PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO NON-CONCEPTUAL CONTENT
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO NON-CONCEPTUAL CONTENT

Summary/Abstract: Over the past years McDowell’s conceptualist theory has received mixed phenomenological reviews.Some phenomenologists have claimed that conceptualism involves an over-intellectualization ofhuman experience. Others have drawn on Husserl’s work, arguing that Husserl’s theory of fulfillmentchallenges conceptualism and that his notion of “real content” is non-conceptual. Still others, bycontrast, hold that Husserl’s later phenomenology is in fundamental agreement with McDowell’stheory of conceptually informed experience. So who is right? This paper purports to show thatphenomenology does not have to choose between any of these positions. Central to the outlineI offer is that there are multiple approaches to non-conceptual content in play today. By separatingthem we can begin to oversee the diversity of phenomenological contributions to the debate aboutnon-conceptual content. I conclude that current literature presents us with at least three soundphenomenological accounts of non-conceptual content, but also that these are generally notincompatible with conceptualism.

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