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International Journal of Philosophical Studies

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Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content

Jan Almnga a University of Gothenburg, Sweden

To cite this Article Almng, Jan(2008) 'Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content', International Journal of

Philosophical Studies, 16: 2, 161 177 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09672550802008583 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672550802008583

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International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 16(2), 161177

Affordances and the Nature of Perceptual Content

Jan Almng
jan.almang@phil.gu.se JanAlmng 0 2000002008 16 2008 & (print)/1466-4542 Original Article 0967-2559Francis International Journal 10.1080/09672550802008583 (online) RIPH_A_301024.sgm Taylor and Francis of Philosophical Studies

Abstract
According to John McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. This paper criticizes this view by claiming that there is a certain kind of representational and non-conceptual perceptual content that is sensitive to bodily skills. After a brief introduction to McDowells position, Merleau-Pontys notion of body schema and Gibsons notion of affordance are presented. It is argued that affordances are constitutive of representational perceptual content, and that at least some affordances, the so-called conditional affordances, are essentially related to the body schema. This means that the perceptual content depends upon the nature of the body schema. Since the body schema does not pertain to the domain that our conceptual faculties operate upon, it is argued that this kind of perceptual content cannot be conceptual. At least some of that content is representational, yet it cannot feature as non-demonstrative conceptual content. It is argued that if it features as demonstrative conceptual content, it has to be captured by private concepts. Since McDowells theory does not allow for the existence of a private language, it is concluded that at least some representational perceptual content is non-conceptual. Keywords: McDowell; Merleau-Ponty; nonconceptual; perception; content; affordance

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Introduction According to some philosophers, most prominently John McDowell,1 representational perceptual content is conceptual. What does this mean? It means that the content of a perception is conceptual through and through, and that this content represents certain conditions and facts as obtaining in the world. The purpose of this paper is to challenge that view. I shall argue that there is at least a special subclass of representational perceptual content that is not conceptual. The general structure of my argument will be that at least a special kind of affordance is representational and nonconceptual. An affordance, to use the term coined by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson, is a perceived feature of the environment which

International Journal of Philosophical Studies ISSN 09672559 print 14664542 online 2008 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09672550802008583

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indicates a possible action in the environment for the perceiver. Whereas affordances have been discussed before in this context, no one has to my knowledge successfully argued that they can be both representational and non-conceptual. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part presents the problem, and elucidates in particular the notions of representational and conceptual content. The second part introduces the notions of body schema and affordance and argues that the latter depends upon the former. The purpose of the second part is to demonstrate that the body schema can function independently of our capacity for rational thought, and that consequently affordances can feature as non-conceptual content, though not necessarily as representational content. It also contains a discussion of previous attempts to show why affordances have to be nonconceptual. I argue that these fail since they do not establish that affordances feature as non-conceptual representational content. The third part of the paper draws upon the conclusions reached in the second part, and presents a novel argument for the position that some affordances can indeed be representational and non-conceptual. The Problem According to McDowell, representational perceptual content is conceptual. But what does it mean to say that a perceptual experience is representational? Initially, it is important to note that it does not mean that what we are directly aware of is a representation of the world. That is a different issue. To say that a perceptual experience is representational means that its content is available for cognition. The perceptual state represents certain states of affairs. It is something that has a direct bearing on the beliefs of the perceiver and something that the perceiver can think of. A perceptual representation is not a belief-state itself, but it can provide reasons for holding a particular belief. There can also be non-representational perceptual content. This may, for example, be the case when perceptual information influences our behaviour, but is not available for cognition. In these cases we have in some sense registered features of the perceived environment, yet we do not represent it in the sense given above. In one psychological experiment, for example, normal subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to press a target that was illuminated and stationary. After the subjects had initiated their movement with their hand towards the target, the target occasionally changed position, i.e. the illuminated target was darkened and a dark target close by was lit up. The change of position was large enough to require an adjustment of the movement, which the subjects managed without any loss of time. Yet the subjects were unaware of the change!2 What this experiment indicates is that some perceptual information (the change) is not available for cognition and is thus non-representational. Yet it is still perceptual 162

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content, since this information is picked up by our senses, or else it could not have influenced the action of the subjects. On some accounts, perceptual content has to be in some sense phenomenally conscious. If this is correct, there may well be no non-representational perceptual content in the sense described above. My way of framing the distinction between representational and non-representational perceptual content is intended to steer clear of that particular discussion. The notion of content as it is used here simply means an informational state that makes some features of the world available for cognition and / or guides the subjects conduct in the world. States carrying information that is available for cognition and which may guide the conduct of the subject have representational content. States which are not available for cognition but which carry information that can guide the actions of the subject have on this account non-representational content. According to McDowell, conceptual capacities are drawn on in receptivity.3 This means that they are not exercised upon some non-conceptual state that is given, but that perceptual states are conceptual from the very beginning. McDowells point is that we do not form concepts through a process of abstraction from a non-conceptual perceptual state, a sensible manifold. The conceptual capacities of a perceiver are involved already in the process of receptivity.4 The conceptual capacities which are drawn on in receptivity would according to McDowell not be conceptual in the proper sense of the word if they were only used in receptivity. They would not be recognizable as conceptual capacities at all unless they could also be exercised in active thinking.5 The reason for this is that an empirical experience represents certain conditions as obtaining in the world. As a consequence, an empirical experience is related to the rational capacities of the perceiver. The perceiver may, for example, judge that a certain perception is an illusion. Or the perceiver may draw inferences that are based on the (conceptual and perceptual) representation of the world: Quite generally, the capacities that are drawn on in experience are recognizable as conceptual only against the background of the fact that someone who has them is responsive to rational relations, which link the contents of judgments of experience with other judgeable contents.6 This is a point that McDowell returns to several times. Our conceptual capacities belong to a network of capacities for active thought, a network that rationally governs comprehension-seeking responses to the impacts of the world on sensibility.7 According to McDowell, perception, belief and thought can only be rationally connected if the same conceptual capacities are drawn upon in thought 163

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and in sensory receptivity. Since perceptual experiences are conceptual, it can be rational to form a belief based upon such a perceptual experience. And since it is the same conceptual capacities which are formative of both perceptual experience and active thinking, the link between empirical experience and active thinking can be rational. If this were not the case, McDowell fears that the link between thought and perception would be broken, in the sense that perceptual states would not be able to present us with reasons for holding certain propositions to be true. McDowells account has been criticized from several quarters. One important discussion has been about the nature of perceptual content and the role of demonstrative concepts. It has in particular been questioned whether a conceptualist can explain the fact that our ability to make perceptual discriminations is finer in grain than our capacity to describe our perceptual experiences in non-demonstrative terms. We can, for example, perceptually experience more shades of red than we have concepts of red, and we can also perceptually experience more shapes of squares than we have concepts of shapes of squares.8 McDowells response to this problem is that the perceptual content in these cases consists of demonstrative or recognitional concepts. A particular shade of red is, for example, experienced as that shade of red. Prima facie, this looks like an ad hoc solution, but that is according to McDowell an unwarranted accusation. For underlying such experiences is a recognitional capacity that endures over time albeit perhaps over a short stretch of time. If, for example, one is presented with the same shade of red twice, but with a short temporal interval, one can recognize the shade as being the same because it is captured by the same demonstrative concept.9 McDowell claims that the very identity of one of these possibly shortterm recognitional capacities is tied to a particular case of the kind of impact on sensibility that is supposed to be captured by the associated concept.10 It is important to note in this context that our recognitional capacities are tied to a specific impact on sensibility. In a trivial sense, all concepts that are drawn upon in a perceptual experience are of course also activated by an impact on sensibility. But the identity of non-demonstrative concepts is not tied to a specific kind of impact on sensibility. Consider, for example, the concept of bird. Needless to say, certain impacts on sensibility activate the concept of bird, but the various impacts on sensibility that do so activate the concept need not have anything interesting in common apart, of course, from thus activating the concept of bird. Birds can, and often do, differ a lot in shape, size and colour. But when we perceive something as a bird it is still the same kind of concept that is drawn upon, regardless of its sensory presentation. But this is not the case with demonstrative concepts. They are tied to a specific impact on sensibility. That shade is activated only if a specific shade is sensed, and so on.11 164

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According to McDowells theory our conceptual capacities are drawn upon in receptivity, and employed in active thought. McDowell also claims that intentional bodily actions are actualizations of our active nature in which conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated.12 This means that bodily actions are also in some way related to our conceptual repertoire. The claim, strictly speaking, involves two separate claims. First of all, McDowell claims that intentional bodily actions are always related to our capacity for rational thought. Secondly, McDowell claims that rational thought is always conceptual. I believe that both claims are erroneous, but for the sake of argument, I shall not challenge either claim. I do, however, believe that my conclusion offers grounds for rejecting the second claim.
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The Assumptions In this section I shall explicate the nature of intentional bodily actions and its relationship to perceptual content from a Merleau-Pontyian perspective.13 My point of departure will be Merleau-Pontys notion of body schema.14 According to Merleau-Ponty, our body schema enables us to habitually perform physical actions such as walking, running, jumping or typing. Our embodied knowledge of how to do things physically is in other words stored in the body schema. But the body schema employs not only stored skills, but also proprioceptive information of bodily posture and perceptual information of the surrounding environment. The kind of movement required in order to do something depends on our initial bodily position in relation to the object towards which we are acting. I shall advance four claims in this section: first of all, that affordances feature in perceptual content and that they depend for their nature on the body schema of the perceiver. Secondly, that the body schema relies upon information that is not by necessity made available for cognition. Affordances are in other words not always representational. Thirdly, that the body schema does not operate in a way similar to rational thought, and by implication that the same conceptual capacities which are operative in thought are not operative in the body schema. My fourth claim is that affordances are not necessarily conceptualized. Most of the section focuses on the first two claims. The third and fourth are primarily implications of the first two. I shall conclude the section by showing that the fourth claim does not threaten the conceptualist. But it sets the stage for the next section, in which I draw upon the conclusions reached in this section and argue that not all perceptual content is conceptual. Affordances outline possible actions in the perceptual environment for the perceiver.15 The affordances of an environment are what the environment offers, or affords to, the perceiver, be it good or bad. A floor, for example, affords walking. Dangerous animals, on the other hand, afford danger, and are thus perceived as something to avoid or flee from. A pen affords 165

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writing, a chair affords sitting, a fence may or may not afford jumping over, and so on.16 An affordance stands in an interdependent relationship to the body schema. An affordance depends for its nature on the body schema and on the surrounding environment. At the same time, the body schema would not function if the agent did not perceive his affordances. Some affordances more or less command some specific actions to be performed if one were to spot a lion in ones visual field, one would probably feel compelled to avoid the lion. Other affordances are such that they outline actions which are possible, but not in any way commanded. I may, for example, see a floor as walkable, even though I have no plans ever to set foot on the floor. And I may also see a glass of water as graspable and as within reach, even though I have no intention of actually reaching for the glass. Affordances are constitutive of the perceptual content of an experience. They are in particular constitutive of the functional meaning17 of a perceived object. They outline the possible function an object or an environment can have for a perceiver, and it is in virtue of this that they are constitutive of the perceptual content of an experience. But the functional meaning of an object is not, unlike, for example, colours and shapes, tied to a specific impact on sensibility. Affordances feature in perceptual content in a similar way to non-demonstrative conceptual content. Two qualitatively different impacts on sensibility can activate the same affordance. A grass court may activate the affordance walkable. But the same affordance may be activated by a frozen lake. Identical affordances can differ a lot in their sensory presentations. An affordance is an agent-relative property of a perceived object. The affordance of an object is always an affordance for someone. It is in virtue of the fact that the affordance of an object invites18 certain physical actions that the object has the affordance. But this means that it is due to the fact that the perceiver is an embodied agent, viz. that the perceiver has a body schema, that he can perceive affordances.19 By implication, the same environment may have different affordances for different perceivers and for the same perceiver at different times. A certain hill, for example, can be perceived as being climbable by an experienced alpinist, but not by the present author. Let us now turn to the second claim advanced above: that the body schema can function independently of our capacity for rational thought and cognition. It is initially important to point out that the body schema has a complex relationship to our capacity for rational thought and decisionmaking. We can explicate the relationship as one in which by thinking we decide what to do, whereas the action is performed in a specific way by the body schema. But the way the body schema performs an action is not necessarily for reasons or by rational thought. It can operate independently of this capacity. 166

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The specific way of performing an action may in itself be a specific action. For actions are normally nested within each other. Performing an action normally means that you pursue an end, the pursuit of which requires that you perform other actions, the ends of which are merely a means for your pursuit of the end of the action in which the action is nested. Of course, actions nested within other actions may have other actions nested within them, and so on. Actions nested at the lowest possible level are not normally performed on the basis of rational thought, but by the body schema. If actions at the lowest possible level were performed on the basis of rational thought, then the information requisite for performing the action would be available for cognition. But a range of ordinary and pathological examples demonstrate that this is not a necessary requirement in order to perform a physical action.20 Consider, for example, the case of typing. I am currently writing a paper. I do this by pressing various keys on my keyboard. But pressing the keys in a specific way is not an action that is related to my capacities for rational thought. In fact, I am unable to report the location of the various keys on the keyboard. If someone gave me a keyboard with the signs of the letters removed and asked me to point out where the letter A normally is I would be unable to answer, unless I was allowed to write on the keyboard and could observe the movements of my hands. So any beliefs regarding the location of the keys on the keyboard cannot be a necessary requirement for me to type. But this is information that I nevertheless must have. This information is available for my body schema, but is not accessible for thought and cognition.21 The same conclusion can also be drawn from psychological experiments such as the light-switch experiment described earlier and pathological cases. Consider, for example, a by now famous study by David Milner and Melvyn Goodale. They described a patient D. F. who has a damaged perceptual system.22 She can detect light, but she has no phenomenal consciousness of shapes and edges. She is also unable to form beliefs about her surrounding environment on the basis of visual perceptions; her perceptions apparently lack representational content altogether. But she is able to perform actions which rely on perceptual information. She is, for example, able to walk in mountainous areas. In one famous experiment, D.F. was asked to post a card through an open slot. This she performed perfectly. But if she was asked in which way a given slot was oriented if it was oriented updown or leftright or tilted in a specific way she was unable to answer, unless she was given a card and could observe how her body tried to fit it into the slot. So whereas she has no beliefs about her surrounding environment, her body schema must still be able to pick up at least some affordances.23 The claim here, it should be noted, is only that the body schema can function independently of our capacity for rational thought. But our capacity for 167

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rational thought may well be necessary for us to function normally as embodied agents. Indeed, this is probably also shown by D.F., since she is not a fully functioning embodied agent. It is important to note that whether an action is performed for reasons or by means of the body schema varies from case to case and from individual to individual. An action performed for reasons in one context may be performed automatically by the body schema in another context. The body schema is to some extent sensitive to feedback from cognition and practical reasoning; it is possible to change the nature of the body schema by monitoring its operations by rational thought. This may be the case when my doctor orders me to walk in a new way, since my current way of walking is bad for my back. When this happens, I enter a transitional period in which I sometimes try to monitor my way of walking and sometimes fall back into old habits. Gradually, however, I shall presumably start to walk habitually in the desired way. When this happens, I can once again walk without rationally reflecting upon my style of walking; the body schema once again functions independently of rational thought. The exact relationship between the body schema and our capacity for rational thought is a difficult problem, and it may also in practice be difficult to say when the body schema operates independently of rational thought and when it does not. Suffice it for our present purposes to note that it can function independently of our capacity for rational thought. If this were not the case, then the body schema would not be able to draw on information which is not available for cognition. But this is the case, as we have seen. It follows that whereas the body schema is related to our capacity for rational thought, it is not reducible to it. It is a separate capacity. So far I have argued that affordances are constitutive of perceptual content, that they depend upon the nature of the body schema, and that the body schema normally functions independently of our capacity for rational thought. At this point, it is time to make an assumption explicit. I shall assume that the body schema does not function in a way that is analogous to thinking. This could presumably only be the case if the body schema could be implemented within the framework of homuncular functionalism. The latter kind of theories are very controversial. I shall simply assume that homuncular functionalism is an untenable position, at least insofar as it can explain the nature of the body schema. I have argued against it in a different context and would stray too far from the subject at hand were I to rehearse those arguments here.24 The third and fourth claims outlined above now follow more or less automatically. If the body schema does not function in a way analogous to thinking, it does not operate upon concepts. A fortiori, affordances are not automatically conceptual. Note that so far the account is consistent with McDowells position. It has not been established that affordances feature in representational perceptual content or that they do so as non-demonstrative conceptual content. The point so far 168

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is merely that affordances feature in perceptual content, and that qua nonrepresentational perceptual content, they cannot be conceptual. Some philosophers, most notably Gareth Evans and Merleau-Ponty, and, following closely in their footsteps, Sean Kelly,25 have argued that the fact that perceptual content is dependent upon our body schema shows that this content is non-conceptual.26 Kelly, for example, argues that perceptual content is non-conceptual because it irreducibly contains in it dispositions to act toward the object of perception. Perceptual content is thus nonconceptual precisely because it is constituted by the bodily sensitivity to a variety of situationally defined aspects of the motor intentional object.27 This means according to Kelly that affordances28 are dependent upon motor intentional identification. Motor intentional identification is constituted by a bodily preparation to grasp a particular object in a particular way toward a particular end.29 This may all be true, and my account so far is consistent with Kellys position. But this kind of argument does not establish that these affordances are constitutive of the representational content of the perceptual experience. For, as we have seen, a bodily preparation to do a certain thing is not necessarily something that is available for rational reflection. And if that is the case, then the corresponding affordance need not be available for cognition either.30 Indeed, it seems that we are often unable to reflect rationally upon the specific affordances of the environment. So McDowell can argue that what Merleau-Ponty et al. have shown is at best that there is non-representational non-conceptual content.31 The Argument The previous section tried to establish that affordances depend upon the body schema, and that the body schema functions independently of rational thought. A reasonable conclusion is that in virtue of providing information for the body schema, affordances have to be non-conceptual. In order to threaten McDowells position, however, affordances need to feature as representational non-conceptual content. The purpose of this section is to argue that this is the case. Initially I shall attempt to show why it is not particularly controversial to assume that affordances at least sometimes feature as the representational content of a perceptual experience. Indeed, McDowell himself would presumably agree that this is so. A more problematic issue is whether affordances qua representational content are nonconceptual. The major part of this section will attempt to establish why this is the case at least sometimes. Representational content presents the way the world is for a perceiver. It makes the world available for cognition. The previous section discussed cases in which affordances feature as non-representational perceptual content. But this is not always the case. Sometimes we are able to form 169

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judgments based on perceptual observations of what the environment affords for us. If, for example, you are walking and encounter a small brook, you may pause and reason whether you can jump over the brook. In this case you judge that the brook affords jumping over. Or, trivially, you might see directly that the brook is jump-over-able, and explicitly form the judgment that that is the case, and so on. Moreover, affordances need not be related only to the perceivers capacity to act, but can also be related to other subjects and their capacity to act. They can be intended as obtaining for other agents, although not for the perceiver herself. If I have a visitor who is in another part of the room, I shall quite naturally ascribe different affordances to him and to me. Objects that are within reach of him are not within reach of me, and so on. But while there is ample evidence from the phenomenology of perceptual experience that affordances can feature as representational content, it is far from clear that they do so as non-conceptual content. McDowell could easily accept the claims that affordances depend upon the body schema and that the body schema can function independently of rational thought, and yet still claim that affordances as they feature in representational content do that as conceptual content. The critical point in McDowells enterprise is to secure the link between representational content and cognition, and he argues that that link is established by the fact that the conceptual capacities which are involved in cognition are involved at the level of perceptual content too. So McDowell would presumably claim that it is not a sufficient condition for affordances to feature in representational content that they get their nature from the body schema. In virtue of being representational content, they are necessarily conceptualized. According to McDowell, the network of concepts that is drawn upon in perception is the same network of concepts that govern our capacity for active and rational thought. But affordances such as jump-over-able, within reach and walkable appear to correspond to the concepts jumpover-able, within reach and walkable, or at least that is the approach to the problem one would expect McDowell to take. Hence, if all the concepts of a perceiver are drawn upon in perception, affordances pertain to the conceptual content of a perceptual experience. But there is a second kind of affordances which is also operative in perceptual experience, and which is presumably the genetic origins of the first kind of affordances though the latter point is unimportant in this context. These affordances are too specific and context-sensitive to be captured by any ordinary non-demonstrative concept. What I have in mind is the kind of experience we have when we experience a situation or an object as affording something if we do so and so, where so and so cannot be described using any ordinary non-demonstrative concepts. The point in question is that the perceptual content could be described as an affordance that is conditional upon the action being 170

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performed in some specific way, where our normal linguistic abilities do not suffice for a description of the way the action is performed. I can, to give an example, perceive a dangerous object that is quickly approaching me as avoidable if I do so and so. If I am riding my bicycle and suddenly encounter someone cycling in the opposite direction on a course to collide with me, I can perceive the situation as avoidable if I move in a very specific way, but not otherwise. This specific way can to some extent be conceptually described, but not in a way sufficient to capture the detail of my knowledge of my movement. I may know that I should initially move my body to the left, in order to change the course of my bicycle slightly. But I have no way of expressing in detail my knowledge of how much I should move my body to the left, or of the exact way that I should do this, or my knowledge of the intended consequences of the change of direction of my bicycle. Nevertheless, I perceive the situation as avoidable if I perform such a movement. The point is that the conditional so and so in this and similar cases is clearly experienced as realizable by a certain kind of embodied action, even though this experience cannot be conceptually described in any relevant sense of the term. There are two very natural objections at this point. The first is that what I have been describing is not a case of representational content. The second is that conditional affordances feature as demonstrative conceptual content in a perceptual representation. Turning to the first objection, it could be argued that these affordances, the conditional affordances as I shall call them, are not available to active and rational thought and, in particular, that they are not perceived as representing certain facts as obtaining. They represent on the contrary information that is only available to the body schema. For three reasons, I believe that this objection is erroneous. My first argument is that the perceiver can in some cases see a conditional affordance as obtaining for someone else, though not for herself. This may, for example, be the case when the perceiver is watching a cyclist in the example above. The perceiver would thus see the collision as avoidable for the cyclist if the cyclist moves in that specific way. In this case, she perceives a conditional affordance as obtaining for the cyclist, because the conditional affordance would obtain for her if she were in the position of the cyclist. Apprehending the conditional affordances of others is presumably done by what Merleau-Ponty called a transfer of the body schema; we apprehend what the other can do in a given situation by apprehending what we could do if we were in the position of the other.32 So this by itself would not establish that we can perceptually represent the conditional affordances of others. But two considerations indicate that the conditional affordances of the other can feature as representational content. First of all, there is phenomenological evidence to the effect that we can rationally reflect on the affordances of the other, and this applies to conditional affordances as well as non-conditional affordances. The second consideration concerns 171

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the function of a body-schematic transfer. Were it not the case that we could rationally reflect upon both the conditional and the non-conditional affordances of the other, a lot of useful information for human agents would be lost. For, presumably, the body schema itself has no use for all the information it can gather about the affordances of the other. It is primarily interested in the affordances of the other, in so far as they concern the affordances of the agent herself. But if conditional affordances of other agents can be representational, there are no reasons why conditional affordances of the perceiver herself should not be representational. For if they can be made available for cognition in the first place, there should be nothing that hinders them from being available for cognition in the second place. The second argument relies on phenomenological evidence: it is a brute fact of representational perceptual content that they contain conditional affordances. Let us assume that you are out walking and for some reason have to jump over a fence and you see two specific ways of doing so. In this case you may perceive the fence as jumpable if you perform this movement or that movement.33 But you may nevertheless be able to reflect rationally on which movement you should perform; there may, for example, be different advantages and disadvantages connected with the options, and you would need to reflect on which option you prefer. So in these cases it is quite clear that the conditional affordances are available for active and rational thought, and by implication that they are constitutive of the representational content of a perceptual experience. A third argument for the representational status of conditional affordances concerns the difference between conditional affordances and normal affordances, which it should be rather uncontroversial to assume can feature in representational content. The critical difference is clearly that we have non-demonstrative concepts for the latter kind of affordances. But this is due to a linguistic contingency rather than to any non-linguistic essential difference between the nature of these two kinds of affordances. It is thus very likely that what is a conditional affordance for the language users of one linguistic community can be a normal affordance for the language users of another linguistic community. So unless we assume from the outset that only affordances which can be captured by non-demonstrative concepts can feature in representational content, there are no reasons to assume that conditional affordances have a nature that prevents them from featuring in representational content. So far I have argued that conditional affordances are representational, but that they are too fine-grained to feature in non-demonstrative conceptual content. What about the second objection outlined above? Is it possible that conditional affordances feature as demonstrative conceptual content, i.e. that they are constitutive of conceptual content in the same way as specific shades and shapes? 172

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It is logically possible, but it is unlikely, because as I shall now proceed to show, the only way for the conceptualists to allow affordances to feature as demonstrative conceptual content is to accept the existence of a private language. But this is a conclusion that McDowell and other conceptualists cannot afford to draw. For if there can be a private language, there are no reasons to believe that perceptual content is conceptual through and through in the first place. A conditional affordance is something that exists in virtue of a specific relation between the perceived environment on the one hand and the body schema of someone (normally the perceiver) on the other hand. In this respect it differs from normal demonstrative conceptual content, which refers to features (shapes and shades) of the perceived environment which obtain independently of the perceiver34 and are only perceived in virtue of a specific impact on sensibility. Since conditional affordances exist in virtue of a relationship between an environment and the body schema of an agent, they are not necessarily intersubjective. For example, it is perfectly possible that two normal perceivers perceive the same environment from the same perspective and possess the same conceptual network and yet perceive the situation differently with regard to the conditional affordances that obtain. Indeed, their sensory system may be stimulated in identical ways, yet they may still perceive different conditional affordances. This will inevitably happen if they have different body schemas. So conditional affordances cannot be tied any more than normal affordances to a specific impact on sensibility, for the same impact may give rise to different conditional affordances for two agents or at different times for the same agent. The converse, that the same conditional affordance may correspond to different impacts on sensibility is also true. A brook and a snake may both be perceived as jump-over-able in a specific way. But brooks and snakes rarely have anything interesting in common with regard to the sensible impacts they make. But at this point we run into a problem that should be severe for McDowell. For if the above account is correct, then the presumed conceptual content of conditional affordances will have to be private. In short, anyone committed to the idea that conditional affordances can be analysed as a kind of demonstrative conceptual content is also committed to the existence of a private language. But if a private language is in principle possible, then the question arises as to why we should assume that representational perceptual content is conceptual in the first place. So the argument is in short that if affordances can feature as demonstrative conceptual content, then the best argument that perceptual content has to be conceptual evaporates. Let us turn first to the claim that if conditional affordances can feature as demonstrative conceptual content, they have to be private. A concept is private if it is, as McDowell puts it, constituted by a justificatory relation to a bare presence, since forming such a concept would be tantamount to 173

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giving oneself a private ostensive definition.35 Concepts which are formed by a private ostensive definition are private because in these cases we are unable to communicate the content of the concepts. The definition is by its very nature not public and the corresponding concept is thus private by nature. It is important to note that demonstrative conceptual content as it features in McDowells theory is not private in that sense. For in the case of shades and shapes, one can always point to specific shades and shapes in a public environment. Demonstrative concepts picking out shades and shapes are constituted by publicly accessible ostensive definitions. But this is not true of conditional affordances. For conditional affordances obtain in virtue of a relationship between the environment and the body schema of the perceiver. As we have seen, the same environment may afford different actions for different perceivers or for the same perceiver at different times. So it is not possible to point to any public property or object in order to communicate the content of a putative demonstrative concept of a conditional affordance. In fact, it is not possible at all to make a publicly accessible ostensive definition of a conditional affordance. Even though affordances are by their very nature perceived to be properties of the environment, they nevertheless depend upon the body schema of the perceiver. And since body schemas differ from perceiver to perceiver, conditional affordances will too. Conditional affordances may possibly be picked out by demonstratives as embodied knowledge of how to perform a specific action in a specific way, but only if the demonstrative does not refer to any publicly accessible object or property, but rather to an embodied knowledge of how to do things in certain situations. This account, it should be noted, does not preclude that different perceivers with different body schemas may at some time perceive that the environment has the same conditional affordances. And neither does it preclude that a perceiver may ascribe a conditional affordance to another agent. But this ascription can only be made on the basis of an analogical process, in which case the perceiver infers which conditional affordances would obtain for her if she were in the position of the other. In this respect ascribing conditional affordances to the other differs from ascribing most other mental states. With regard to propositional attitudes, normal affordances and sensations, it is possible to communicate verbally to others what ones mental states are. But this is not the case with conditional affordances. For the content of conditional affordances cannot be verbally communicated. If the above account is correct, then conditional affordances can only be constitutive of private concepts and not of public concepts. So if anyone wants to defend the claim that all representational perceptual content is conceptual, he or she will also have to admit that there can be a private language. But this is a conclusion the conceptualists cannot afford to draw. For if there can be a private language, there seems to be no reason to 174

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assume that perceptual content is conceptual in the first place. This is a point that McDowell himself is explicit upon. The private language argument is according to him not a particular rejection of the idea that there can be a non-conceptual perceptual content, a Given, from which concepts can be formed. It articulates the very idea that perceptual content is conceptual through and through: So the Private Language Argument just is the rejection of the Given, in so far as it bears on the possibilities for language; it is not an application of a general rejection of the Given to a particular area.36 The logic behind McDowells position as it bears on the private language argument is that any private concept has to be constituted by a private ostensive definition. This is after all what makes the concept private and incommunicable. But if that is the case, then the perceiver has to be able actively to conceptualize perceptual content that is in itself non-conceptual. For if the perceptual content were already conceptualized, it would not be necessary to give a private ostensive definition of the concept in the first place. The concept would on the contrary already be present in the perceptual content. So if private concepts are possible at all, then perceptual content cannot be conceptual through and through. I have argued that a special class of affordances, the so-called conditional affordances, features in representational perceptual content. While these affordances can in principle feature as demonstrative conceptual content, they can only do that qua private concepts. So if they feature as conceptual content at all, then private concepts have to be possible. But private concepts presuppose a private ostensive definition, which in its turn presupposes that some representational content is non-conceptual. If this is correct, the only way for the conceptualists to defend the claim that perceptual content is always conceptual is to admit that some perceptual content is non-conceptual. This is, however, a self-contradicting position. I conclude that at least some perceptual content is non-conceptual.37 University of Gothenburg, Sweden Notes
1 For McDowells position, see his 1994. Since he is the most influential of the conceptualists, I shall limit my discussion of their view to him. 2 See Jeannerod, 1997. 3 McDowell, 1994: p. 9. 4 Ibid., p. 10. 5 Ibid., p. 11. 6 Ibid., pp. 11f. 7 Ibid., p. 12. 8 The argument was originally made by Gareth Evans. See Evans, 1982: p. 229. 9 See, for example, McDowell, 1994: pp. 56ff. 10 Ibid., p. 59.

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11 Strictly speaking, McDowell needs to frame the distinction in other terms. For it might well be that when I move closer to an object, I shall continuously perceive it as having the same shape, even though its impact on my sensibility keeps changing. If this is the case, and I think that it is, then recognitional concepts are not tied to a specific impact on sensibility, but rather to a specific disposition of the perceived object to have a specific impact on the sensorial stimulation of the perceiver given certain perceptual conditions. And it is in this respect that they differ from non-demonstrative concepts. But this way of framing the distinction does not help McDowell avoid the problems we are about to discuss, so I shall for the sake of simplicity use McDowells way of framing the distinction in this paper. 12 McDowell, 1994: p. 90. 13 See especially Merleau-Ponty, 1996. It should be noted that whereas my account is inspired by Merleau-Ponty, it is not necessarily exegetically faithful. 14 As Shaun Gallagher has pointed out, the English translation of Merleau-Ponty by Colin Smith is erroneous with regard to the notion of body schema, since it translates schema corporel as body image. See Gallagher, 1995: p. 232. 15 The term affordance is employed both in the sense that it refers to an objective property that is out there irrespective of whether or not it is picked up and in the sense that it is constitutive of perceptual content. It should be clear from the context which sense is being employed. 16 For the notion of affordance, see in particular Gibson, 1986: pp. 127ff. Needless to say, Merleau-Ponty would have no objections to this view of perception. 17 I borrow this term from Harry Heft. See Heft, 1989: p. 3. 18 The concept of affordance is a loose translation of the gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewins term Aufforderung, invitation or exhortation. 19 Needless to say, this observation has been made before, not least by Heft, 1989. 20 Merleau-Ponty makes a strong argument that it is not a sufficient condition either. See Merleau-Ponty, 1996. 21 See Merleau-Ponty, 1996: pp. 143f. 22 Milner and Goodale, 1995; Goodale and Milner, 2004. 23 Milner and Goodale famously concluded that there are two visual pathways from the eyes, one leading to a centre for cognition, and the other leading to the action centre. 24 See Almng, 2007: Ch. 7. 25 See Kelly, 2001, Merleau-Ponty, 1996, and Evans, 1985. For a similar kind of analysis, see Cussins, 2003. 26 Merleau-Ponty is, however, the only one of them who would express this relation in terms of the body schema. 27 Kelly, 2001: p. 86. 28 Kelly does not employ this term in this context, but it captures roughly what he is after. 29 Kelly, 2001. p. 86. 30 And Kelly, it should be noted, does not claim that to be the case. The point is not merely that no active or conscious cognitive processing goes on, but that it is not in terms of calculations or deductions or any other cognitive processes at all, whether they are consciously experienced or not, that our perceptual information gets the content it does. Ibid., p. 73. 31 This appears to be Alva Nos position. See No, 2004: p. 201. 32 For an elaboration and defence of this theory, see Almng 2007: Ch. 8. 33 This is not to say that the thought of them is a thought consisting of demonstrative concepts. There may well be non-conceptual kinds of thinking. I do not want

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34 35 36 37

to take a stand on the issue, but it is impossible to describe this case without the use of demonstrative concepts. In the case of shades, this could be questioned by philosophers who deny that colours are properties of objects. McDowell, 1994: p. 20. Ibid. Thanks are due to Alexander Almr, Jonas Axelsson, Kent Gustavsson, Helge Malmgren and an anonymous referee for valuable comments.

References
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