Husserl And Non-Conceptual Content

A non-conceptualist, like Evans, argues that perceptual content is non-conceptual, for the reason that because of its fineness of grain the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience cannot be articulated by conceptual capacity. On the contrary, a conceptualist, like McDowell, claims that there is no non-conceptual content in perception indeed. For him, the motivation from the epistemological concern necessitates it that perceptual content has to be conceptual, if experience could be accounted as a reason for empirical knowledge. Non-conceptual content cannot play a justificatory role for perceptual knowledge, for the certain reason that it should be ruled out from the logical space of reasons. It is this epistemological problem that troubles the non-conceptualists.Early Husserl provides a new articulation of the relation between perceptual experience and empirical knowledge, namely, a fulfillment, according to which, it is the evidence presenting itself in pure consciousness that legitimates the knowledge founded in experience. Nevertheless, Husserl’s account still can be regarded as a support for conceptualists. As a conceptualist reading of Husserl shows, conceptual capacity that present in Intentional acts is a necessary condition for evidence, without which there is no possibility for the evidence to identity itself. What is implied in this fulfillment theory is that, experience as a source of perceptual knowledge, do not have to be a segment of inferential systems.However, a fulfillment theory of knowledge is not the end for Husserl. If we accept the genetic phenomenology developed by the later Husserl, a pre-conceptualist perspective of empirical content will satisfy both of the phenomenological insight from the non-conceptualists and the epistemological concern from the conceptualist. At the same time, pre-conceptualism could give a reasonable response to the question, "what is it to conceptualize a non-conceptual content?", because sensory data would orient themselves towards the subject in passive synthesis, where they anticipate to become the perceptual focus. What is more, pre-conceptualism could avoid to be "the myth of the given", because the fulfilling intentional content has been conceptualized already in the active synthesis, where they could be identified as evidence for the support of empirical knowledge. As a result, it makes no sense to distinguish conceptual content from non-conceptual content any more, and a distinction between conceptual content and pre-conceptual content is suggested. This paper concludes that, from a genetic phenomenological perspective, whilst the perceptual contents in the conceptual field are conceptual content, the contents in the pre-conceptual field are not conceptualized, but can be conceptualized as soon as being the focus of the subject in the experiential horizon. What is more, Evans’phenomenological insight and McDowell’s epistemological concern are both satisfied by this pre-conceptualist approach. Based on this, Husserl’s own position could be clarified, namely, which is to say that, he is not a theorist of sense data, not a supporter of the myth of the Given, most importantly, not a epistemological foundationalist, though he does seek for an abstract and stable foundation for empirical knowledge.