Are there some facets of perceptual experience which cannot be characterized as conceptual?

Question

Some philosophers (e.g John McDowell) argue that the content of perceptual experience is necessarily characterized by conceptual terms; namely - the content of the experience is entirely built of concepts possessed by the subject of experience. Others (e.g. Hubert Dreyfus) claim that there are necessarily some aspects of the perceptual experience which cannot be characterized as conceptual.

My question: To what extent the content of our perceptual experience is conceptual? Are there any examples demonstrating that some facets of perceptual experience cannot be characterized as conceptual? What do we have to assume in order to arrive at a conclusion that perceptual experience must be conceptual "all the way down" ?

Notes:

(1) In light of a comment received below - let me further clarify: The notions of 'concept' and 'experience' belong to abstract and concrete realms respectively. The question I posed seeks to find out - in what ways a perceptual experience can or cannot be devoid of concepts? (The question could be seen in some way as parallel to the question of the relation between theory and observation; though the one I raised is more basic)

(2) My current tentative conjecture is that if we talk of some kind of religious experience than we have an extreme example of some possibly perceptual experience that is devoid of concepts by means that it is ineffable. But I will welcome any other directions - perhaps such that are drawn in addition from philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, phenomenology and philosophy of science.

Answer 1

I take your term "conceptual" to really be getting at representational, where information is really being represented and "deliberated" on. Allow me to give some examples:

Many studies show (as Dreyfus argues in many papers) that skilled labor actually occurs in a non-representational fashion. For example, a chess-master need not consciously deliberate on the "best" or most "rational move" in order to play well. In fact, this conscious deliberation causes people who engage in skilled labor to become more inept than they normally are. To take a mundane example, when I see someone who is angry, I don't need to actively represent some information about anger to verify that a person is indeed angry.

There is some complexity that goes into this, and I would recommend a paper called "Intelligence Without Representation," that talks about being-in-the-world and maximum grip theory very succinctly.

By contrast, even Dreyfus admits to the fact that some representation does occur. For example in self-reflection or the rational deliberation of a particular belief/propositional attitude (i.e How many people are in the U.S? should people gamble?)

However, some such as Richard Moran argue that even though information is being represented, our primary means of introspection is non-inferential/non-perceptual/immediate, meaning that propositional attitudes are actually self-constituted by introspection.

To complicate things further, take one of the tenets of the somatic marker hypothesis, which argues that some of our emotional states are actually a conscious or unconscious representation of a particular emotional body state, suggesting that some parts of phenomenal consciousness. Similarly, if part of our conscious deliberation is based on emotional content, then some parts of prop. attitudes might actually be non-representational.

Needless to day, any argument that floats around "fully conceptual" would be facile in its approach without addressing the concerns of many, many philosophers.

From an intuitive perspective, it's hard to believe that every decision we make is some rational deliberation of evidence (for example. every step you take in a particular direction) but it also feels strange to admit to the fact that all decisions don't depend on some so-called "conceptual content" or informational representation.

This is ignoring mind-extension theory, how conceptual content might alter phenomenal experience (vice versa), causal pathways in the mind, potential metaphysical reduction, self-knowledge (what kind of "concepts" exist?) and so forth.

There is a lot going on, so it is a difficult question to answer in this kind of format. I would suggest starting with that Dreyfus essay. Perhaps Moran's "Authority and Estrangement," some Ned Block David Chalmers etc., perhaps some literature on the somatic marker hypothesis. It sounds like you would also enjoy donald davidson's "mental states" and Charles Taylor.