Perceptual Experience In "the Logical Space Of Reasons"

The aim of this dissertation is to comb and elucidate McDowell's conceptualism which insists perceptual experience has conceptual content. This thought is proposed originally in his Mind and World and sparked widespread discussion. McDowell develops and improves this thesis in the responses to his critics. But McDowell is not keen on constructing theory, he did not interpret his thought systematically in a monograph. In contrast, he expounds his thought in a series of lectures and essays. So this dissertation attempts to comb the literature and construct a logical framework systematically.There is a profound theoretical background in McDowell's thesis of empirical conceptual content. He explains this clearly in the introduction of Mind and World. The problem he focuses on is the relation between mind and world. How can we make sense of the idea of mental state's or episode's being directed towards the world? McDowell insists that a minimal empiricism could dissolve the anxiety caused by this perplexity. The minimal empiricism insists that a belief or judgement must be a stance that is correctly or incorrectly adopted according to how things really are. And we know how things are through perceptual experiences. So the minimal empiricism thinks that the relation between mental states and objective reality is constructed by the way a belief or judgement answerable to perceptual experience. Thought contact the world in a normative context.But this relation is cut off by Sellars. He denies that impressions have any role in epistemology, though he insists that experiences can be reasons for belief or judgement. Impressions are impingements caused by the world on our sense organ. So they are non-conceptual and have not epistemic value. McDowell thinks, as a result, the normative relation between thought and the world is cut off. We will confront the problem of the relation between mind and world at once.McDowell adopts an idea of Sellars that make a distinction between the logical space of reasons and the logical space of nature. He revises the idea of sense impression in Sellars. He thinks that perceptual experience has conceptual content in the space of reasons. And perceptual experience which presents things in the world to subject is different from belief or judgement in its phenomenological features. Perceptual experience is the conceptual shaping of sensory consciousness. In this view, the role of perceptual experience play in epistemology guarantee the relation between thought and world in the normative context.Above mentioned is the theoretical background of the thought of empirical conceptual content. In this question consciousness, McDowell insists that it is necessary that perceptual experience has conceptual content. While presuppose the necessity of McDowell's conceptualism, this dissertation concentrates on the significance of this thought, elucidate the basic proposition of "perceptual experience as the conceptual shaping of sensory consciousness". We will see there are five aspects in this proposition:First, claiming and justifying are the paradigmatic mode of actualization of conceptual capacities. We exploit perceptual experience in the discursive activity for claiming or justifying. This suggests that perceptual experience has the form for being exploited by the discursive activity. This kind of form is the conceptual form.Second, McDowell expounds the concept of intuition in Kantian sense to revise the idea of sense impressions in Sellars. McDowell thinks that the conceptual content perceptual experience have is not propositional content but intuition. Intuitions have conceptual forms for being exploited in the discursive activities. Meanwhile, intuition is object-directed for object to come into view for us.Third, perceptual experience such as "seeing that...", "remembering that..." and "heard that..." is an epistemic standing in the space of reasons. Subject in this epistemic standing has already acquired facts and reasons for his belief. The epistemic standing is essentially in a rational normative structure. In this sense, perceptual experience is conceptual.Forth, McDowell adopts Sellars'conceptual holism. McDowell thinks that the observational knowledge acquired from perceptual experience rely on other kinds of empirical knowledge. The conceptual content of perceptual experience is also dependent on a great deal of knowledge we possessed.Fifth, intuition as sensory consciousness has phenomenological features. We can redescibe it as a sensation by omitting from a specification terms that reflect outward directedness. Even so, spatiality such as shape remains in intuition in a vestigial form. So the conceptual representation an intuition has is directed towards the world. Intuition is the conceptual shaping of sensory consciousness.