[1]
See, for example, Frege’s “Thoughts“, (1918–1919).
[2]
Not that I mean to suggest that it is right to think of Kant as actually offering a psychological account. But it might look this way from Frege’s perspective.
[3]
As both Dummett (1973) and Baker & Hacker (1984) have noticed.
[4]
For a discussion of this fascinating topic, see A. Nagel (2011).
[5]
As Heidegger (1927) would have put it, the things we encounter are always already familiar.
[6]
I return to this issue of the unity of concepts in section 5 below.
[7]
This example is from Stephen Mulhall (1986).
[8]
With this last example we move beyond description to the suggestion of an argument. The thought is that the relevant forms of understanding couldn’t be underwritten by judgement, since we are not able, as a general rule, to frame the needed judgements. Indeed, something like this line of thought is already suggested in the way I’ve sketched the perceptual and active modes above. Recall the celebrated case of Oliver Sacks (1970): a man can’t recognize the item before him as a glove; his powers of judgement are fine—he describes what he sees as a self-enclosed piece of fabric with five outpouchings—and he knows what a glove is. The case is illustrative because it brings out that it is less the fact that he can’t recognize the glove, and more the very fact that he needs to think about it all, that brings home the thought that in our normal life there is no room for that sort of deliberation.
[9]
Intellectualism can be defined differently. For a variety of approaches to problems in this vicinity, see Bengson & Moffett (2011).
[10]
This was David Marr’s (1982) view. The content of visual experience is given in a 2.5D sketch, that is, in a depiction of what is given in the projection of the world onto the retina. It is only in so far as vision yields knowledge that it goes beyond what is given in this intermediate-level representation and gives rise to a fully conceptual 3D model. But for Marr, and for his recent advocates (Prinz 2013), although we live in the world of the 3D sketch, our experience is confined to the intermediate-level representation. And crucially, for these thinkers, you don’t need concepts or understanding at the intermediate level. You just need optics.
[11]
Stanley (2011) offers a different account from that developed in Stanley & Williamson (2001). The former is framed in terms of modal parameters governing the interpretation of the relevant sentences. Although he insists that know-how does not entail ability, he admits that attributions of know-how exhibit more or less the same sort of modality as ascriptions of dispositions and abilities.
[12]
Stanley & Krakauer (2013, p. 5) write: “[b]ut at some point, all such knowledge will rest on knowledge of basic actions, such as grasping an object or lifting one’s arm. These activities are not skills; they are not acquired by or improved upon by raining in adult life. Their manifestation is nevertheless under our voluntary control.”
[13]
See Noë (2004, Ch. 6) for detailed engagement with the issue of the conceptuality of perception and the relation between my own position and that of John McDowell.
[14]
See McDowell (1994). His discussion of demonstrative senses and demonstrative concepts aims at just this point.