellars' thought that leads interpreters to such disparate conclusions. My account depends on highlighting the importance of Sellars' little discussed thesis that perception involves a systematic form of mis‐categorization, one where perceivers mistake their sensory states to be properties of physical objects. I argue that the counterpart color and shape attributes of these states, which become ‘point of viewish’ when organized by the productive imagination, provides perceptual experience with its non‐conceptual representational content. I then argue that this content is not a form of the mythical Given because one can only have a non‐conceptual point of view on an object when an object is introduced into one's perceptual experience through the conceptual mis‐taking of one's sensory states. So, while Sellars has a notion of non‐conceptual representational content, it can only be salient in the context of a perceptual act that is conceptual overall.