NON-CONCEPTUAL CONTENT - FROM PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE TO SUB-PERSONAL COMPUTATIONAL STATES

Philosophers have often argued that ascriptions of content are appropr iate only to the personal level states of folk psychology. Against thi s, this paper defends the view that the familiar propositional attitud es and states defined over them are part of a larger set of cognitive processes that do not make constitutive reference to concept possessio n. It does this by showing that states with nonconceptual content exis t both in perceptual experience and in subpersonal information-process ing systems. What makes these states content-involving is their satisf action of certain basic conditions deriving from a general account of representation-driven behaviour that is neutral on the question of con cept possession. It is also argued that creatures can be in states wit h nonconceptual content even though they possess no conceptual abiliti es at all.