Positing Nonconceptual Representations

In the second chapter, the author describes some research by cognitive scientists, who posit nonconceptual representations to explain certain perceptual capacities (and incapacities). This research and the way in which it is reported illustrate the type of theoretical work done by an error-permitting notion of nonconceptual representation, alongside a malfunction-permitting notion of function. One set of studies (led by McCloskey) that is described in some detail focuses on an unusual deficit in locating visual targets (in a young woman, AH), which were intended to contribute to understanding normal human vision. The author makes clear why the contents ascribed to the underlying representational states, where the errors first occur, are referential-intentional contents, not merely (natural-factive) informational contents, and why their ascriptions count as intensional, according to standard criteria. Toward the end of the chapter, the author reminds readers of a familiar conundrum: if a representation’s having content is not causally potent in a psychological process, why is it (still) a central tenet of mainstream cognitive science that such a process should be understood as representational?