Could mental representation be entirely non-conceptual?

Think of it more like training, accompanied by pre-existing conditioning. There are only so many ways to see, and interact with the world that actually work. If the representational faculties of the brain are destroyed, your training and instinct will still allow you to interact with the world in a trained, and instinctual way. You can have everything above the brain stem removed, and no one (including yourself) would even notice. The only difference is that you'd loss all inhibition, become super exploratory, and couldn't learn anything new.

Reply to Wosret So it's an entity that sees, hears, tastes, feels, and responds to the world, but it never sees that, hears that, feels that...? What takes the place of thought is instinct.

I think that perception is non-conceptual at times, or rather, all the time to some extent (but not all the time in every aspect). It's simply a matter of observing/being aware of things but not thinking conceptually about them--not thinking about what you name those things (a la types), what makes them that type versus something else, etc.

Reply to Mongrel

Thought is made of hope and fear. It directs you towards desirable possibilities that are not ready at hand, and away from possible dangers that are not ready at hand. Representing stuff to yourself is always about one of these two things, and the forms, and modes that they take effect your dispositions towards the ideas, as well as your levels of desire and aversion. They're useful for bringing things up from the past in order to direct the future. They aren't actually necessary to get by, and they can so greatly diverge from reality that they can become entirely wrong about how you reacted and will react, and can even be entirely unpracticable.

When you're thinking, you're ignoring your senses in order to develop these projections. Thought takes the place of sense in every moment that you're thinking.

The brain activity, non-consciously constructs our perceptions. We don't experience "raw" perception. By the time a perception hits the executive part of put brain, where we can consider it, it's already gone through filters that include our preconceived notions about how the world works. Our model of the world isn't created by what we perceive, or at least not solely, but it is not entirely untrue that our model of the world determines what we perceive. It's a (to some extent) self-correcting feedback loop.

Should also say, that extracting memories in order to create projections alters the memories. You use a conceptual scaffolding to give form to memories, which are emotionally tagged, and remembered because of their emotional significance, and you may not even have the conceptual tools to bring them into focus. When you can and do, you alter them based on that scaffolding, which is a general form, and recreate the details every time, and store them differently depending on how you feel about them at the time of recollection or when you're done with them.

Quoting Wosret

Representing stuff to yourself is always about one of these two things, and the forms, and modes that they take effect your dispositions towards the ideas, as well as your levels of desire and aversion.

I've been doing a lot of fiber art lately and I've had a number of episodes of a kind of paralysis where an image of something that hasn't happened yet takes me over. In some cases it has to do with a way of doing something. It doesn't seem like something I'm doing. It happens to me in pretty much exactly the same way seeing an amazing flower or arrangement of clouds would arrest me. Are those things necessary to get by? No, probably not necessary, but I can imagine the same thing happening to somebody out in the desert.. a sudden inspiration of how to find water comes and momentarily paralyzes. I'm guessing that in the old days a person who gets that a lot would be called a seer.

Quoting Wosret

When you're thinking, you're ignoring your senses in order to develop these projections. Thought takes the place of sense in every moment that you're thinking.

I agree.

Reply to Terrapin Station So you don't see mental representation that's totally non-conceptual as a viable viewpoint?

Reply to Reformed Nihilist Hi dude! You're expressing my usual attitude. We see ideas. I was just exploring the opposing view.

Reply to Mongrel

Maybe that much greater thing that overtakes you is the real you, and the "seer" is what's unnecessary. Being receptive, engaged, not thinking, that's when the soul emerges, but the greatness, and excitement of it ironically distracts us from it immediately. It's such an amazing thing, that we turn our backs on it the moment it surfaces in order to replay that little tiny piece of it back to ourselves in a million different ways.

Quoting Mongrel

So you don't see mental representation that's totally non-conceptual as a viable viewpoint?

Not all the time, in all respects if we're talking about persons.

It's viable some of the time in all respects, and all of the time in some respects.

Reply to Mongrel Sure. I hope my post added some information that was useful.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Not all the time, in all respects if we're talking about persons.

It's viable some of the time in all respects, and all of the time in some respects.

One of the things this view commits you to is qualia. Before I try to change your mind about that, do you really accept qualia as a form of mental representation?

Quoting Wosret

Maybe that much greater thing that overtakes you is the real you,

It's not a greater thing. It's little bubbles of red silk poking out of black wool. I've got a dye called "oxblood red." Oddly, it isn't what's normally thought of as oxblood. It's actually blood red.

Reply to Mongrel

Is it possible to eliminate the conceptual element altogether?

We do have a lot of repetitive functions that seem to involve very little thought. Such as coming to a stop at a red light while driving. There must be some short cut processes in us.

Perhaps some seers had brain issues in the form of epilepsy. I recently read speculation that Paul had a form of frontal lobe disorder as explanation of why he fell off his horse, but this is not a very popular explanation in Christian circles.

Reply to Cavacava Frontal lobe disorder probably wouldn't go over well with the faithful.

The topic sort of starts with realism about mental representation. Maybe it could be reframed as "what is thought.. concept or sensation?"

A proponent of the non-conceptual view would be Hume. Maybe exploring his view would shed light.

Quoting Mongrel

do you really accept qualia as a form of mental representation?

As a form of mental representation, no. But I certainly accept qualia as a mental phenomenon.

Reply to Mongrel

"what is thought.. concept or sensation?"

I think sensation is a two stage process. What we are aware of is filtered, we pick out what deem important but this occurs at a different level than our initial awareness, and both stages occur in millionths of a second. I think both are possible, the same tree I pass each and every day does not provoke any thought, it is simply given. The tree that just crashed into the house provokes all sorts of representations which I can't easily get out of my mind.

Perhaps the ordering of sensations give rise to concepts and the ordering of concepts give rise to thought, where intentionality is a product of our organism as a whole. I think the work of the intellect is done in an imaginary space, where reason, desire & memory interact. The vehicle for this interaction is language, which already is ordered, meaningful, already valued both rationally and emotively.

Reply to Terrapin Station You allow qualia, but not as mental representation. Then explain again what sort of mental representation you support?

Quoting Cavacava

I think the work of the intellect is done in an imaginary space, where reason, desire & memory interact. The vehicle for this interaction is language, which already is ordered, meaningful, already valued both rationally and emotively.

If I understood correctly, you're describing one theory of mind that involves a sort of grand central station. When you say the vehicle for interaction is language, could you explain what you mean? Give an example?

Reply to Mongrel

Well you talk to yourself don't you. Something like 90% of our language use is our own internal dialogue with our self.

Reply to Cavacava Not as much as some people do. It blew my mind the first time I met someone who claimed to experience that internal voice constantly. I didn't believe it at first.

Do you think of that voice as the bulk of mental representation?

I think language constitutes thought, but I don't think it is thought, I think thought is the workings of that "grand central station".

Reply to Mongrel

Well, I don't know how narrowly you're defining "mental representation." For example, I don't know if you'd say that perception on a direct realist account is "mental representation" (arguably it isn't because it's different than represenatationalism, but if we're using "mental representation" far more loosely, then maybe it counts).

If we're using "mental representation" more narrowly, I'd say that something like visualization is an example of mental representation.

Reply to Cavacava I was wondering if you meant the voice is hardware (the walls and ceiling of the station) or software (the dance of the travelers through the station...did you ever see The Fisher King with Robin Williams?)

Reply to Terrapin Station The SEP article defines mental representation loosely. That was the meaning I was using.

I think I'll just go back through Bundle Theory. Are you familiar with that?

Reply to Mongrel Inner voice, is more like the trains that enter and leave the station...thought-trains.

I saw the Fisher King a long time ago. The scene at the station where everyone was waltzing, the disorganized crowd started to move to the rhythm of the music. I don't think sensations are a like a disjointed buzzing mass of a crowd. A crowd that we put into a dance. I think sensations come in pre-structured chunks, that they already by and large fit together, and we construct perception out of these chunks into a coherent whole,

Regarding the inner voice, Chomsky:

Now let us take language. What is its characteristic use? Well, probably
99.9% of its use is internal to the mind. You can’t go a minute without talking
to yourself. It takes an incredible act of will not to talk to yourself.

Thought train...woo, woo!

Quoting Mongrel

I think I'll just go back through Bundle Theory. Are you familiar with that?

Yes, and I suppose I could say that I basically agree with it, but the whole idea of separating properties and substances has always struck me as stupid, and bundle theory, if taken very "strictly," is still basically making that separation.

Reply to Mongrel

Just a train:
A $5.00 bill is a real representation, I can hand it over to you in repayment for a debt. It has presence and functionality, and its value is generally acceptable.

Reply to Terrapin Station Oops.. due to Cavacava I've become interested in the corporealization of words... maybe Lacan?

Phenomenalism will have to wait for another day.

Reply to Cavacava Any reading recommendations?

bReply to Mongrel try John Searle's Social Ontology

Lacan is best read through secondary sources unless you are taking a course. I like Bruce Fink's interpretation, Fink is very clear.

Reply to Cavacava Awesome. Thank you.

Quoting Mongrel

Been reading the SEP article on mental representation and started pondering on the section about conceptual vs non-conceptual. The main difference is that conceptual representation is not supposedly accompanied by qualia. Non-conceptual representation is exactly what it sounds like: sensation lacking concept.

Is it possible to eliminate the conceptual element altogether? The SEP article gives an example of a (possibly) hybrid MR (mental representation): seeing that something is blue. How would we eliminate the conceptual part of that?

I have the impression this remains a hotly contested region of philosophical discourse in the schools.

I'm inclined to say that perceptual experience like ours involves both sensory and conceptual activity or "content". I presume there are "layers" of nonconscious sensory processing that can be construed as involving sensory "representation" without any contribution from conceptual capacities. But on my view such representations are always already conceptualized by the time they manifest in conscious perceptual experience.

Presumably the question of non-conceptualism starts with the semantic intuition that we each have only a finite number of linguistic categories at our disposal that we must somehow apply to a potentially infinite number of experiences without any public guidance beyond what we have learned crudely through a small number of supervised presentations.

For example, while in a forest a person might experience thousands of shades of green but only have words to communicate a very small number of shades, hues and textures. Yet at the same time, the person might also demonstrate a far richer non-verbal capacity to discriminate hundreds or even thousands of shades of green.

So with respect to any given class of stimulus that has a clear public definition, "non-conceptualism" is presumably the relative extent to which a person's reactive behaviour can discriminate instances of that class of stimulus, compared against their ability to verbally discriminate that class of stimulus.

my understanding of "non-conceptualism" begins and ends with the behaviour I observe of other people. I don't think that it is directly meaningful to apply this term to first-person experience per-se. However, i would guess that Wittgenstein's "picture theory" of language vs "meaning as use" are analogous concepts that are therapeutically applicable to first-person experience .

Reply to Wosret
Quoting Wosret

You can have everything above the brain stem removed, and no one (including yourself) would even notice. The only difference is that you'd loss all inhibition, become super exploratory, and couldn't learn anything new.

This is almost certainly untrue.Quoting Wosret

Thought is made of hope and fear. It directs you towards desirable possibilities that are not ready at hand, and away from possible dangers that are not ready at hand.

Are you suggesting that human cognition is restricted to these functions exclusively?