A Critique to McDowell's Kantian Argument against Animal Perception
Abstract
John McDowell claims that perception is always filtered by concepts or, to say it with the traditional Kantian term, by spontaneity. Without concepts that support perception, it would turn out impossible to have intelligible and ordered perceptions of the external world to justify beliefs. A possible consequence of this kind of argumentation is that non-human animals, unable to generate structured concepts as required by McDowell, are also unable to have ordered perceptions of the outer world. In this paper, I will reconstruct McDowell’s arguments against non-conceptual perception. In second place, I will show the difficulties that arise regarding animal behavior when holding these arguments. I will support my conclusions on Ruth Millikan’s remarks about concepts. In order to do so, I will try to show the possibility of having perceptions, or even concepts, which do not necessarily involve the Kantian spontaneity required by McDowell, but a practical encounter with the world, as suggested by Millikan.References
ALLEN, C., & HAUSER, M. D: 1991. “Concept Attribution in Nonhuman Animals: Theoretical and Methodological Problems in Ascribing Complex Mental Processes” en Philosophy of Science, 58 (2), pp. 221-40.
BEKOFF, Marc, Colin ALLEN, and Gordon M. BURGHARDT (eds). 2002. The Cognitive Animal. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
BERMÚDEZ, José Luis & Fiona MACPHERSON. 1998. “Nonconceptual Content and the Nature of Perceptual Experience” en Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 6: pp. 1-33.DÍAZ, José Luis. 2007. La conciencia viviente. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
EVANS, Gareth. 1982. The Varieties of Experience. John McDowell (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
GUNTHER, York H. (ed.). 2003. Essays on Nonconceptual Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
HAUSER, M. D. 1988. “Invention and Social Transmission: New Data From Wild Vervet Monkeys” en R. Byrne & A. Whiten (eds.), Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Oxford: Clarendon Press: pp. 327-43.
HAUSER, M. D. 1986. “Male Responsiveness to Infant Distress Calls in Free-ranging Vervet Monkeys” en Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 19: pp. 65-71.
KANT, Immanuel. 1787. Critique of Pure Reason. Normal. KEMP Smith, tr.; Howard CAVGILL, Intro. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilian, 2007.
KOCH, Christof. 2004. The Quest for Consciousness. A Neurobiological Approach. Colorado: Roberts and Company Publishers.
KRIEGEL, Uriah. 2004. “Perceptual Experience, Conscious Content, and Non- Conceptual Content” en Essays in Philosophy, 5 (1).
MARKS, Jonathan. 2002. What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee. Berkeley: University of California Press.
MCDOWELL, John. 1994. Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996 with New Introduction.
MAC INTYRE, Alasd air. 1999. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Chicago: Open Court.
MILLIKAN, Ruth G. 1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categor ies. Cambr idge, MA: MIT Press.
MILLIKAN, Ruth G. 1993. White Queen Psycholog y and Other Essays for Alice . Cambr idge, MA: MIT Press.
MILLIKAN, Ruth G. 1995. “Pushmi-Pullyu Representations” en AI, Connectionism and Philosophical Psychology, 9: pp. 185-200.
MILLIKAN, Ruth G. 1998. “A Common Structure for Concepts of Individuals, Stuffs, and Real Kinds: More Mama, More Milk, and More Mouse” en Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21: pp. 55-100.
MILLIKAN, Ruth G. 2004a. Varieties of Meaning. The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
MILLIKAN, Ruth G. 2004b. “On Reading Signs: Some Differences Between Us and The Others” en Kim OLLER, Kim PLUNKETT y Ulrike GRIEBEL, eds. The Evolution of Communication Systems: A Comparative Approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
NAGEL, Thomas. 1974. “What is Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review, vol. LXXXIII, no. 4, octubre: pp. 435-50.
PEACOCKE, Christopher. 1998. “Non-conceptual Content Defended” en Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 58 (2): pp. 381-388.
PEACOCKE, Christopher. 2001. “Phenomenology and Non-conceptual Content” en Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62: pp. 609-15.
POVINELLI, Daniel J. 2003. “Behind the Apes Appearance: Escaping Anthropocentrism in the Study of Other Minds” en Daedalus, 133: pp. 29-41.
RIZZOLATI, Giacomo & Laila CRAIGHERO. 2004. “The Mirror-Neuron System” en Annu. Rev. Neurosci, 27: pp. 169-92.
SEARLE, John. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. SEARLE, John. 1994. “Animal Minds” en Consciousness and Language, 2002. Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press.
SELLARS, Wilfrid. 1956. “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”. Herbert FEIGL & Michael SCRIVEN, eds. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 1. Minneapolis: University of Minnesot Press: pp. 253-329.
TAYLOR, Charles. 2002. “Foundationalism and the Inner-Outer Distinction” en Reading McDowell. On Mind and World. Nicholas H. SMITH, ed. London: Routledge.
TODD M. PREUSS, et al. 1999 “Distinctive Compartmental Organization of Human Primary Visual Cortex” en Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96: pp.
–6.
