Non-conceptual Content and the Sound of Music

MICHAEL LUNTLEY
Abstract: I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational

content. The argument is compatible with McDowells defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine-grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subjects reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best achieved with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music.

John McDowell has deployed a powerful strategy against the idea that the representational content of personal level experience includes nonconceptual content.1 I call it the kidnapping strategy. The literature on nonconceptual content abounds with examples about the fine-grainedness of perceptual experience which, it is claimed, illustrate that experience represents properties that fall between the grip of the subjects conceptual repertoire.2 The kidnapping strategy shows how such representations can be rendered conceptual by treating them as examples of short-lived recognitional capacities for the fine-grained properties in question. In this paper I present an argument for nonconceptual content that is compatible with this strategy. The examples that I employ involve auditory perception, in particular, our experience of music. I shall briefly extend the argument to other sense modalities.

1. Outline of the Case for Nonconceptual Content Suppose a subjects personal level experience represents something as F. Where the representation of F-ness is conceptual, the content of that part of the subjects experience at issue can be thought of as a component of the proposition expressed by the sentence,
Earlier versions of this material were presented at CREA, Paris, University College, London, and the University of Manchester. Thanks to all those present for hard questions and helpful suggestions. Thanks also to my colleagues Naomi Eilan, Christoph Hoerl, Peter Poellner and Johannes Roessler and to an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Address for correspondence: Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. Email: michael.luntley@warwick.ac.uk
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McDowell, 1994, Lecture III and Afterword 2., 1998, 2001. Evans, 1982 p. 229; Crane, 1992; Peacocke, 1992 p. 67ff.; Bermu dez, 1994 p. 403.

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I disregard for present purposes the component that occupies subject position. If the content is conceptual it will be what we ordinarily call a concept. By nonconceptual contents, I mean ways of representing properties that take predicate position in propositions which characterise a subjects experience and yet are not expressible with concepts the subject possesses. The challenge in making the case for nonconceptual content is to provide examples in which it makes sense to report on the subjects experience by saying that it represents: such-and-such is F and yet the subject has no capacity for grasping the proposition in terms of their current conceptual repertoire. The fact that the point is put in terms of a proposition that the subject cannot grasp should not be taken to entail that nonconceptual content is itself propositional in structure. Indeed, the phenomenology of nonconceptual content suggests quite the opposite.3 The idea then is that the proposition in question characterises part of the content of the subjects experience, but they have no resources for expressing that proposition themselves. Put like that, it can both seem easy to accommodate the idea of nonconceptual content at the subpersonal level (in terms of propositions that express the information handled by sub-personal systems) and problematic to accommodate nonconceptual content at the personal level. Prima facie, the very idea of personal level nonconceptual content seems unintelligible, for how can a subjects personal level experience include the representation that such-and-such is F and yet the subject not know this? The conceptualist will protest that if the content of the subjects personal level experience represents the way that the world is for them, how can the world be a certain way for them without their having a grip on it being that way for them? The protest points up a real difficulty. The notion of personal level experience is the notion of experience that is phenomenologically real; the content in which we are interested is the content of experience that characterises the subjects point of view on the world. Personal level nonconceptual content is content that characterises the subjects point of view but is invisible to their concepts. If concepts are the means by which things and properties are brought into experience, then nonconceptual content must be invisible to the subjects point of view. So, how could nonconceptual content be

Of course, it is not clear that this proposition is well-formed if it has a conceptual component in subject position and a nonconceptual component in the predicate position. It is best to treat the propositions that express nonconceptual contents as nonconceptual through and through. For now, I simplify and concentrate on the predicate position. It is plausible to think that if the predicate component is nonconceptual the subject component must be also, for if the subject could focus conceptually on the object represented in the proposition, why not the properties too, for focus on the former would give a basis for the latter?
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part of the subjects point of view? There appears to be an easy response to this protest. The response is to provide examples in which the subjects experience discriminates F-ness even though the subject lacks the concept of F-ness. For example, the subject discriminates a colour shade, e.g., magenta. The discrimination is at the personal level (it hardly seems right to deny that the colour is, in some sense, there for them), and yet they do not possess the concept magenta. So the proposition expressed by: such-and-such is magenta characterises part of the content of the subjects experience but is invisible to the subject, for they have no resources for expressing it.4 It is this response that falls foul of McDowells kidnapping strategy. The fact that the subject cannot express a conceptual encounter with magenta using the word magenta does not show that their discrimination of the shade is nonconceptual. Their discrimination will be conceptual if we say that the proposition that characterises the content is that expressed by the sentence: such-and-such is that colour under appropriate circumstances of use where that colour expresses a short-lived recognitional capacity. This manoeuvre appears to be available to kidnap any putative example of nonconceptual content. The propositions that characterise the conceptual content of a subjects experience may only be expressible with context-sensitive linguistic items, but as long as the subject has some resources for expressing a conceptual discrimination of F-ness, it hardly matters whether or not they have the resource that uses the normal word for F-ness. Lacking the canonical resources for expressing the concept of F-ness does not constitute lack of a conceptual discrimination of F-ness.5 In order to show that nonconceptual content has a role to play in characterising the subjects personal level take on the world, we require examples in which it is correct to say both that the proposition expressed by: such-and-such is F characterises part of the representational content of their experience and that the subject has no resources for expressing a conceptual discrimination of F-ness. They must be conceptually blind with respect to F-ness. Most examples in the literature
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It is only the component in predicate position that I am assuming is conceptually invisible, cf previous footnote. The fact that the expression of the concept is context-sensitive will also determine the extent to which the deployment of the concept is context-free. This matters for the characterisation of conceptual content, see section 2 below.
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on nonconceptual content do not prove this conceptual blindness; at best they illustrate lack of the canonical conceptual resources for discriminating F-ness.6 The requirement of conceptual blindness with respect to F-ness in order to make the case for nonconceptual content reveals the potency of the kidnapping strategy.7 There is a prima facie difficulty in showing both that a subjects personal level experience represents F-ness and that the subject is conceptually blind to F-ness. Nevertheless, the requirement of conceptual blindness with respect to F-ness shows why the conceptualist protest of three paragraphs back begs the question. The protest was: How can experience represent the world as being a certain way for a subject without the subject having some conceptual resources for expressing that way, for concepts are the ways in which things and properties are for us in experience? The problem for the nonconceptualist is that it seems to make sense to suppose that as soon as you notice something in experience it gets conceptualised. So the nonconceptualist has to challenge the assumption that concepts are the only way in which things and properties are for us in experience. What needs to be shown is the possibility of things you notice that you cannot conceptualisethings and properties made available in experience that you struggle to pick up. To pick them up in experience is to make the discrimination available for the rational organisation of behaviour by the subject. The conceptualists protest is question begging for it ignores the possibility of there being elements of experience that discriminate things but which cannot be rationally deployed. Showing that this is possible requires a more radical departure from the conceptualist model than that which depends on examples about the fine-grainedness of experience, but it is not obvious that such a possibility can be ruled out a priori. It may turn out that no convincing examples can be given to illustrate the idea of a capacity to discriminate

Crane (1992) explicitly put the case in terms of canonical versus non-canonical resources for discrimination. Bermudez and Peacocke sometimes express the idea of nonconceptual content in a way that leaves it unclear with respect to which concepts fine-grainedness is characterised: (Bermu dez, 1995 p. 335) the richness and grain of perceptual experience is not constrained by the concepts a perceiver might or might not express; (Peacocke, 1992 p. 67) an experience can have a finer-grained content that can be formulated using concepts possessed by the experiencer. At other times both explicitly characterise fine-grainedness with respect to descriptive concepts. Bermu dez, 1994 p. 403 says that the idea of nonconceptual content is particularly pertinent in the case of modalities for which very few people have a developed descriptive vocabulary. Peacocke (1992 p. 67) says that the content of visual perception when looking at rounded jagged mountains is far more specific than that description indicates. Kelly, 2001 argues that the fine-grainedness argument is too weak. See Heck, 2000 for a different argument in terms of the role nonconceptual content plays in explaining our possession of conceptual content. See also Eilan, 2001, and Campbell, 1997 for a similar view. I discuss this approach below. Schantz, 2001 does not grasp the power of the strategy, cf McDowell, 2001.
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F-ness which fails to satisfy the requirements on being a conceptual capacity, but it is an issue whether it has to be the case that no such examples can be given. By presenting the case for nonconceptual content in terms of a capacity to discriminate F-ness that fails on one of the marks of a conceptual capacity, the dialectic of the debate swings round to put pressure on what is meant by saying of a capacity to discriminate F-ness that it is conceptual. It will not do simply to assume that capacities to discriminate are conceptual. So the issue is this: Under what conditions are we entitled to say that a subjects experience represents F-ness in giving them a capacity to discriminate F-ness and yet the subject is conceptually blind to F-ness? The idea behind the account of nonconceptual content that I want to promote can now be stated. I follow McDowell in taking concepts as filling out the space of the subjects reasons. The conceptual content of experience is content that can figure in the subjects reasons for belief and action where the subjects reasons are identified with contents that figure in inferences.8 So I take the following as a mark of a conceptual capacity: If subject S has a conceptual capacity for discriminating F-ness (their experience represents F-ness in some way), the representation of F-ness must be capable of contributing to the rational organisation of their behaviour by figuring in their inferential reasons for belief/action. This is not uncontentious. I am assuming that the only way a content can contribute to the rational organisation of behaviour is by being available for the subject to deploy in inference. This assumption would be denied by what we might call the Quick Argument for nonconceptual content. The quick argument says that nonconceptual content is content that figures in non-inferential reasons for action, e.g. the content deployed in imagistic reasoning. The best reason for endorsing such an argument is that it introduces a level of content possession of which can be used to explain full-blown conceptual content.9 The case is not proven or straightforward.10 For one thing, there is a danger that the quick argument reintroduces the given, the avoidance of which has been central to McDowells defence of conceptualism. Campbell argues that reference to objects requires selective attention and that selective attention is the notion we need to describe the link between propositional and imagistic content.11 This seems right,

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It matters that it is the subjects reasons, not a third-party account of the subjects reasons for belief/action, that is stake here, cf McDowell, 1994 p. 163ff for use of the distinction between the subjects reasons for action and the theorists account of reasons for the subjects actions. Peacockes argument against McDowell seems to ignore this distinction, cf McDowell, 1998 and also Peacocke, 1998. Campbell, 1997; Heck, 2000; Eilan, 2001. Cf Brewer, 2001 for dissent. Op cit p. 57.
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but runs the risk of leaving conceptual content detached from anchorage in objects and anchored only in the nonconceptual imagistic level of content. That would threaten the epistemological advantage of the conceptualist position that has the conceptual content of our reasons reaching right out to things.12 If the case for nonconceptual content rests solely on the quick argument, the phenomenological point of nonconceptual content is left undeveloped. It also threatens the return of the given. The argument that I give turns on getting the phenomenological detail of auditory experience right. The position I defend is compatible with Campbells account of nonconceptual content, but the route I take shows why the concern about the given is unfounded. My concern is to show the phenomenological place of nonconceptual content, to show that it exists regardless of its potential role in explaining the existence of conceptual content. Given the above as the mark of conceptual content, the trick to showing that nonconceptual content has a role to play in characterising personal level experience is to find ways of discriminating things in experience that cannot contribute to the subjects rational organisation of their behaviour. At the same time, such components must not drop through into the merely causal determinants of behaviour at the sub-personal level. The simple idea that I want to explore can then be summed up as follows: The capacity to discriminate F-ness as contributing to the content of the subjects experience is nonconceptual if and only if the capacity cannot contribute to the subjects rational organisation of their behaviour. As noted, much hangs on what it means for a capacity to discriminate F-ness to contribute to the subjects rational organisation of their behaviour. That is what makes such a capacity conceptual and its absence is what leaves it nonconceptual. The first task in clarifying the case for nonconceptual content is to put more substance to this key idea.

2. The Mark of Conceptual Content Consider hierarchies of concepts such that concepts of level 1 fall under a sortal of level 2 which in turn falls under a sortal of level 3, etc. For example, let the concepts of red, green and magenta be level 1 concepts; colour a level 2 concept; the way things look a level 3 concept. Suppose subject S has an experience that represents magenta, they discriminate it. McDowells strategy is to say that even if they lack the appropriate level 1 expression for the concept, their experience can be kidnapped conceptually by:

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Securing this advantage is the whole point to Brewer, 1999

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McDowell, 1994, 1998, is clear that the conceptual content represented by the phrase that colour is the content of a short-lived recognitional capacity; it is not a content in which the level 2 concept colour figures as a componentcall that a compound demonstrative concept. For the moment I ignore the distinction between recognitional and compound demonstrative concepts, although I shall later discharge this.13 Suppose that the concept deployed in the kidnapping strategy is a compound demonstrative concept. The case for nonconceptual content will be illustrated if we can produce examples of subjects who are novices with the sortal required to deploy the kidnapping strategy. In the case of colour examples we would need a subject who had no grasp of the sortal concept colour and yet had the ability to discriminate, say, magenta, so that we would say that their experience represented such-and-such as being magenta. Their lack of grasp of the sortal colour would then make the kidnapping strategy unavailable, for it requires that the content of their experience is the content expressed by: such-and-such is that colour but, by hypothesis, the concept that colour is not available to them.14 In the visual case it is hard to see how such an example could be available. In part, this is due to the sophistication of our visual concepts and the central role they play in determining action. In auditory perception this structure is easier to satisfy. Testing the phenomenology of music perception against such a theoretical structure is, however, only of value if I discharge the assumption that the distinction between recognitional and compound demonstrative concepts does not matter. Discharging this assumption turns on a key mark of conceptual content in McDowells theory. The mark of conceptual content for McDowell is that concepts fill out the space of reasons. This means that concepts are content components that have the potential to figure in the subjects rational organisation of their behaviour (beliefs and actions). For a representation of F-ness to be conceptual it must have the potential to figure in Ss reasons for behaviour. On the assumption that contents that figure in reasons do so in virtue of figuring in inferences, then in order to have this potential, the representation of F-ness must have a capacity to recur in combination with other contents in inferences. By such means the representation
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Concepts formed from sortals and demonstratives are property-dependent concepts in the same way that demonstrative ways of thinking about objects are object-dependent. Property dependent concepts are ways of thinking about properties that depend on the subject keeping the property in perceptual experience. Cf Luntley, 2002 for further discussion of examples. Lack of the sortal concept colour is not the same as lack of use of the word colour. A subject may grasp the concept colour by using the level 3 of expression the way things look. This possibility is important. I return to discuss it further below.
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of F-ness satisfies the Generality Constraint on content.15 So, if the representation of F-ness is to fall within the subjects space of reasons, it must be possible for it to be entertained and recur in contents other than that in which it is given in experience thus underpinning the rational connectivity of the contents available to the subject. In short, suppose S has an experience that includes the content expressed by: such-and-such is F. If the representation of F-ness is conceptual it must have the capacity to recur in other propositions, e.g., All Fs are G making it rational for S to conclude that: such-and-such is G. The subject might not exploit the connections rationality provides, what matters is that the representation has the capacity to be combined with other representations to underwrite the rational linkages of belief and of belief and action. That the representation has the capacity to be so deployed must, of course, be understood in terms of the subjects conceptual repertoire at the time of the experience, it cannot be a capacity for rational deployment that depended on an increase in Ss cognitive abilities. In conclusion, if the representation of F-ness is conceptual it must have the combinatorial capacity typical of propositional components without S needing to acquire any further information or concepts. This is what it means for the representation to be available to Ss reasons. The test I propose for this is to say that if the representation is available to Ss reasons, there must be an argument concerning Ss beliefs, that exploits the representation, the validity of which is transparent to S. The requirement of transparency is to ensure that the validity of the argument does not require further information or cognitive enhancement.16 For example, suppose S attends to a magenta coloured item and they have only a very limited stock of colour names and a poor descriptive vocabulary for colours. We say that the appropriate part of the representational content of their experience is characterised by the proposition expressed by: such-and-such is that colour.
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Evans, 1982 was clear that nonconceptual content failed the generality constraint p. 104 n.22, but then his notion of nonconceptual content was not a personal-level notion of content. Peacocke (1992), Bermu dez (1995), Heck (2000) also acknowledge that nonconceptual content fails the generality constraint. I draw upon Campbell, 1988 at this point, see also Luntley, 1999, Chapter 11, section 6.
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If it is correct to see this proposition composed of conceptual components, then, regardless of whether it is a compound demonstrative content or the content of a short-lived recognitional capacity, the that colour must be capable of figuring in other propositions inferentially connected in a way that is transparent to S. For example, if S possesses the concepts of brightness and attractiveness, then, without increase in Ss cognitive abilities, the validity of: That colour is bright. Bright colours are attractive. That colour is attractive. will be transparent to S. In other words, the validity of the inference does not require an identity premiss linking the first occurrence of that colour and its occurrence in the conclusion. The inference exploits the subjects capacity to hold that content steady in thought and re-employ it in different whole thoughts. This is mastery of a concept and the transparent validity of the inference exploits Ss mastery. The that colour must then be a conceptual content. A further argument against restricting reasons to inferential reasons is given by Hurley (2001) who thinks that practical reasoning that exploits a subjects perceptions can employ reasons to act that lack the hallmark context-freedom of conceptual inferential reasons. I think Hurley overstates this context-freedom; see also Brewer, 2001 and Noe , 2002. For any account that takes seriously the demonstratively expressed conceptual contents exploited in McDowells kidnapping strategy it will have to be the case that the rational deployment of such contents is context-bound. Context bound contents will only be available for context-bound inferences. This is something made clear by the requirement of transparency above. The transparency of an inference turns on the subject being able to trade on the identity of sense of the relevant component and that is something that, in turn, is context-sensitive. To suggest that the concept of practical reason automatically requires a notion of nonconceptual content because practical reasons do not enjoy the context-freedom of reasons fully expressed linguistically is to ignore the very idea of context-bound concepts that is central to the conceptualists account of experience. It is also to assume an overly abstract model of concepts and to work with too crude a concept of the practical.17 I think there is little value in pursuing the issue who is right about whether practical reasoning shows the existence of nonconceptual contents and reasons without first getting a lot more detail in the examples that show that the conceptualist position is incomplete. I propose then to continue to assume that believing/acting for a reason requires possession of a content that is available to inference. This might strengthen the conceptualist position, but it ends up allowing a more discriminative range of options with regard to conceptual practical reasons and, crucially, the existence of nonconceptual content.
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See Noe , 2002 p. 187 for a criticism of Hurleys overly reflective model of conceptual abilities with which I have much sympathy. See footnote 19 for further issues regarding the idea of practical concept mastery.
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The account of what it is for a representation to have the capacity to figure in the subjects rational organisation of their behaviour places a constraint on the operation of the kidnapping strategy. There is a danger of being too liberal with the kidnapping strategy and thinking that a putative nonconceptual content can be kidnapped just in case the subject is prone to respond with: I f that colour where f is an attitude verb such as, like, want, dislike. The existence of that response alone is insufficient to kidnap the content. For the kidnap to work the representation must be available to figure in an argument that is transparent to the subject. I shall proceed as if the kidnapping strategy employs compound demonstrative concepts. The strategy will then be twofold. First, I shall show that there can be representational contents of experience that cannot be kidnapped by such means because the subject lacks grasp of the appropriate sortal concept. Second, I shall develop the examples in sufficient detail to show that there is nothing to the idea that a concept based on a short-lived recognitional capacity might suffice for kidnapping the representation instead. I start with the compound demonstrative concept. The formulation of the first part of my strategy camouflages an important and interesting range of cases that pose difficulties for the nonconceptualist. These are cases in which the subjects possession of the sortal concept is expressed with higher order sortals. Recall the hierarchy of concepts mentioned above. Suppose the concepts exploited in visual perception arrange in the following hierarchy: Level 1 concepts: magenta, green, circular, dodecahedron . . . Level 2 concepts: colour, shape, brightness . . . Level 3 concepts: how things look, . . . Level 2 concepts are the sortals for level 1 concepts, and level 3 is sortal for level 2. I use F for level 1 concepts; G for level 2 concepts and H for level 3 concepts. The obvious way of exploiting the kidnapping requirement is to say that a representation of F-ness is kidnapped just in case the subject finds transparent an argument employing that G. But that leaves out of the picture the possibility that the subjects mastery of G is, in turn expressed contextually and manifest in their finding transparent arguments employing that H. Of course, for use of that H, to manifest grasp of the concept of colour, let alone colour concepts, we will demand that behaviour manifests a discriminative ability to distinguish between ways things look, and behaviour here will have to include taking the validity of the appropriate inferences as transparent. In principle, however, the expression of the sortal that the subject exploits in order for the representation to be kidnapped need not belong at the next level up from the target concept. Allowing that the appropriate sortal could belong at higher levels introduces the possibility that a large segment of concept mastery could consist in a practical capacity manifested in a complex combinatorial structure whose linguistic expression exploits nothing more than
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complex nestings of that H. The possibility of constructing such an account of concept possession for significant segments of our conceptual explains the power latent in the kidnapping manoeuvre.18 Acknowledging this power means that we have to read the kidnapping strategy in a way that places no a priori restriction on the linguistic level from which the sortal is taken. What matters is that from whatever level the sortal is taken, its use manifests a combinatorial potential appropriate for the target concept. Being competent with a concept, or being a novice, is not a matter of vocabulary. In the light of the above clarification of the way the kidnapping strategy works we can now formulate a confirmation condition for the existence of nonconceptual content:19 Confirmation condition: A representation of F-ness will be nonconceptual if (a) the subject can discriminate F-ness, (b) the subject is a novice with respect to the sortal concepts required for generating demonstrative kidnapping concepts, (c) the subject fails to treat transparently the validity of inferences that exploit a conceptual representation of F-ness. Satisfaction of clause (c) discharges my assumption that it does not matter that I ignore the distinction between compound demonstrative and short-lived recognitional concepts. 3. The Sound of Music In order to construct examples to illustrate the existence of nonconceptual content I borrow some terminology from DeBelliss treatment of these issues.20 DeBellis has argued that an important part of the content our musical experience is nonconceptual. I agree with his conclusion, but not with his argument. DeBellis distinguishes
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The idea of practical concept mastery is frequently overlooked. I return to it in the next section. Bermu dez (1997) employs a simple dichotomy between practical engaged unreflective representations and reflective theoretical representations. Bermudez represents Campbell (1994) as offering just such a simple contrast, as if a practical engaged grasp of causation in action has to be unreflective and thereby not a conceptual one. In fact, it seem to me that Campbell says no such thing. For sure, his notion of causal indexical representation is concerned with an immersed grasp of causation in action that is unreflective, e.g. see Campbell, 1997a, p. 634. This does not, however, mean that there cannot also be a practical form of representation which is reflective and hence conceptual without requiring the apparatus of theoretical representations. Indeed, Campbell (1997b) allows that option, see comment at p. 658 contrasting the theoretical linguists explanations of language structure with the grammarians practical familiarity with structure. From now on, I use practical to pick out an immersed engaged conceptual representation. The concept of practice that I am using is, for present purposes, a concept of something that is in principle open to reflection. This is a strong condition the meeting of which confirms the existence of nonconceptual content. I do not rule out cases in which the subject is competent with the appropriate sortal concept, but in such cases everything turns on the empirical matter of the sophistication of their that G concept. The requirement (b) side-steps that empirical issue. DeBellis, 1995.
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between weakly nonconceptual content and strongly nonconceptual content. The former is open to the kidnapping strategy, for it captures elements of musical experience for which the subject lacks music-theoretic concepts and that leaves such elements open to kidnap by other concepts.21 DeBelliss notion of strongly nonconceptual content captures the content of a hearing that is not the exercise of any concept.22 This is a notion of content for which the subject is conceptually blind. The problem with DeBelliss case for strongly nonconceptual content is that the argument draws upon empirical research into listening abilities which are plausibly seen as involving discriminations operating at the sub-personal level.23 Such examples do not address the phenomenological issue that I want to get into focus. Where DeBellis considers personal level characterisations of experiences, most of the time he contrasts listening informed by music-theoretic concepts and listening not so informed.24 Apart from the fact that lack of deployment of music-theoretic concepts does not amount to a lack of concepts, this dichotomy leaves too much lumped together on the second category. No case for nonconceptual content can be made unless we can rule out the sort of contextualised practical conceptual listening that is characteristic of many musical idioms, especially those with a strong folk tradition. For example, jazz and blues musicians often have a comprehensive and deeply comprehending perception of music without that perception being informed by music theory. They have a sense of immersion in a musical landscape of melodies, harmonies and rhythms that they navigate in a manner not unlike our navigation of the spatial environment.25 This is a form of practical knowledge and practical belief that lies between the novice listener and the musical theorist.26 Indeed, to say that this form of musical knowledge lies between the poles that, most of the time, DeBellis, considers is already to beg important questions. For many purposes, it is the hands-on, ears-alert understanding of where you are in a melody or harmonic progression that matters, not the theoretical grasp. The key concept that I want to take from DeBellis is that of an expectation.27 Expectations are components of experience that have satisfaction conditions. In

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See the discussion of Budd at pp. 268. See p. 28 for DeBelliss acknowledgement of the kidnapping strategy. DeBellis, p. 57. See the discussion of pitch representation at pp. 613. It is, for example, the topic of Chapter 5 although, by that point of the book, his interest is not in the topic of nonconceptual content as such, but in understanding the differences between novice and theoretically informed listeners. See Sudnow (1993) for explorations of the phenomenology of jazz piano that are full of these sorts of remarks. This sort of practical competence is precisely the sort of concept mastery that comes into view once we acknowledge the idea that concept possession can be generated from complex nestings of what are, from the music-theoretic point of view, rather crude sortals. See section 2 above, especially footnote 18. DeBellis introduces this concept at p. 66 to capture a form of musical sensitivity that can be found in Budd, 1985. DeBellis takes the concept from Meyer, 1956.
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listening to music our experience gives us expectations about melodic, harmonic and rhythmic progression. We can think of these expectations in terms of sets of subjective probabilities that capture the way we expect a piece of music to develop. These expectations can be satisfied or not; it is this that makes them representational. To take a simple harmonic example, on hearing a 7th chord, most listeners will have a strong expectation of the related tonic; hearing a D7 chord creates a strong expectation that a G major chord is due. The experience of the D7 chord has a content that represents a sort of tension, it has a pullingnessto-a-resolution quality about the experience of the chord. It is this quality that captures the expectation. Subsequently, on hearing the tonic chord, most listeners have a sense of completion, the music is at rest and there is no further expectation about what comes next. I shall characterise the content of these respective experiences as: (1) and, (2) It sounds I. It sounds V7

I use V7 to represent the dominant 7th chord and I to represent the tonic. (1) and (2) are the theoreticians ways of cataloguing the expectational content of experience; they are not ways of characterising the content by the subject. I shall just say that, for the subject, they have expectations. The expectational content of (1) is that it assigns a high probability to: (3) It will sound I,

an expectation that is satisfied when the experience represented by (2) occurs. Expectations can be treated in terms of probabilities assigned to propositions, but only from the theoreticians point of view. From the point of view of the phenomenology of the subject there is no such propositional content. The issue is whether such experiences can be rationally inert. I shall assume that expectations are rationally inert; the test is to provide an example that illustrates this. The examples involve a novice listener. By a novice I mean someone who lacks both music-theoretic knowledge and the practical competence of a musical performer and, analogously, they lack a practical competence at listening. The practical competence of a performer might depend on music-theoretic knowledge or it might depend on a demonstratively articulated musical knowledge. By the same token, although this is more difficult and rarer than practical competence at performance, there can be a practical listening competence that consists in a demonstratively articulated knowledge of music unsupported by music-theoretic knowledge. Sophisticated cases of this are common in jazz. They involve knowledge that comes from being able to pick
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out a harmonic or melodic progression and recognise it, where the recognition consists in your ability to place yourself within it without necessarily being able to articulate in music-theoretic terms where you are. This is a complicated achievement. A simpler illustration of practical listening would be the case of a guitarist who, on hearing a tune, can recognise the chord progression and find it immediately on the guitar neck. Guitarists can survive with only a rudimentary grasp of theory. It is common to recognise a progression with, as it were, your fingers without stopping to think theoretically about which key you are in or which chords you are playing.28 Exploiting such recognitional capacities gives the listener with practical competence a rich systematicity to their musical experience. In contrast, the novice has no systematicity to their musical listening. It is doubtful that anyone is a novice with respect to all aspects of musical hearing, but most of us are novices with respect to some. That is all that is required for what follows. We need cases in which the novice has an experience that represents some musical feature F. The experience represents F because it produces the expectation appropriate for F-ness, but the discrimination has no generality to it. Consider in more detail our experience of tonality. Much music in the western tradition gives us an experience of being in a key. The music has a harmonic structure to do with our sense of tension and rest within it. The harmonic structure of simple tunes is normally representable with three chords based on the first, fourth and fifth notes of the scale: the tonic, sub-dominant and dominant or dominant 7th. We represent these as I, IV and V or V7. The use of V7 instead of V gives a stronger sense of tonal centre, for the sound of a dominant 7th chord has such a powerful pull towards the tonic that it is almost impossible to hear a dominant 7th chord without a sense of tonality centred on the respective tonic. I suggest that the sense of tonality produced by hearing the dominant 7th is, for the novice, a nonconceptual representational content. This sense of tonality means that if the subject hears the tonic chord, the music will sound at rest. The case I am suggesting involves no more than the isolated hearing of a 7th chord and the way that such a hearing produces a sense of tonality. This is representational because it has correctness conditions and, furthermore, they are correctness conditions to which the subject has some access, for, if they hear the tonic chord the subject will be disposed to say That sounds right. And, similarly, should some other chord be
28

Like the piano, the guitar offers not only the opportunity for playing more than one note at a time, but it has all its notes spatially arranged under the hands. Competence with chord shapes exploits a spatial sense of where the chords lie and what shape they have. A similar point applies to scales. The difference between, say, a Major, Minor, or blues pentatonic scale in so far as it is grasped by anything other than how they sound is often grasped in terms of different spatial patterns across the neck. Such practical competence requires an extensive range of recognitional capacities, but it does not require mastery of music-theoretic concepts. Both the case of the jazz musician and the guitarist are best conceived as subjects who exploit recognitional capacities for the relevant musical properties, recognitional capacities that get expressed demonstratively. I am still ignoring the distinction between recognitional-based concepts and those composed from demonstratives and sortals. The distinction, at this point, does not matter.
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played, they will affirm, That sounds wrong. Let me make this suggestion more precise. I shall say that the novice has an experience, on hearing the chord of D7, that I shall represent as, (4) That sounds V7.

That is to say, there is a way that the music sounds that indicates that hearing G major will be experienced as the music moving to a position of rest. The experience of tonality need not be the same as expecting that a G major chord will come next. The expectation about what comes next can be a different expectation, although in the limited case I am currently considering, the two thingsa sense of tonality and the sense of what is due nextinvariably have the same content. In more complex contexts the content of the experience can be more sophisticated.29 I use (4) to represent, from the theoreticians point of view, the representational content of the novices experience. What I am assuming as uncontroversial is the claim that the novice has a sense of tension in the music that amounts to the expectation that the harmonic progression to the tonic is called for.30 Their experience assigns a high probability to, (5) That will sound I.

The issue concerns the nature of the representational content of the expectation. If it is correct to say that the novice has a sense of tension or pull in the music, then it is legitimate to say that their experience discriminates the V7-ness of the music. Hence, it is legitimate to employ (4) to represent the representational content of their experience. Can the content of (4) be kidnapped? To be kidnapped, the representation of V7-ness must be capable of figuring in Ss space of reasons. It is not enough to kidnap this merely to suggest that S hears, (6) That sounds that way,

where that way is either the expression of a recognitional capacity or a demonstrative concept. Simply claiming a recognitional capacity is too quick.
29

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For example, hearing a D7 after a D major chord might produce an expectation that a G major will follow, but this does not necessarily mean that the tonality is centred on the key of G. It is common, on hearing D7 following D to have a sense of tonality centred on D. In part this is due to the D major chord setting the tonal centre, it is also because the harmonic transition in the move from D to D7 is a common move in a twelve bar blues to introduce the sub-dominant at bar 5. In such a case, the tonal centre stays on D, and the G major chord is the sub-dominant. I make no assumption about the origins of these expectations, although I expect the likeliest source is cultural; it seems unlikely that they are innate.
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An expectation is, even if nonconceptual, a capacity to represent a property that can be redeployed. It is a repeatable component of experiences over time. The repeatability of the capacity to represent a property is not enough to make it conceptual. What makes a recognitional capacity conceptual is its potential to contribute to Ss rational organisation of their behaviour. In order for that way to be a conceptual representation there must be some argument the validity of which is transparent to S without S acquiring further information or cognitive enhancement. The basic idea for nonconceptual content is very simple. Nonconceptual representations are ways in which we respond to the world that we are not able to rationally organise. They are representations that provide us with a response to X, but not a rational response; they are not responses that can figure in the rational organisation of behaviour.31 So the novice responds to V7, they discriminate it, but their discrimination does not and can not rationally bear upon their behaviour. This is not to say that the nonconceptual representation introduces an element of the given in experience. The nonconceptual representation provide a means of orientating directly to the environment, but it is an orientation that produces no rational pattern to behaviour. If such an orientation is to be kidnapped, we need a lot more detail to see whether a kidnap works. First, suppose the expectation is to be kidnapped by a concept figuring in subject position. This requires that there should a transparent argument of the form, That way sound is F Fs are G That way sound is G. For the novice, by definition, there is a shortage of candidates for the concepts F and G. In order for the representation to be kidnapped, there has to be the space in the subjects conceptual repertoire in which the representation can exercise the combinatorial potential that makes it conceptual, rather than nonconceptual. Of course, there could be a conceptual content available to the novice, e.g., if the music does not resolve as they expect, they hear the sound as not nice. But what we need is a conceptual content with respect to V7-ness, not nice does not capture the expectation hears V7. Indeed, with respect to non-satisfaction of the expectation produced on hearing a dominant 7th, not nice is a sophisticated concept, it presupposes that the subject possess some means for detecting the dominant 7th but it does not provide access to, its sense does not determine, the property of being a dominant 7th.
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By rational organisation of behaviour I mean an organisation in which the content is available to the subject in inference. Anyone who thinks that spatial reasoning deploys nonconceptual contents simply because the contents are deployed in imagination rather than pure thought is in danger of assuming too intellectualist a model of inference. As noted above, demonstrative inference has to be understood in less than a fully articulated linguistic structure. I prefer to load the dice in favour of the conceptualist and still find space for nonconceptual content, rather than make that space by assuming a limited and formal model of inference.
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The novice lacks the appropriate space in which the representation can, as it were, be exercised. In general, a subjects inarticulacy with respect to a feature does not entail lack of a conceptual orientation. It does, however, make it harder to see what possession of a conceptual orientation can consist in. In visual perception there is normally a large number of potential sortal concepts available that can be exploited in the kidnapping strategy. Even if the subject lacks the appropriate sortal, the range of concepts that can be applied to visual perception by normal subjects means that appeal to short-lived recognitional capacities to kidnap putative nonconceptual representations is in line with the richness of the conceptual resources of the normal subjectthe content of the recognitional capacity is secured by the surrounding conceptual structure of the subjects repertoire. In auditory perception there is a much smaller standard stock of concepts available for organising auditory perception. In auditory perception, our relative inarticulacy shows up a conceptual naivety of an order that simply would not be warranted when considering examples from visual perception. It is a condition on applying a recognitional capacity, or demonstrative concept, to kidnap a putative nonconceptual representation that there be an argument the validity of which is transparent to the subject. No argument with the representation in subject position appears to be available. There is a sense in which the subject recognises the V7-ness of the music: they discriminate it; it sounds familiar; it makes other musical events sound right and others sound out of place. None of this, however, shows that there is a conceptual representation of V7-ness, for in order for that be in place, the subject would have to find transparent the validity of an argument that turned on the concept of V7-ness. But for the novice, there is no such argument. The novice lacks the sortals for constructing a compound demonstrative concept and therefore lacks the conceptual space in which a recognitional capacity could exercise its conceptual muscle. Consider now the possibility that the representation could be kidnapped in predicate position. Could our subject not think something like this, (7) x sounds that1 way things that sound that1 way sound that2 way x will sound that2 way

where that1 way is the concept that kidnaps the representation of V7? Clearly, the subject might think something like (7). The issues is whether we can show that their that1 way has the right sense to pick out V7. (7) is easy to say, but difficult to mean with the appropriate sense. I have three arguments against such a kidnap. First, for the kidnap to work we need to be sure that the that1 way has the correct reference. Our subject might speak of things sounding that way, but the issue is whether they have a sense that picks out the V7 character that I am claiming the novice can hear. For sure the novice can hear the unfinished quality of the musicit is harmonically incomplete, but that does not show that their that way expresses a sense that picks out the V7 quality of the music. There are many ways
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in which a piece of music can sound harmonically incompletein the right harmonic context the minor seventh of the second note of the scale (IIm7) can have a strong pull towards the tonic. By hypothesis, the novice can hear the incompleteness of the music, but they cannot conceptually discriminate between these different kinds of incompleteness. They need have no sense that a D7 chord is similar in this respect to a C7 as opposed to an Am7. Why then do they hear the harmonic incompleteness of the music? The subject has a conceptual content of incompleteness, but this is a content that does not pick out the V7 quality of the music. There are many ways of sounding harmonically incomplete. So incomplete does not represent V7. Given the vague character of incomplete, why then do they employ this concept? On my account, the answer is that they hear the music as incomplete because they have a representation of the V7 in virtue of the expectation of the tonic that that representation captures, they have a nonconceptual representation of V7. Without this, it becomes a puzzle why they hear the incomplete nature of the music. So, if that1 way is something like incomplete it will not do the job; its sense is too crude to pick out the feature to which novices are able to respond. At the same time, without the nonconceptual representation of V7, we are left with a puzzle about why they say the music is incomplete. The answer, on my account, is that they are troubled by the music, but they can be troubled in different ways. They hear different kinds of troublings even though they cannot conceptually discriminate between them.32 Second, could the that1 way be a recognitional concept? Could our subject simply have a recognitional capacity for picking out V7s? This is not, given the argument against kidnapping in the subject position, a viable strategy. For the that1 way to be a recognitional capacity for picking out V7, there would need to be sufficient conceptual surround to ensure that it was a sense with the right reference. But that surround is, for the novice, absent. My suggestion is that the novice responds each time to V7 chords in a similar way without realising that there is a sense in which their response is similar, beyond the fact that the music sounds incomplete. That is not enough to fix a V7. Suppose a subject has only ever heard V7 incompleteness, that still does not make their sense of incomplete a sense that picks out the V7-ness to which they are responding, for if they then come to hear a IIm7 kind of incomplete that too will sound incomplete, where incomplete is a conceptual content. Third, suppose our novice comes to recognise conceptually the transition from dominant 7th to tonic. Suppose that can figure in exercises of judgement as one of those kinds of completions. Perhaps they even come to recognise subtly different kinds of completions, e.g. the completion from the minor 7th on the second note of
32

The explanation of the conceptual content incomplete in virtue of the nonconceptual representation of V7 fits Campbells model of attention as the link between conceptual and nonconceptual content, but offers no reason to think that expectations reintroduce the given. This point is independent of endorsing a general need for using nonconceptual content to explain the existence of conceptual content, cf Heck, 2000.
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the scale to tonic. Now, unless they can pick out dominant 7th chords, their ability to recognise the move from dominant 7th to tonic would be a mystery. But there is no reason to suppose that because they can conceptually pick out the relevant type of completion, they can also conceptually pick out the 7th chord. Therefore, we can consider the case of someone who conceptually discriminates the type of completion but cannot conceptually discriminate the 7th. Their conceptual ability is then unexplained. On my account, it is explained in virtue of their nonconceptual representations of the dominant 7th and tonics, a discrimination finer than the conceptual discriminations in virtue of which they rationalise their behaviour. What if the novice listener hears a piece of atonal music, or something in which they can detect no tonal centre? Suppose they have an experience characterised by (4), but the music does not resolve in the way they expect and it concludes on an unrelated chord. Suppose our novice then says, (8) I dont like that.

Would this not show that the representation of the V7-ness figured in the rational organisation of their behaviour?33 I think not. The idea behind the kidnapping strategy using (8) must be this: The that in (8) is a conceptual representation for the dischordant way in which the music sounded when the expectation established by (4) was thwarted. If the representation for the dischordant way the music sounded is conceptual and fit to kidnap the that way in (4), it would have to pick out the way such that the inference in which it transparently figured were sufficient to manifest a representation of V7. But, as I have argued, there are no such inferences. There are, of course, inferences available to the subject whose validity is transparent. For example, That awful sound is F Fs are G That awful sound is G What is at issue is not just whether a concept is at play for the novice, but whether there is a concept that represents V7-ness. The kidnapping strategy is a powerful strategy because whenever a subject lacks the normal way for representing a property, they can normally be presumed to possess another sense for the same reference. They lack the music theoretic concept for a dominant 7th, but they might have a practical recognitional concept for it. Such a concept must still, of course, have the appropriate referencethe property in question. In the case of the novice, the lack of conceptual surround means that whatever inferences are transparent for them, these are insufficient to provide a focus for a sense that determines the right reference. The inferences that the novice deploys show, at best, that their that is

33
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Thanks to Peter Poellner for raising this objection.

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too crude for it to a be a representation of a dominant 7th. Despite this, they have a discrimination of a dominant 7th. They hear something that they cannot pick up conceptually. That is an experience with a nonconceptual content. And, at this point, nothing hangs on whether the that is supposed to be a recognitional concept or a demonstratively compound concept; neither are available to the novice. Of course, the conceptualist will protest that if the V7 cannot be picked up conceptually then it is not there for the subject. But whats the point of this protest? The notion of nonconceptual content that I am advocating does not introduce the given. It does not introduce a level of content in virtue of which our possession of conceptual content in general has to be explained. The point is simply to get the phenomenology of experience right. All I am claiming is that there can be representational contents to experience that are unavailable to the subjects inferential reasons (without cognitive enhancement). For much of our experience, such contents are extremely difficult to spot because of the reach of concepts into most areas of experience, especially in visual experience. But there is no metaphysical threat, in terms of setting up a gap between mind and world, in admitting the kind of contents I am describing. They are contents that are part of the minds direct contact with the world. The point is simply that that contact is not rationally structured through and through. There is a background reason for the relative poverty of conceptual repertoire available to the normal auditory perceiver which is relevant to my argument. One explanation of the conceptual richness to most ordinary visual experience compared to auditory perception is the relative priority of visual data over auditory data with regard to action. Auditory perception at the extremes (the sudden introduction of sounds, the rapid increase in volume e.g. in the sound of approaching footfalls) can be highly relevant to action, but much of our auditory perception is, literally, of background noise. Although a similar remark holds true of the other sense modalities, even if much of the content is background noise we nevertheless rely heavily on visual information in organising our behaviour, much more so than we rely on auditory perception. As rational agents, this means that there is a general likelihood that the visual background noise is capable of being picked up and deployed for the rational organisation of behaviour should anything about it become salient. And that is the operation of conceptualisation. With auditory perception, and in particular with music, this is simply not the case. In short, music is, for the novice, redundant to their agency. It might sound nice or awful. They might discriminate elements of the music that more sophisticated listeners can represent conceptually, but the novice, although moved by the music, is not rationally responsive to it. So, when they think the music was awful and conclude that they will not listen to it again, what they are responding to may be the harmonic disquiet caused by the thwarting of their expectations; what they are thinking about is just the music as a whole. They do not in thought reach to those parts that their nonconceptual representations reach. The passivity of the subject in the sort of musical example I am presenting is not unconnected with the fact that the experience is primarily aesthetic. It is an experience that creates a certain impression, but it is not primarily an experience productive of a rational response. Our aesthetic experience makes use of complex
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sensitivities to expectations, combining them in sophisticated ways. And this can be just as true of visual experiences as of auditory ones. Bell provides a compelling account of the experience when a painting previously seen as stubbornly problematic begins to acquire a point.34 Bell is keen to insist that when the painting begins to have a point this does not depend on the subject providing an interpretation. The change in experience is not conceptual. I think this is right and I think the apparatus that I have been deploying in the auditory case makes sense of such cases. As you look at an abstract painting that initially fails to generate any response, one of things that happens is that you set up a framework of expectations about line, tone and colour. Perhaps you begin to allow your expectations with respect to such things to tune in to patterns that are not to be found in representational art?35 The point can be very simple. Consider, for example, such apparently simple art works as Matisses Blue Nude I & II. The art lies not in tearing out pieces of coloured paper to represent the human form, but in producing something in which the balance between elements is just so satisfyingly right. And that, I suggest, is, in part, a matter of meeting visual expectations. Here is a more complex example that reveals something common in our experience of popular music. Consider the chord sequence A, Em7, D as experienced by a novice. A common way of hearing this sequence is as a movement from dominant to tonic via the minor seventh of the second note of the scale; that is the harmonic sequence V, IIm7, I.36 The novice non-conceptually hears the harmonic progression V, IIm7, I. The novice need have no conceptual mastery of the harmonic relationships involved here, either music-theoretic or practical. To say the novice nonconceptually hears the progression V, IIm7, I, is to do no more than note the character of their expectations. The sequence feels complete, it has come to rest. Consider now the difference if the same chord sequence is played in a different voicing of the chords.37 This is still the sequence A, Em7, D but it is a voicing that, for many people, is recognisable as the opening sequence of the James Taylor song, Fire and Rain. What is significant about this voicing of the chord progression is that it produces an expectation that is absent from the first version of the progression. In the new version, the expectation is that the tonal centre rests on A, not D. This means that the expectations can be represented by saying that the novice nonconceptually hears I, Vm7, IV. Each of the chords has a different harmonic value.

34 35 36 37

Bell, 1987 pp. 2367. Like tuning your ear into modern jazz. If these chords are played in root position on a guitar they are typically heard with the harmonic values indicated. On the guitar the difference is achieved by playing the A chord not in the standard root position, but with the top three strings played in the normal F major shape moved five frets up, the Em7 played with the same shape two frets lower and the D played in root position. The different voicings of the A chord are then: (listing the string values from the 5th string up and where x means the string is not sounded) 1st caseA, x, A, C#, E; 2nd caseA, x, C#, E, A.
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The listener is left with a sense of a different tonal centre manifested in the expectation that they will get chord I againanother A chord.38 The change in expectation illustrates something that is, I suspect, very common in our experience of popular music. Our experience and recognition of popular songs is extraordinarily sensitive, for much popular music is built around subtle variants of cliched musical devices. We learn to associate very particular voicings of chord progressions and other features of orchestration and accompaniment with this music. There is a level at which our experience discriminates precisely that song, that chord voicing, rather than at a level at which the song has elements in common with others. We frequently have no concept of the respects in which the song is similar to others. It is important to recall that the expectations at play here are not to be thought of as perceptual cues that prompt recognition where a perceptual cue is something that operates below the level of conscious awareness. The cues are elements of phenomenology. The novice hears the progression in ways that produce different expectations. In the first case, musical experience has a phenomenological sense of completeness. This is absent in the second version that requires a further A chord and probably, beyond that, an E followed by Gmaj7 to complete the opening sequence to the song. It is musical experience at the personal level that is acutely sensitive to changes of chord voicings. It takes an experience of just the right version of the chord progression to set up the expectation that is characteristic of an experience of the song. It does not matter whether the novice recognises the tune. All that matters is that the experience changes with the change in chord voicing. And even if it were claimed that the change were recognition driven, as a result of a recognition of the gestalt whole of the song, it is still the case that there is an element to the experience in the second case, an expectation, that is there to be met or un-met. The element in question is not the recognition of the song. That is conceptuala that song conceptual content. The element in question is the representation of the key, the expectation that picks out the chord that brings the harmonies to rest. It is the musical sophisticate who will notice the similarities between one popular song and another, where the sophisticated listener has either a musictheoretic or practical grasp of musical structure. But that is conceptual. Our novice enjoys a song, their expectations are played with, whether or not they recognise it. If they do recognise the song, the recognition need involve no exercise of a general capacity to detect similarities in structures of expectations. The general idea in these examples is of expectations as components of experience such that their satisfaction conditions discriminate particular musical events and properties and yet have no rational bearing on the satisfaction conditions of other expectations. Having an expectation is having a representational content without, as
38

There are a number of explanations for this change in expectations. One explanation is that the second voicing of the chords produces a descending sequence of notes which emphasises the G natural in the Em7 chord. In a pop music culture influenced by the blues, the G natural, as the flattened 7th note, gives a strong indication of tonality centred on A.
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it were, knowing what to do with it. The subject of experience with non-conceptual content cannot deploy this content in rational action. This explains why it is easier to construct examples that are impervious to the kidnapping manoeuvre in the auditory case rather than in the visual. Visual perception has a more dominant role for us in action control. It is much harder to sideline visual perception from our action than it is to sideline auditory perception. It is not, however, impossible. Suppose you walk into a familiar room in which the furniture has been subtly re-arranged, perhaps a chair is moved slightly closer to the window. It is possible to have an experience of things being not quite right, not quite as expected, but not be able to say in what respect this is so. A related example is that of the person who revisits the botanic gardens last seen as a child. They are puzzled. Everything looks wrong, they find the place troubling. Their expectations are being continually thwarted. They may, or may not, eventually cotton-on that the difference is that they have grown up and an environment that had consistently prompted expectations of being dwarfed has lost this relative hold over them. Once the key point of the idea of nonconceptual content is grasped, the search is not for fine-grained representations, it is for representations which the subject cannot, in terms of their current conceptual abilities, employ in the rational organisation of behaviour. This is not a level of content below the conceptual or a level of content in terms of which the application of conceptual content is in general to be explained. That, of course, is McDowells concernit would reintroduce the notion of the given. The troubling is not the given. It is, rather, direct openness to the world that we cannot at present handle rationally. The account of nonconceptual content proposed offers resources for tackling a number of basic issues. One issue is the relation between the content of experience appropriately ascribed to non concept possessing creatures and that enjoyed by subjects with conceptual understanding. The obvious suggestion is that animals without concepts have an experience the content of which troubles themthey have nonconceptual representations. They have expectations about what will happen next, but they do not have the resources to organise their troublings in a rational manner. We do. To acquire concepts is to overcome your troubles. The speculative hypothesis is that the difference here turns on having a will, coming to conceptualise experience in the development of human cognition is not unconnected with the development of agency.39 The vehicle for achieving this is, as Campbell suggests, attention. Possession of concepts requires possession of will and, for developed human adult experience, you have to look hard, and in normally unexamined corners, to find those areas of experience where we find it hard to exercise will. Dept of Philosophy University of Warwick

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Agency is the ability to alter perceptual inputs at will, Russell (1996) p. 3.

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Meyer, L. 1956: Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Noe , A. 2002: Is perspectival self-consciousness non-conceptual? The Philosophical Quarterly, 52, 18594. Peacocke, C. 1992: A Study of Concepts. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Peacocke, C. 1998: Nonconceptual content defended. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LVIII, 3818. Russell, J. 1996: Agency: Its Role in Mental Development. Hove: Erlbaum (UK) Taylor and Francis Ltd. Schantz, R. 2001: The Given regained. Reflections on the sensuous content of experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXII, 16780. Sudnow, D. 1993: The Way of the Hands. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

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