Does Philip Ball Really Move Beyond Quantum Weirdness?

In 2018, the science writer Philip Ball had a book published called Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is Different.(Did Ball think that the word “wrong”, unlike “different”, was too in-your-face?) In that book he downplays the “weirdness” of quantum mechanics and stresses new approaches to its interpretation. This piece, however, doesn't use Ball's Beyond Weird. Instead it relies on his articles, blogs and a seminar he gave for The Royal Institution. However, it does focus on some of the same issues.

More specifically, this piece concentrates on what Christopher Fuchs calls “the grimacing and posturing” that quantum mechanics often brings about. In that sense, it inevitably focuses on the Copenhagen interpretation; which Ball somewhat favours. It also deals with the Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment; the specifics of wavefunctions; and “informational theory” as it's applied to quantum mechanics. All this is embedded within a discussion of philosophical anti-realism, which (to me) is a useful and even ideal position to adopt within the context of quantum mechanics. (Seeing the Copenhagen interpretation in anti-realist terms is, of course, hardly original.)

The No-One-Understands-Quantum-Mechanics Meme

The physicist Christopher Fuchs (as quoted by Philip Ball and referred to earlier) expresses the problem of quantum mechanics in terms of “all the posturing and grimacing over [its] paradoxes and mysteries”. In other words, for the layperson especially, that posturing and grimacing seems to have become the very essence of quantum mechanics... And perhaps this is even the case for some physicists too.

And from that quantum weirdness there follows the no-one-understands-quantum-mechanics refrain. That's why Philip Ball uses Richard Feynman's often-quoted words:

“I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics.”

Ball picks up on the bizarre nature of this statement when he says that “[a]t that point, no one alive knew more than Richard Feynman about quantum mechanics”. He concludes: “What hope is there, then, for the rest of us?”

So why, exactly, does no one understand quantum mechanics? Indeed is it the case that no one understands quantum mechanics? And what does it mean not to understand quantum mechanics?

To be honest, I find Feynman's remark rhetorical; as I suspect Philip Ball does. After all, it's fairly well-known that Feynman didn't have too much time for the interpretations¹ of quantum mechanics, let alone for the philosophy of quantum mechanics. In other words, Feynman knew all (or at least most) of the relevant maths. “The trouble was”, as Ball puts it, “that's all he could do”.

On the other hand, from a purely scientific point of view, it's easy to agree with Feynman. So it's not a surprise that Ball says that “[s]ome scientists feel the same way today”. Many scientists, in the words (quoted by Ball) of the physicist David Mermin, also say “shut up and calculate”. Ball himself writes:

“Quantum theory works. It allows us to calculate the shapes of molecules, the behaviour of semiconductor devices, the trajectories of light, with stunning accuracy.”

Thus the “theory works”; though “without our knowing what it's about”. And that surely wouldn't be such a bad thing if physicists believed that there's no real answer to the what-is-it-about question. Perhaps some (or even many) do believe that.

So what do the words, “What the maths mean”, mean? What does the maths describe? What is there beyond the maths (if anything)?

Does the mathematics alone give us a full understanding?

The Copenhagen Interpretation & Anti-Realism

Albert Einstein famously asked whether the moon continued to exist when we stopped looking at it. He said:

“[I can't accept quantum mechanics because] I like to think the moon is there even if I am not looking at it."

Einstein's moon is also a good way of putting the ostensible problem with philosophical anti-realism. However, no anti-realist has ever argued (as far as I know) that the moon ceases to exist when we stop looking at it. (That's what idealists argue.) Instead, let Ball himself express the anti-realist position. He says:

“It now seems that something is there when we don’t look, but exactly what is there is determined only when we look.”

In other words, there's no description of the moon “as it is in itself”. Everything we say about the moon is theory- and observer-relative. But this doesn't in any way factor out the moon as a physical object which is, indeed, independent of minds.²

To change direction.

My position is that the anti-realist stance on “the world” (or “nature”) is similar to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. However, whereas Niels Bohr and others might have mentioned measurements, experiments and whatnot; anti-realists have talked of verification, observation, the “public nature of meaning”, etc. Indeed these differences in jargon may not count for much; at least within this limited context.

So let Philip Ball put the “Copenhagenist” interpretation of quantum mechanics in its most graphic form:

“In this comment [from Niels Bohr] lurk all the notorious puzzles and peculiarities of quantum theory. It seems to be an incredibly grandiose, self-obsessed image of reality: nothing exists (or at least, we can’t say what does) until we bring it into being. Isn’t this the antithesis of science, which assumes an objective reality that we can examine and probe with experiments?”

One can see the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation when it's expressed in that way. Yet Ball lays his cards on the table about both this interpretation and his positive view of it. He writes:

“It’s perhaps for this reason too that I think there are misconceptions about the Copenhagen interpretation. The first is that it denies any reality beyond what we can measure: that it is anti-realist. I see no reason to think this.”

Ironically, Ball then puts the anti-realist position in the most explicit way possible when he tells us that

“[a]t the root of the matter is the issue of whether quantum theory pronounces on the nature of reality (a so-called ontic theory) or merely on our allowed knowledge of it (an epistemic theory)”.

Perhaps Ball should brush up on his contemporary philosophy. Most/all anti-realists don't “deny any reality beyond what we can measure”. They say (to put it simply) that this “mind-independent” reality serves hardly any purpose. And anti-realists also believe this for similar reasons to that given by Niels Bohr (whom Ball then quotes). So perhaps, like so many others, Ball is guilty of fusing anti-realism with idealism - or even with postmodern quackery!

Indeed many/all anti-realists class their position as “epistemic” too. Or, rather, it can be seen as an epistemic position on ontology. (Some may see that as almost being oxymoronic.)

So since we have made that point, let Ball himself put the “epistemic” position of the Copenhagen interpretation. He writes:

“Ontic theories, such as the Many Worlds interpretation, take the view that wavefunctions are real entities. The Copenhagen interpretation, on the other hand, is epistemic, insisting that it’s not physically meaningful to look for any layer of reality beneath what we can measure.”

Philosophical anti-realists would be (more or less) happy with that quote. So, again, it's odd that Ball seems to have a negative view of anti-realism. Perhaps this boils down to the brazen technical term that is “anti-realism”. After all, this term can be read as a philosophical position that is against the real!

And in the following quote we can again see why so many people conflate both the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and philosophical anti-realism with idealism. Ball writes:

“Pascual Jordan, one of the physicists working with Niels Bohr who helped to define the new quantum world view in the 1920s, claimed that 'observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it… We compel [a quantum particle] to assume a definite position.' In other words, Jordan said, 'we ourselves produce the results of measurements'.”

One can understand the idealist smell of the quote directly above. Nonetheless, the fact that “'observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it” doesn't mean that that there wasn't a reality (or a something) which was measured in the first place. There was. That something (John Locke's “Something, I know not what”?) was disturbed. So there's an acceptance here that there was a something which was disturbed. It's not as if this something was created out of the blue. After all, the very words “disturbed” and “measured” show us that there was something that was disturbed or measured! Stressing observations or measurements clearly doesn't factor out what is that's observed or measured.

Ball continues:

“People might read [anti-realism!] into Bohr’s famous words: 'There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description.' But it seems to me that the meaning here is quite clear: quantum mechanics does not describe a physical reality. We cannot mine it to discover 'bits of the world', nor 'histories of the world'. Quantum mechanics is the formal apparatus that allows us to make predictions about the world.”

More relevantly and importantly:

“There is nothing in that formulation, however, that denies the existence of some underlying stratum in which phenomena take place that produce the outcomes quantum mechanics enables us to predict.”

An anti-realist (again) wouldn't have a deep problem with any of that. The anti-realist, and perhaps even Niels Bohr, would say that we can't know Kantian noumena (Bohr and Ball both mention Kant) – i.e., the world “as it is in itself”. Though, again, instead of the Copenhagen talk of “predictions”, anti-realists would simply emphasise verification, observations, intersubjectivity, etc. Bohr himself backed this up when he famously said (quoted by Ball) that

“'[i]t is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature'”.

We can now conclude by saying that there's nothing beyond measurement (or beyond observation, verification, experiment, etc.) Or, rather, there is; though there may as well not be. Why? Because when it comes to noumena (for want of a better and more up-to-date word), there's nothing we can say about it. (Though Kant did say a lot about noumena.)

According to Ball, Christopher Fuchs goes further than this and says that

“standard Bayesian probability theory assumes, probabilities – including quantum probabilities – 'are not real things out in the world; their only existence is in quantifying personal degrees of belief of what might happen'”.

Furthermore:

“This view, he says, 'allows one to see all quantum measurement events as little ‘moments of creation’, rather than as revealing anything pre-existent.'...”

In a certain sense, this is stronger than anti-realism in that an anti-realist would never feel the need (I guess) to use a phrase like “moments of creation”. Thus we accept the “pre-existent” without also saying that we can “reveal” it in its complete fullness. Indeed if we don't reveal the pre-existent, then what point does it play? Kant, for one, gave many reasons to accept the importance of noumena – or of the preexistent. Fuchs, on the other hand, appears to erase it from the picture.

This is very tricky. If the pre-existent were different, then surely the “moments of creation” would be different too. And if that's the case, then how can the pre-existent be entirely erased from the picture? Clearly these moments of creation can't be autonomous. They are restrained by the pre-existent. Thus any creation carried out by a physicist is restrained by – and dependent upon – the preexistent. In other words, if we take Fuchs literally and non-rhetorically, his position is essentially idealistic!

Schrödinger's Cat

Philip Ball applies more or less the same arguments found above to the specific and well-known case of Schrödinger's cat.

First of all Ball tells us that

“in neither the Copenhagen nor the Many Worlds interpretation is the cat 'simultaneously alive and dead'”.

In more detail, Ball says that

“I think Bohr might have said something along the lines that 'Observation allows us to speak about the classical state of the cat. And look, it is a dead one!'."

In other words, until we get information about the cat, we don't know if it's alive or dead. It's not the case that it's both alive and dead at one and the same time (i.e., before we gain that information). However, until we get that information (as with anti-realism), the cat may as well be both alive and dead... in a manner of speaking!

Ball also offers up a more original take on the cat scenario. When one reads it, it seems extremely simple yet also powerful.

Basically, in quantum mechanics, why the hell are we talking about alive and dead cats in the first place? Sure, this was meant to be a colorful thought-experiment (i.e., against a certain take on quantum mechanics). However, it's a thought-experiment which many people don't really take to be a thought-experiment. In Ball's own words:

“In order to be able to talk about the [cat] scenario in quantum terms, we need to be able to express it in quantum terms. But we can’t, because 'live cat' and 'dead cat' are not well-defined quantum states.”

I don't know about “well-defined quantum states”: a live cat and a dead cat (both together or separately) don't seem to be quantum states at all. Perhaps that doesn't matter. After all, what's happening here is that we're applying a quantum-mechanical situation (or possibility) to the “real world” - to a cat! And what's wrong with that?

Again, Ball's point seems to be very simple. And, as with so much in philosophy, the simple only seems simple after it is stated. Thus Ball continues:

“What quantum property is it, exactly, that characterizes the superposition state, and that will enable you, unambiguously and in a single shot, to distinguish the two classical states? Live and dead are not quantum variables, and I’m not at all sure that they can be correlated even in principle with quantum variables that can be placed in superposition states.”

Yes, the question really is blindingly simple:

What exactly is it for a cat (or anything else) to be both alive and dead at one and the same time?

If we can't even say what we mean in the first place, then what exactly are we talking about? This isn't a philistine (or “positivist”) rejection of “modal theorising” or though-experiments: it's just a demand that we define our terms, concepts or variables before we get the ball rolling.

Interestingly enough (especially in terms of philosophy), Ball focuses on logic and (sort of) plays down the maths of the quantum-mechanical cat scenario. Firstly he states:

“The paradox lies not in 'two states at once', but in 'two contradictory states at once'. He [Schrödinger] was pointing not to 'weird behaviour' predicted by quantum theory, but to logical paradoxes.”

Forget paraconsistent or dialethic logics here (which can be deemed to be pragmatic logics when it comes to quantum mechanics – see W.V.O. Quine and Graham Priest), Ball is asking us logical questions here. We have some kind of clash between logic and maths. Thus:

“David Deutsch and Max Tegmark say, ah language! What should we trust more, language or maths? Contingent sounds, or timeless equations?”

Yet Ball argues that “here language is articulating something that underpins maths, which is logic”.

If you go with the maths rather than the logic (as it were), then we'll inevitably have some strange scenarios to deal with. Ball cites the physicist Brian Greene's position on the cat again. Greene is quoted as saying: “Your cat is dead, but your cat remains alive.” What's more, Greene adds: “That is you too!”. Yes, “[t]hey are both you”!

Ball delves even more into logic when he says that “individual identity is a logical construct”. He then says that “[y]ou can’t wish it away with fantasies about 'other yous'”. (I'm not sure this is entirely a case of logic trumping maths. Philosophy - or “conceptual analysis” - comes into the equation too.)

Wavefunctions

Philip Ball quotes physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer to back up his “Copenhagenist” position on wavefunctions. Like (it can be argued) Louis de Broglie and Max Born before him, Schlosshauer is quoted as saying that the

“whole talk of waves versus particles, quantization and so on has made many people gravitate toward interpretations where wavefunctions represent some kind of actual physical wave property, creating a lot of confusion”.

Indeed Schlosshauer concludes by saying that “[q]uantum mechanics is not a descriptive theory of nature”. In other words, there is no literal or physical reality which the wavefunction captures. The wavefunction is a product of our knowledge or “information” and also a “mathematical object”. And we only know any actualities (not the probabilities) when the wavefunction is “collapsed” - perhaps not even then.

According to Ball himself, a wavefunction doesn't tell us what is. It tells us what “we would expect to find”. That is, if we do x, then we will find y or z. If we do y, then we will find something else.⁴

There's a temporal division here. We have a certain experimental situation. A wavefunction is constructed (if that's the correct way of putting it) and applied to that experimental situation. That wavefunction tells us what “we would expect to find” given the many variables involved. Then the wavefunction is collapsed – i.e., a measurement is made. That means that there's a gap between that original situation and the final measurement. (Indeed there's also a gap between a measurement and how that measurement is interpreted.)

It actually seems like a crude mistake to conflate where particle x could be with that particle actually being in all the places it could be. Or, more correctly, it's not a case of particle x possibly being in all the places it could be in: it's seen as being in a lot of places at the same time. If this isn't about probabilities but actualities, then there's also a distinction to be made between where x could be and where x is. So how on earth can we argue that saying

“x could be in many places”

is the same thing as saying that

“x actually is in all these places it could be at the same time”?

Thus a particle is not “in many places at once”. It could be in many different places – but not at one and the same time. Being in difference places at one and the same time is not the same as the possibility it could be in many different places.

In addition, particle x possibly being in either spin up or spin down, for example, isn't the same as that particle actually being in spin up and spin down - at one and the same time.

Information and Spin States

Philip Ball also stresses the importance of what he and others call “information”. He contrasts information with “knowledge”. (Doesn't one need knowledge about information?)

Ball allows Christopher Fuchs (again) to express his own informational view. He writes:

“[Christopher Fuch's] approach argues that quantum states themselves – the entangled state of two photons, say, or even just the spin state of a single photon – don’t exist as objective realities. Rather, 'quantum states represent observers’ personal information, expectations and degrees of belief', he says.”

In other words, a photon isn't in both spin up and spin down at one and the same time. Instead, we simply have the “information” that it can be either in spin-state up or spin-state down. Until a measurement is made, we simply don't know which one it is in.

As stated, all this ties into the stress which Ball places on information. Indeed, despite his view on philosophical anti-realism, information plays almost the same role as observation, verification and whatnot do in anti-realist philosophy.

Ball cites the physicists and philosopher of physics Jeffrey Bub (of the University of Maryland) as essentially putting the same point about information and quotes him as saying

“'fundamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles'”.

Thus there's a distinction between what is and the information we have about what is. This, again, is simple anti-realism.

Fuchs (as presented by Ball) also makes it explicit that this stress on information is on a par with anti-realism when he argues that it isn't an “ontic” position. It is, instead, “epistemic”. In Ball's words:

“Fuchs sees these insights as a necessary corrective to the way quantum information theory has tended to propagate the notion that information is something objective and real – which is to say, ontic. 'It is amazing how many people talk about information as if it is simply some new kind of objective quantity in physics, like energy, but measured in bits instead of ergs', he says. 'You’ll often hear information spoken of as if it’s a new fluid that physics has only recently taken note of.' In contrast, he argues, what else can information possibly be except an expression of what we think we know?”

I suppose that this means that stuff (as it were) gives off information, rather than stuff being information in and of itself. Yet this conflicts with what some philosophers and physicists see as information. That is, they believe (as Fuchs himself seems to say) that information is in no way mind-dependent. That is, they believe that information is information regardless of minds, persons, observers, experiments, etc. The philosopher John Searle, on the other hand, explicitly puts the information-for-us position. He writes:

“... information is typically relative to observers...These sentences, for example, make sense only relative to our capacity to interpret them. So you can’t explain consciousness by saying it consists of information, because information exists only relative to consciousness.”⁴

It seems, therefore, that in accordance with the quote above, Fuchs is partly at one with Searle on this.

Conclusion

Philip Ball has a problem with what he calls (as already quoted) “the tired old cliches and metaphors” found in talk of quantum mechanics. So let's offer an extreme scenario which also ends with a question:

i) If the mathematics of quantum mechanics fully accounts for what it is physicists are describing,

ii) and we take away the maths,

iii) then what do we have left?

Alternatively, if there is something over and above the maths, then what, exactly, is it? Is that above-and-above remainder accounted for by, say, philosophy? So here again we can state:

i) If the maths is indeed everything

(though many people don't realise that),

ii) then there's a danger of moving from Ball's tired old cliches and metaphors to new cliches and metaphors if we don't realise that.

This, then, may be the only route possible for Ball. However, it leaves the layperson - and even many physicists - will very little to say about quantum mechanics... beyond the mathematics.

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Notes:

1) To state the obvious: the interpretations of quantum mechanics are, well, interpretations. It's hard to grasp what kind of standing a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics could actually have. The very word “interpretation” seems to deflate what it is that's being done – at least from a scientific perspective. Does an interpretation become something else when it is proven or simply established as true or correct? Do any interpretators of quantum mechanics believe that their own interpretations can be proven? What would that mean?

2) In very broad terms, it can easily be argued that there is no “nature of reality” that can exist separately from - as Philip Ball puts it - “our allowed knowledge of it” . Indeed I would even suggest that the “ontic” position hardly makes sense. What does it mean to have a view of reality that is completely divorced from our tools for gaining knowledge of that reality?

3) To sum up. It can be stated in this way:

Ball's “if-isms” = anti-realism

Ball's “is-isms” = metaphysical realism

4) John Searle argues that causes and effects - as well as the systems to which they belong - don't have any information independently of minds. However, that doesn't stop it from being the case that these causes and effects can become information due to direct observations, etc. of them. Searle's position on information can actually be said to be an account of what's called “Shannon information”. This kind of information is “observer-relative information”. In other words, it doesn't exist as information until an observer takes it as information.

Is Non-Conceptual Content a Kind of Given?

We can go back to the 18th century and to Thomas Reid to see what appears to be a reference to what is now called “non-conceptual content”. Reid wrote:

“[S]ensation, taken by itself, implies neither the conception nor the belief of any external object. [] Perception [on the other hand] implies an immediate conviction and belief of something external.”

Now let's jump to the first half of the 20^th century, when “sense-data theory” was in fashion. An experience of a sense-datum was seen in non-conceptual terms. It is of course true that this position was problematic in many ways. As Michael Williams puts it:

“It is important to see that acquaintance with sense-data is 'direct' or 'immediate' in two senses. Not only is it independent of any further beliefs, it is pre-conceptual. It makes propositional knowledge (involving conceptualisation) possible.”

Now we can jump forward to another distinction offered by Laurence BonJour. He argues that what he calls “sensory content” is not in fact “propositional or conceptual in character”.

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If we return to the sense-datum of a red patch.

That must have meant (i.e., to sense-data theorists) that a red patch sense-datum is firstly experienced and only then perceived as a red patch. That is, the concepts [red] and [patch] are applied to the red patch. (What is meant by “applied” here?)

Thus, the sense-datum of a red patch is a basis of later knowledge, not an example of knowledge itself. It can become conceptual. So there's no reason to believe it is incorrigible, direct, immediate, pure or anything else like that. The Given is only seen as the Given after the fact.

Following on from that, this raises the possibility (or actuality) that even if we accept non-conceptual content, we may still go wrong when we describe it. However, how would we (or anyone else) ever know that? Here we have another problem: the problem of private mental states. (In this case, private sensory content.)

As for BonJour's position.

We can say that such “sensory content” can become conceptual content. And only then can it (as Michael Williams puts it) “justify basic beliefs”. More simply: sensations cause beliefs (i.e., they aren't themselves beliefs). This is a position which will be defended later.

This question must now be asked:

What is the precise nature of the movement from non-conceptual content to conceptual content?

Animals

It can be argued that some animals have the same “non-conceptual content” as human persons – at least in certain cases. It's just that we can (or do) apply words or concepts to that very same content. This is a position expressed (if not endorsed) by Alex Byrne when he states the following:

“Some of the perceptual states of lower animals have contents in common with human perceptual states.”

We can of course ask (in tune with philosophers like Daniel Dennett) how we could ever know (or even surmise) that “animals have contents in common with human perceptual states”. On the basis of their behaviour? (How would that work?) On the basis of their evolutionary proximity to human persons?

In any case, Martin Davies also allows animals non-conceptual content when he says that “human infants and certain other creatures” are “arguably [ ] not deployers of concepts at all”. More specifically, this perceptual content is free “of any judgement that might be made”. 

We can also take the position of Brian Loar.

Let's talk about a dog called Fred.

According to Loar (not his own example), Fred “picks out a kind” - the kind human beings call “human beings”. More correctly, Fred picks out a particular (say, Mike) and sees that he/it belongs to the kind we call (though it doesn’t) human beings. At no stage of the game is Fred’s x is F anything like our x is F. That is, it's not linguistic or sentential.

So how close must Fred’s x is F to our x is F? More relevantly, why do we demand an exact parallel with our x is F in order to allow attributions of concepts and beliefs to dogs and other animals?

Having put the dog's position, it doesn't appear to be an argument for non-conceptual content in that Loar says that Fred (the dog) “picks out a kind”, etc. Clearly, noting or picking out kinds (even if non-linguistically, etc.) doesn't seem like a candidate for non-conceptual content.

Nonetheless, something (or some things) must also come before the linguistic expressions of human persons: both as a species and as individuals. Our linguistic expressions didn’t occur ex nihilo.

Here’s Paul Churchland making related points:

“[L]anguage use is something that is learned, by a brain already capable of vigorous cognitive activity; language use is acquired as only one among a great variety of learned manipulative skills; and it is mastered by a brain that evolution has shaped for a great many functions, language using being only the very latest and perhaps the least of them. Against the background of these facts, language use appears as an extremely peripheral activity, as a species-specific mode of social interaction which is mastered thanks to the versatility and power of a more basic mode of activity. Why accept, then, a theory of cognitive activity that models its elements on the elements of human language?”

Peacocke, Davies and Tye

One direct case of purportedly non-conceptual content is offered up by Christopher Peacocke when he writes the following:

“Only those with the concept of a sphere can have an experience as of a sphere in front of them."

In detail:

“The natural solution to this... quandary is to acknowledge that there is such a thing as having an experience of something as being pyramid shaped that does not involve already having the concept of being pyramid shaped.”

This is problematic in that there may still be concepts involved in this experience. That is, it may still be what Peacocke calls “object-involving”. In any case, this person (or animal) has an experience - and even an experience of a something (x). It's just that he (or it) doesn't have an experience “as of a sphere”. It's a sphere to us; though not to him (or it).

Elsewhere, Peacocke says that the

“content of experience is to be distinguished from the content of a judgement caused by the experience”.

In our example, this would be a judgement that x is a pyramid.

In basic terms, the “content of experience” and the“judgement” don't occur at precisely the same time. Whether this temporal way of looking at things makes sense (or is acceptable) is another matter. I say that because it can argued that the experience and judgement occur at one and the same time.

Peacocke also sets up a relation between the non-conceptual and the conceptual when he says that

“thought can scrutinise and evaluate the relations between non-conceptual and conceptual contents and obtain a comprehensive view of both”.

This question must again be asked here:

What is the precise nature of the movement from non-conceptual content to conceptual content?

Colin McGinn points out the position represented by philosophers like Peacocke when it comes to “representational content”. McGinn says that they accept

“prerepresentational yet intrinsic level of description of experiences: that is, a level of description that is phenomenal yet noncontentful".

Peacocke himself says that “sensational properties do not determine representational content”. (Peacocke cites an example of an array of dots which can be seen as either vertical or horizontal rows^{1 and} Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit seems to be relevant too.) Concepts are part of this story. 

More specifically on representation, Peacocke says that the

“representational content of a perceptual experience has to be given by a proposition, or set of propositions, which specifies the way the experience represents the world to be”.

Does Peacocke mean something linguistic or something abstract here? Does he mean that these propositions need to be articulated or verbalised? And why do we need propositions at all in these cases?

Peacocke also appears to make a mistake about a supposedly non-conceptual experience.

He says that a person “waking up in an unfamiliar position or place [will have] minimal representational content” . Yet surely unfamiliarity doesn’t entail lack of conceptual or “representational content”. This person may still conceptualise his “unfamiliar position or place”. Perhaps this only displays Peacocke’s linguistic or propositional bias. This person may not describe or form “propositional judgements” about his unfamiliar position or the new place he finds himself in. However, that may be irrelevant to conceptual and/or representational content.

To summerise Peacocke's position:

sensation ⟶ perception ⟶ judgement

Martin Davies too makes an explicit distinction between what he calls the “perceptual content of experience” and the having (or possession) of concepts. In detail:

“[T]he preconceptual content of an experience is a kind of non-conceptual content. What this means is that a subject can have an experience with a certain perceptual content without possessing the concepts that would be used in specifying the content of that experience.”

Thus, in Davies's jargon, the “perceptual content of experience” comes first, and only then are concepts applied to it. Indeed, it seems possible that this perceptual content of experience may remain (as it were) free of concepts.

Davies's perceptual-content idea is even more radical in that it “is not object-involving”. The basic point here seems to be that non-conceptual content can't (by definition?) be object-involving.

Martin Davies also divorces perceptual content from the “representational”. That is, the non-conceptual implies (to me at least) the non-representational. According to Davies, that non-conceptual “substrate” is added to by a “representational superstructure”. In addition, the “sensational” is also distinguished from the “representational”.

Finally, Michael Tye also makes a temporal division when he says that

“visual sensations feed into the conceptual system, without themselves being a part of that system”.

One can now ask how “visual sensations” can “feed into the conceptual system” without having some kind of vital connection to that system. And if they have such a connection, then can they still seen as non-conceptual? That is (as asked twice before), what is the precise connection (or link) between the non-conceptual (visual sensations in this case) and the conceptual system? One is tempted to infer (as with John McDowell) that in order for these visual sensations to be able to feed into the conceptual system, then they must share something with that system. Otherwise how does that system distinguish irrelevant sensations from relevant ones?

Despite that, according to Tye, “phenomenal content” is by definition non-conceptual. And he too (like Peacocke) gives us his own division between “phenomenal content” and belief. Thus we have:

“A content is classified as phenomenal only if it is nonconceptual and poised [for use by the cognitive centres].”

And:

“Beliefs…[which] lie within the conceptual arena, rather than providing inputs to it.”

Here “phenomenal content” is seen as input to be worked upon later. Beliefs, on the other hand, are outputs. Is this phenomenal content “the Given”? It certainly seems to be when Tye made the epistemic point that phenomenal content is “poised for use by the cognitive centres”. That is, it comes (epistemically) before such “use”.

We also have an explicit tying of concepts to language from Tye when he writes the following:

“Having the concept F requires, on some accounts, having the ability to use the linguistic term 'F' correctly.”

Yet Tye also cites mental content that is non-linguistic when he says that

“after-images, like other perceptual sensations, are not themselves thoughts or beliefs; and they certainly do not demand a public language”.

It's very hard to see afterimages as conceptual. Then again, afterimages are a very special case of mental content. That is, afterimages don't seem to be relevant to this discussion because they're unlikely (or rarely) to be the basis of later conceptual content.

Critics of Non-Conceptual Content/the Given

Wilfrid Sellars

Wilfrid Sellars (in his 'Epistemic Principles') lays his critical cards on the table when he said the Given

“would be a level of cognition unmediated by concepts; indeed it would be the very source of concepts”.

Sellars was right to imply here that there can't be a “level of cognition” which is “unmediated by concepts”. However, we needn't also conclude (or accept) that these sensations can't be a “source of concepts”. The problem is that Sellars fuses cognition with non-conceptual content. Yet the two needn't go together. Indeed not even an old-fashioned believer in the Given would have believed that. And isn't that why non-conceptual content is a (to use Sellars' own word) “source” of cognition and concepts, not an example of these things?

Incidentally, Sellars himself did make a distinction between the two when he said that a “sensory element [of perceptual experience] is in no way a form of thinking”. So Sellars happily concedes a “sensory element”. Having said that, that sensory element may not come first. It may simply be part of the perceptual experience from the very beginning.

John McDowell

John McDowell explicitly believed that the acceptance of non-conceptual content is effectively a rebirth of “the myth of the given”. McDowell is now well-known (i.e., within epistemology) for holding this position. That is, for his rejection of the idea that we have a temporal division (as I see it) between the mind being presented with a non-conceptual Given, and then a later application of concepts to that Given.

McDowell himself writes (in his Mind and World):

“[T]he content of a perceptual experience is already conceptual. A judgement of experience does not introduce a new kind of content, but simply endorses the conceptual content, or some of it, that is already possessed by the experience on which it is grounded.”

What does McDowell mean by “simply endorse the conceptual content” (i.e., apart from claiming that the content is already conceptual)? What does McDowell mean by “already conceptual” here? How does a concept-based “judgement” differ from the already conceptual “content of a perceptual experience”? And isn't all this dependent on what philosophers take concepts to be?

So McDowell believes that we're fooled into believing that there's such a thing as non-conceptual content. In the case of “rich” experiences (such as when we don't have the words or concepts for particular shades of colour), it's nonetheless the case that we have a “a recognitional capacity, possibly quite short-lived, that sets in with the experience”. (This is similar to the stress which David Lewis made on “recognitional capacites” when discussing the what-Mary-didn't-know scenario. That is, Mary doesn't "acquire any new facts". However, she does acquire new recognitional abilities.)

Despite all that, it's hard to see a situation in which having a “recognitional capacity” can ever be mistaken for a non-conceptual state by so-called “non-conceptualists”. After all, McDowell argues that it's fully conceptual. So perhaps McDowell is wrong to assume that this is an example of a conceptual state mistaken (by non-conceptualists) for a non-conceptual state. In other words, don't non-conceptualists have something more basic in mind when they refer to non-conceptual content?

A Rich Experience

It's often said that an experience which is “rich” can't be entirely conceptual. For example, Alex Byrne quotes a fictional person saying:

“It appears to me that my environment is thus-and-so.”

And who then says:

“So I suppose the content of my experience is rich/perspectival/phenomenal/non-conceptual.”

I'm not sure if this is a good way of putting it because if the environment is seen to be "thus-and-so”, then doesn't that imply that it's not “non-conceptual”?

Anyway. The above is a simple way of saying that this person had an experience of a particular environment which he couldn't completely describe. Or, rather, at the actual time of the experience he didn't describe it; though afterwards he may well have been able to do so. Nonetheless, even after the experience, there would still have been elements of that environment for which he has no words or concepts.

So does this show that this experience was at least partly non-conceptual?

Here's another description of a rich experience from Christopher Peacocke:

“Our perceptual experience is always of a more determinate character than our observational concepts which we might use in characterising it. A normal person does not, and possibly could not, have observational concepts of every possible shade of colour...”

Can we say that an experience is “more determinate” even if it's not conceptualised in any way? In what sense, then, is it determinate? Here there's a hint at a kind of discrimination which doesn't involves concepts, let alone words or descriptions.

Despite that, even if a person has no “observational concepts” or words for “every shade of colour”, that person is said to still note the unnamed shades of colour. But how is that possible without concepts? Perhaps the problem is tying concepts too closely to public words. Surely an animal (say, a dog) can discriminate without public words or “observational concepts”.

Bill Brewer articulates this point in the following:

“For surely a person can discriminate more shades of red in visual perception, say, than he has concepts of such shades, like 'scarlet', for example.”

That seems to be the case. However, according to Brewer, the “conceptualist” has an answer to this. It is to

“exploit the availability of demonstrative concepts of color shades, like 'that_r shade', said or thought while attending to a particular sample, R”.

As can be seen, this is still language-fixated in that although there are no public words for these colour shades, this person is still saying “that_r shade” to either himself or to another person. Surely this rules out any discriminations an animal may make.

So here we may have a “fineness of grain” (or “richness”) without concepts or judgements that implies a level of discrimination which occurs without concepts - or at least without words.

Of course one can apply concepts or words after the fact. One can even invent one's own neologisms for experiences or colours one doesn't know the name of. But we may still have had an experience of the colours without using concepts or words.

We can now go beyond talk of the different shades of colour and say, as Gareth Evans did, that perception itself always (or often) has a “phenomenological richness” which goes beyond the concepts used in perception. In other words, experiences or perceptions are more fine-grained than can be accounted for by simple references to the many different shades of colour. Indeed, phenomenologically, an experience is almost infinitely rich (or detailed). And even if we had public words for everything within it, such words would still never be used during the actual experience itself. 

Davidson on Causes and Sensations

It may be useful to press-gang Donald Davidson into this debate.

Whereas we can stress non-conceptual content, Donald Davidson himself stressed the “causes” of what he called “sensations”. So, in this picture, the causes of sensations can be said to take the place of non-conceptual content.

In the following passage (from his paper 'A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge') Davidson wrote:

“The relation between a sensation and a belief cannot be logical. Since sensations are not beliefs or other propositional attitudes. What then is the relation? The answer is, I think, obvious: the relation is causal. Sensations cause some beliefs and in this sense are the basis or ground of those beliefs. But a causal explanation of belief does not show how or why the belief is justified.”

So it's worthwhile rewriting this passage for clarification and to put it within the context of non-conceptual content. Thus:

The relation between “sensations” (or non-conceptual content) and beliefs cannot be logical. Since sensations are not beliefs. What then is the relation? The answer is, I think, obvious: the relation is causal. The world causes non-conceptual content (or sensations) and in this sense is the basis or ground of concepts (or conceptual content) and beliefs. But a causal explanation of non-conceptual content (or sensation) doesn't show how or why judgements about it are true or false of the world.

Another passage (from the same paper by Davidson) is even more apposite in this context. Davidson wrote:

“Accordingly, I suggest that we give up the idea that meaning or knowledge is grounded on something that counts as an ultimate source of evidence. No doubt meaning and knowledge depend on experience, and experience ultimately on sensation. But this is the 'depend' of causality, not of evidence or justification.”

Here again we can rewrite Davidson in the context of our take on conceptual and non-conceptual content. Thus:

I suggest that we give up the idea that conceptual content (or belief) is grounded on something that counts as an ultimate reality: either non-conceptual content or the world. No doubt conceptual content (or beliefs) ultimately depend on non-non-conceptual content (sensations) or the world. But this is the 'depend' of causality, not mind-independent truth or fact.

In Davidson's terms, conceptual content causally “depends” on non-conceptual content (or sensations) and the world (or causes). However, that non-conceptual content or world doesn't - and can't - in and of itself guarantee us truth. Thus it can't be seen as the Given in the 20th century sense.

In that case, perhaps we can say that our causal interactions with x are the Given; though not the beliefs these causes bring about. In that case, as Susan Haak says, it is

“only propositions, not events [or objects], that can stand in logical relations to other propositions [or beliefs]”.

The causal interactions (or non-conceptual content/sensations) themselves are neither beliefs nor propositions. Therefore they can't “stand in logical relations to other propositions” or beliefs. The causal interactions (or sensations) are causes of beliefs; though, in and of itself, they are neither evidence for such beliefs nor justifications for further beliefs.

In any case, the same causal context - taken only in itself - can cause different beliefs in different people and possibly different beliefs in the same person at different times. The interpretations of our causal contacts depend on our prior beliefs and the prior concepts which we apply to our causal interactions. And even if a particular causal contact brings about the formulation of new beliefs or new concepts, these will still be dependent upon - or be related to - prior beliefs and prior concepts.

Conclusion

To sum up. It can be said that surely there must be some kind of Given in order to get the ball rolling.

Thus in Davidson's scheme we had:

causes ⟶ sensations ⟶ beliefs 

instead of the more basic:

sensations (or non-conceptual content) ⟶ beliefs (or conceptual content)

Alternatively:

i) An experience of x.

ii) Then an experience of a [?].

Or:

i) Sense experience x.

ii) Then sense experience x + conceptual content (or plain concepts).

We can now say that i) and ii) may not, or cannot, occur at one and the same time.

Thus “the Given” needn't remain given. That is, i) becomes ii).

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Note:

1) 

Christopher Peacocke's example of a "sensational substratum" of either three vertical columns or four horizontal rows doesn't seem to work. He says that "we see the array as three columns of dots rather than as four rows". However, isn't that simply because the dots in the columns are closer together than the dots in the rows? If the distances between the dots were identical in both cases, then what would we "see"? The image at the top of the page is more balanced than Peacocke's own example in this note.