A More Serious Problem for McDowell

On McDowell's new view, any particular bit of intuitional content can be brought to consciousness -- can be recognized, made explicit, articulated -- by merely the addition of the "I think" -- so to speak, by willing it into consciousness.

This would not be the case if intuitional content were rich enough to include whatever a recognitive capacity might allow one to gain knowledge of via a particular experience, as I had suggested in my previous post. For then the articulation of the content of an intuition might require the exercise of recognitional capacities which were not already in play in having an intuition with a particular content (since intuitions with the same content can be had by thinkers with different recognitive capacities).

I suspect that McDowell holds that the concepts of "common and proper sensibles" are in some sense necessary for one to be able to have experiences at all. In the first appendix to Mind and World McDowell suggests that "interesting" analytic judgements can be maintained through reference to "necessary" aspects of any possible view of the world (he apparently takes this view over from Jonathan Lear). So there's reason to think McDowell finds this sort of talk plausible (whereas I do not). If he does think that the concepts of "common and proper sensibles" are a priori (in the sense of being necessarily had by any thinker, by anyone with a "view of the world"), then the exercise of such conceptual capacities as would be needed to articulate an intuitional content can plausibly be said to not involve any special recognitive capacities, since all of the concepts involved are "in the mind a priori" and don't need special education to acquire. I still think that the conceptual capacities involved in articulating an intuitional content have to be recognitive capacities, since being able to articulate a particular content requires being able to recognize it as the same content as might occur elsewhere (in things with the same shape, size, etc.). Being able to articulate an intuitional content is being able to recognize that content, even if the particular content articulated is one that the thinker has not encountered before. If I only recognize an octagon on one occasion, and do not recognize it as being the same shape as other octagonal things I encounter on other occasions, then I can't be said to have recognized the shape of the octagon.

I don't think is how McDowell uses "recognition"-talk; he seems to reserve it for what I called above "special recognitive capacities". I don't see how they can really be so opposed, though. All of my recognitive capacities are capacities to recognize something when it is sensibly present to me in experience (as with McDowell's cardinal); that is what makes them "recognitive". So all recognitive capacities involve (in some sense) recognizing what I am given in experience, and so knowledge gained by such capacities can't be simply opposed to knowledge gained by articulating intuitional content, on the grounds that the latter is knowledge gained by bringing to consciousness what is given in experience. For both sorts of knowledge are the bringing to consciousness of something presented to me in experience. (The one as part of an intuitional content, the other as... I don't know what McDowell says here. My complaint about "exculpation" in the previous post stands.)

So, this is why McDowell doesn't think that intuitional content involves more than a scant number of concepts: it is able to be articulated by the mere addition of the 'I think". No recognitive capacities are required, apart from those already "passively actualized" in having an intuition with a particular content.

In a footnote, McDowell notes that intuitional content can be remembered without having been made discursive (though it's easier to remember if it has been so articulated, as a fact about our psychology). I suppose the idea is that if I've seen an object with a particular shape, I can call up the shape in memory and make explicit just how it looked. "It had... eight corners, and three of them were bent like this, and the rest were right angles." This seems plausible enough. And for thinkers who lack such numerical concepts as "eight" and "right angle", it seems plausible that they might still be able to draw a picture of the object, or sculpt it, or at least recognize it as the same shape if they saw it again. But then I'd think it would also apply to aspects of objects which do not involve common and proper sensibles: "The thing I saw was made of... oh, I have it, it was made of ice, and was sort of a pinkish-red." So however the mass of our noninferential judgements get their justification, they can be related to memory in the same way as judgements justified by their articulating intuitional content. If I don't consciously note that something is made of ice when it's in view, I can recognize it as made of ice by examining it in memory, later on.

Given this latter capacity, exemplified in my ability to recognize that the object I saw the other day was made of ice (though I hadn't articulated this fact at the time the object was present to me), it seems that my recognitive capacities cannot be limited by the concepts which were "passively actualized" in having an intuition with a particular content. For I might see a pink ice cube on Tuesday, learn to recognize what ice cubes look like on Wednesday, and then, on Thursday, noninferentially gain knowledge that the thing I saw on Tuesday was made of ice (because I remember what it looked like, and I now have the ability to recognize cubes made of ice as being made of ice when I see them).

So, I am able to gain noninferential knowledge from being given an intuition with a particular content without the having of that intuition having involved the actualization of all the concepts involved in the noninferential knowledge which it entitles me to. For I can noninferentially know that what I saw on Tuesday was ice, yet it was not possible for my having been given that intuition to have been an actualization of my conceptual capacity to recognize ice, for I had no such capacity at the time I saw the ice cube. (To sharpen the picture, suppose the ice cube I saw on Tuesday was the first time I had ever encountered ice of any sort, and then Wednesday was spent (by coincidence, since I don't think of Tuesday's cube again until Thursday) encountering a great deal of ice, learning about it, practicing distinguishing it from glass and transparent plastic, etc. So on Tuesday I had no concept of "ice", and by the end of Wednesday I had become proficient in handling encounters with ice knowingly, and on Thursday I gain a bit of noninferential knowledge about what I saw on Tuesday.)

So, if all knowledge gained noninferentially on the basis of experience involves recognitive capacities similar to the capacity involved in my recognizing ice, then it might seem that intuition does not involve an actualization of conceptual capacities at all. For an intuition might entitle me to noninferential knowledge despite such knowledge involving concepts which were not possessed by me at the time of my having the intuition. But if intuition did not involve the actualization of any conceptual capacities, then it's hard to see how such entitlement could be anything but the Mythical Given. For nothing outside the "space of reasons" has import within that space, and the space of reasons is thoroughgoingly conceptual; justifying and being able to justify is a linguistic affair. But it's not clear to me how McDowell's current position on noninferential knowledge gained apart from the articulation of intuitional content isn't similar Mythically Given. For if the articulated content of an intuition is something like "There is a cube at rest in front of me", then how can this justify my noninferential knowledge that "There is a pinkish-red cube made of ice at rest in front of me"? It doesn't help if the cube is (in fact) pinkish-red and made of ice, since these aspects of the ice cube are not things which were made visible to me in the content of the intuition I was given, which is the only means by which I have a view of the ice cube. (It also doesn't help that the intuitional content is infinitely richer than "There is a cube in front of me", since, for all its richness, it involves only concepts of proper and common sensibles.)

So: We must make it clear how noninferential knowledge can be gained on the basis of an intuition the having of which did not involve the actualization of conceptual capacities the possession of which is a necessary condition for being able to gain said noninferential knowledge. This puzzle seems to stand regardless of whether or not we follow McDowell in his recent limitation of the concepts which are involved in intuitional content.

For, if the concepts involved in the having of an intuition are not limited to those of "common and proper sensibles", they still must be limited by the conceptual capacities of the thinker who has a particular intuition. For capacities that are not present can't be actualized, passively or no. And yet, since intuitional content may be recollected, an intuition may entitle a thinker to noninferential knowledge which he could not have gained at the time of the intuition. The content of an intuition thus seems to be both limited by the conceptual capacities a thinker has and not limited by the conceptual capacities a thinker has. McDowell's current position is available to avoid this, by narrowing the concepts involved in the content of an intuition, but this still leaves the justificatory problem. Where I previously thought I saw a way out of this difficulty, I now see that my "solution" was a chimera.