case of a red light run. One should note that, in general terms, this is close to Kant's claim that concepts stand on the “unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation” (CPR B 93). Similarly, McDowell describes this relation between particularity and generality as one in which a subject understands a given “circumstance (…) as a particular case of a general type of state of affairs” (MAW, 37)44. Following McDowell, I will also take the relation in question as one in which a subject understands that the same circumstance - e.g. red light runs - can be entertained by me, you, Maria, the policeman or someone else on different occasions.
Regarding (ii), I will take perceptual judgments as a rational recognition that something satisfies - or not - the demands of falling under a concept. In judging “that I see a red light run” the policeman recognizes Maria's red light run as being a particular case that falls under the concept of being a red light run. So the idea is that in judging that something is a case of such-and-such, one commits oneself to the conceptual demands that settle when something would be such-and-such.
McDowell understands the relation between the sensory awareness of particular cases and the commitments to this or that generality in perceptual judgments as a warranted relation. For him, it can be so only if there is a proper rational relation between perceptual experience and perceptual judgment. To say that a relation is warranted is the same as to say that it obtains in the light of other things. In MAW, McDowell uses the notions of “warrant” and “rational relation” interchangeably45. But the reader must be warned that there are different concerns about McDowell's talk of warrant of perceptual judgments.
45SeeMAW, 191.
44I will discuss the implications of McDowell's reading of Kant on generality in Chapter 5. Cf. Gersel 2018.
In general, McDowell uses such terminology to highlight that conceptual capacities can be actualized in the exercise of an active thinking by a subject that is able to appreciate the rational credentials of its own perceptual knowledge46. What McDowell wants to emphasize is that this process implies that a rational subject bears a capacity for self-consciousness. But for us, the point worth noting is that McDowell has different applications to this idea.
Within the context of texts such as MAW, AMG, and TFKG, to name a few, what McDowell (mainly) intends is to describe what he takes to be the conceptual nature of sensory awareness and its rational relation to perceptual judgments. As we will see in more detail below, he focuses on the conceptual nature of sensory awareness as a natural consequence of the idea that rational subjects have a conceptual capacity that could be actualized not only in active thinking, but also in sensory awareness.
In texts such as PEER, PEBRC, CBGS and RBGS, however, he is mostly concerned with issues regarding the epistemic status of experience as opposed to the so-called “bad cases” of hallucinations or illusions. In that respect, such a notion of self-consciousness is meant to suggest that, when things go well, the subject's sensory awareness may include that she is in a perceptual state. To put the point another way, when a subject perceives that things are thus and so, experiential warrant is guaranteed, according to McDowell, by the self-conscious character of sensory awareness, that is, by the fact that self-consciousness includes her being in a perceptual state. So self-consciousness here relates to the matter of whether or not
46SeePEBRC, 151.
veridical experiences can warrant perceptual knowledge, as well as how this relates to the epistemic standing of a rational subject both in the bad and good cases47.
Those two applications must not be conflated. Although they are related to each other, McDowell stresses that regarding content and its relation to conceptual capacities, they concern different issues. He notes the following with respect to this specific topic of the epistemic standing of a rational subject: “there is no need to attribute content to perceivings, let alone to speak of concepts” (...). I do not speak of concepts in [PEER]. Where I do speak of concepts, my governing concern is (...) with the property of being conceptual, which I conceive as belonging primarily to certain capacities, and only thereby to certain contents” (RBGS, 395). Moreover, he emphasizes that in the case of the epistemic status of sensory awareness, his “point is about the capacity for knowledge through perception, not directly aboutthe experiences that subserve it” (RBGS, 390, emphasis added). I would like to make clear that “the experiences that subserve” perceptual knowledge is exactly the concern of this Thesis, and that I will focus on the nature of sensory awareness and its relation to perceptual content instead of issues regarding the epistemic status of experienceper se.
Accordingly, one should note that I will use and take “rational relation” and
“warrant” interchangeably to refer to that kind of relation in which perceptual experience bears a rational link with perceptual judgments. In that regard, McDowell stresses that a perceptual judgment is said to be rational only when relations within the space of concepts obtain - the ones “which link the contents of judgments of experience with other judgeable contents” (MAW, 12). That said, our question now is as follows: how sensory awareness can be in rational relation to perceptual judgments?
47See Sedivy 2019 for an overview of McDowell's position on these issues.
Authors such as Travis (2004, 2007, 2013), Campbell (2002), and Brewer (2019) argue, from what is often called an Anti-representationalist view, that the rationality of perceptual judgments is sufficiently provided by the relation between a subject and the sensible features presented by her experience. I will take a closer look at Anti-representationalist accounts in Chapter 5. For now, what I want to stress is that according to them, the cognitive capacity to bring worldly items under concepts is an act that occurs only downstream from sensory awareness.
McDowell agrees with the idea that to make a perceptual judgment is to take a
“step beyond” sensory awareness since the latter does not involve any intellectual activity, such as properly thinking about a worldly item. For him, when a subject exercises her cognitive capacities for perceptual judgment “she makes something of what she perceives” (RBGS, 390). He also agrees with the idea that our perceptual contact with the world obtains through a direct relation with particular worldly items and their sensible features48.
This relation - “[the] experience of the world that puts us in a position to think about it”, as Campbell expresses it49- is seen by McDowell in what he calls anormative way: “[The] relation between mind and world is normative (...) in this sense: thinking that aims at judgment (...) is answerable to the world - to how things are (...)” (MAW, xii). But for McDowell, this normative responsiveness to the world could be considered properly normative and relevantly rational only insofar as it is understood as a relation in which not only perceptual judgments but also perceptual experiences are taken as involving cognitive capacities: “we cannot really understand the relations in virtue of which a
49Campbell 2002:1.
48SeeAMG, 11.
judgment is warranted except as relations within the space of concepts (...), which hold between potential exercises of conceptual capacities” (MAW, 7). McDowell's point is that to guarantee that this relation is rational we must presuppose that the same capacity exercised when we bring wordly items under concepts – for example, when we make perceptual judgments – is somehow also in operation when worldly items are perceptually given to us in experience50.
In MAW, McDowell claims that insofar as perceptual experience involves conceptual capacities, they exhibit a content that presents particular worldly items in experience as truth-makers of our perceptual judgments: “The very idea of representational content brings with it a notion of correctness and incorrectness:
something with a certain content is correct, in the relevant sense, just in case things are as it represents them to be. I can see no good reason not to call this correctness ‘truth’”
(MAW, 162). The notion of content, as we can see from the citation above, is something that McDowell defends as his view on the nature of sensory awareness at least since MAW. But it is important to clarify what McDowell has in mind when he uses terms such as “content” and “representation”. It should be noted that McDowell no longer treats experience as having a representational character. He now believes that “[e]xperiences of perceiving do not represent what their subject perceives; they revealit” (RBGS, 393, emphasis added). Nevertheless, McDowell still refers to sensory awareness as involving conceptual content, at least in a certain sense51. But what sense is that? I will address this issue in detail in the next section.
51SeeRBGS, 391.
50 McDowell's talk of operation instead of exerciseis crucial when he refers to perceptual experiences. What he wants to emphasize is that whilst judgments, with their discursive and intellectual character, are the paradigmatic exercises of conceptual capacities, “In experience conceptual capacities are passively drawn into operation” (RBGS, 391). I will take a closer look at McDowell's idea that conceptual capacities have a passive character in experiences in a moment.