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Overcoming the Myth of the Mental: How Philosophers Can Profit from the Phenomenologyof Everyday ExpertiseAuthor(s): Hubert L. DreyfusSource: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 79, No. 2(Nov., 2005), pp. 47-65Published by: American Philosophical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30046213

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OVERCOMINGHEMYTHOFTHEMENTAL:H o w PHILOSOPHERSAN R O F I T FROMTHEPHENOMENOLOGYFEVERYDAYEXPERTISE

HUBERT . DREYFUSUNIVERSITYF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY

Backin 1950,while a physicsmajoratHarvard,wanderedinto C. I.Lewis'sepistemology course. There,Lewiswas confidentlyexpoundingthe needforanindubitableGiven ogroundknowledge,and he was explainingwherethatgroundwas to be found. Iwas so impressedthatIimmediately witchedmajorsfromungrounded physics to groundedphilosophy.Fora decade afterthat,Ihung aroundHarvardwritingmy dissertationon ostensible objects-the lastvestige of the indubitableGiven.During hattime, no one at Harvard eemed to have noticed that WilfridSellars haddenounced the Myth f the Given,andthathe andhiscolleagues were hardat work, not on a rock solid foundationforknowledge, but on articulatingtheconceptualstructureof ourgraspofreality.Sellars'sdecisiontoabandonthe old Cartesianproblem of indubitablegroundinghas clearlypaid off.WhileLewisis now read,ifatall,as adead end, Sellars'sresearchprogramis flourishing. John McDowell, for example, has replaced Lewis'sphenomenalistaccount ofperceptualobjectswithaninfluentialaccount ofperceptionas givingus direct access to reality.But, although almost everyone now agrees that knowledge doesn'trequirean unshakeablefoundation,manyquestionsremain.Canwe acceptMcDowell'sSellarsian laimthatperception s conceptual"all heway out,"'thereby denying the more basic perceptual capacities we seem to sharewith prelinguistic infants and higher animals? More generally, canphilosopherssuccessfullydescribe the conceptualupperfloorsof theedificeof knowledge while ignoring he embodied copinggoingon on the groundfloor; neffect,declaring hathumanexperience isupperstories all thewaydown?This evening, I'd like to convince you that we shouldn't leave theconceptual component of our lives hanging in midairand suggest howphilosophers who want to understandknowledge and action can profitfroma phenomenological analysisof the nonconceptualembodied copingskillswe sharewithanimalsandinfants.


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48 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2I. The Failureof CognitivismOne promising proposal for understanding human intelligence, whilebypassingthe body and, indeed, experience altogether,seems to have runits course. In the mid-twentieth century, philosophers, linguists,psychologists,andcomputerscientistsjoinedinproposinga new disciplinecalled Cognitive Science that promised to work out how the logicalmanipulation of formal, symbolic representations enabled minds andsuitablyprogrammed omputerstobehaveintelligently.MarvinMinsky, eadof MIT'sArtificialntelligenceLaboratory, eclared in a 1968press releaseforStanleyKubrick'smovie2001 that"in30yearswe shouldhavemachineswhose intelligence s comparabletoman's."2HilaryPutnamand Iwere bothteaching at MITduringthat optimistic functionalistera, and I rememberHilary skingme earnestlyovercoffee when Iwould admittobeinga Turingmachine.

Inthe earlyseventies, however,Minsky'sAI abran intoan unexpectedproblem. Computerscouldn'tcomprehend the simple storiesunderstoodby four-year-olds.3Minsky uggested thatgivingthe computerthe requisitecommonsense knowledgewouldmerelyrequirerepresentinga few millionfacts. But t seemed tome that he realproblemwasn'tstoringandorganizingmillions of facts;it was knowingwhich facts were relevant.Oneversionof thisrelevanceproblem s called theframeproblem.If hecomputer has a representation of the current state of the world andsomething changes, how does the computer determine which of therepresented facts stay the same, and which representationshave to beupdated?Minsky uggestedthattoavoid the frameproblemAIprogrammerscould use descriptionsof typicalsituations ikegoing to a birthdayparty olistandorganize he relevant acts.Influencedbya computerscience studentwho had taken my phenomenology course, he suggested a structure ofessential featuresand defaultassignments,which, likeHusserl,he called a"frame."

Buta systemof frames sn't n a situation, o how, Iwondered, could thecomputer determine which of the millions of facts in its database wererelevant forrecognizingthe relevant frame?Itseemed to me obvious thatanyAIprogramusing frames to solve the story-understanding roblembyorganizingmillionsof facts was going to be caught in a regress, and that,therefore, the project was hopeless. And, indeed, Minskyhas recentlyacknowledged in WiredMagazine thatAIhas been braindead since theearly seventies when it encountered the problem of commonsenseknowledge.4

JerryFodornailsthepointwithcharacteristic larity:"Theproblem,"hewrites,is to get the structureof an entire beliefsystemto bear on individualoccasions of belief fixation. We have, to put it bluntly, nocomputationalformalismsthat show us how to do this, and wehave no idea how such formalisms might be developed. ...Ifsomeone-a Dreyfus, orexample-were to ask us whywe shouldeven suppose that the digital computer is a plausiblemechanismfor the simulation of global cognitive processes, the answeringsilence would be deafening.5


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PresidentialAddress - Pacific Division 49II.The Phenomenological AlternativeHow,then,do we manage toorganizethevastarrayof factsthatsupposedlymake up commonsense knowledge so thatwe can retrieve ustthose factsthat are relevant n the currentsituation?Theanswer is: "Wecan'tmanageitanymore thana computercan, butfortunatelywe don't have to."Only fwe stand backfrom ourengaged situation nthe worldandrepresentthingsfroma detached theoreticalperspectivedo we confront he frameproblem.That s, ifyoustripawayrelevance andstartwith context-free acts,you can'tget relevance back. Happily,however, we are, as MartinHeideggerandMauriceMerleau-Pontyutit,always alreadyin a world thatis organized nterms of our bodies and interests and thuspermeatedbyrelevance.As Isaid inWhatComputersCan'tDo:" The meaningfulobjects...amongwhich we live are not a model of theworld storedinour mind orbrain; heyare the world itself."6 o, for us embodied agents, keeping trackof changesinrelevance is not the intractableproblemit was forSymbolicAI.Recently,RodneyBrooks,Minsky's uccessor as directorof MIT'sAlLab,has adoptedthe slogan "thebest model of the world is the worlditself,"and he givesmecreditfor"beingright[backin1972] hattheway inwhich people operateinthe world is intimately oupledto the existence of theirbody."7He now says,lookingback at the frameproblem:

Andwhy could my simulated robot handleit?Because it was usingthe world as its own model. It never referred to an internaldescriptionofthe world thatwouldquicklygetoutof dateifanythingin the real world moved.8But Brooks'srobotsrespondonlyto fixed features of the environment.Thatis, his robots don't feed back into theirworld what they have learned byacting in it. Such ant-like"animats," s he calls them, lack what Merleau-Pontycalls an intentional arc-the way our successful coping continuallyenrichestheway things nthe world show up.Ourexperience of findingourway around n a city,forexample, is sedimented inhow thatcity ooks to usso that we see new opportunities or action. Brooks'sanimats,it turnsout,finesse rather han solve the frameproblem.It seems that our everyday coping can't be understood in terms ofsymbolicrepresentations, s Minsky'sntellectualist pproachassumed, norin terms of responses caused byfixedfeaturesof the environment,as intheempiricist approach of Brooks. We need to consider the possibilitythatembodied beingslike us takeas inputenergyfromthephysicaluniverseandprocess it in such a way as to open them to a world organized n terms oftheirneeds, interests,andbodilycapacitieswithouttheirminds needing toimpose a meaningon a meaningless Given,as Minsky'sramesrequire,northeirbrainsconvertinghestimulus nput nto reflexresponses,as inBrooks'sanimats.Fortunately,hereare models of how the embodied braincouldprovidea causalbasis forthe intentionalarcwithoutdoingany symbolic nformationprocessing and without instantiating a causal chain from input to response.For example, Walter Freeman, a founding figure in neuroscience and thefirst to take seriously the idea of the brain as a nonlinear dynamical system,has worked out an account of how the brain of an active animal can, ineffect, categorize inputs significant to the organism by forming an attractor


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50 Proceedings nd Addresses f theAPA, 9:2landscape.9Freeman'smodel exhibitsa kindoftop-downgoverning ausality.As the organismresponds to what is significant o it, the overallpatternofattractoractivity"enslaves" he activityof the individualneurons the way astorm enslaves the individual aindrops.Freemanconsiders the philosophyunderlyinghis work close to Merleau-Ponty's,nd, indeed, Merleau-Pontyseems to anticipatean attractoraccount when he says:It is necessary only to accept the fact that the physico-chemicalactions of which the organismis in a certain manner composed,instead of unfoldingin paralleland independent sequences, areconstituted...inrelatively table"vortices."10Time will tell whether Freeman'sMerleau-Pontyianmodel is on the righttrack for explaining the functioningof the brain; meanwhile, the job ofphenomenologists is to get clear concerningthe phenomena that need tobe explained.III.Areperception and action conceptual?Inhis book Mindand World, ohn McDowellchampionsa seeminglysimilarview to Merleau-Ponty's hen he says:"An xperiencingandactingsubjectis...herselfembodied,substantially resentinthe world thatshe experiencesand acts on."" And he sounds as if he is channeling Heideggerwhen hespeaks of "ourunproblematicopenness to the world"'2 nd how "we findourselves always already engaged with the world."'3Like these existentialphenomenologists,McDowellmakesthe boldclaimthat"this sa frameworkfor reflection thatreallystands a chance of makingtraditionalphilosophyobsolete."'14ut,unlike the existentialphenomenologists, McDowellgoeson to speak of thisengagement in the world as a "conceptualactivity."'"Tosuggesthow impingementsreceived from naturecan be conceptualthroughandthroughwithout the mindimposingmeaningon a meaninglessGiven,McDowell ntroducesan account of Aristotle'sdea of second nature:

Humanbeings are...initiatedinto...the space of reasons byethicalupbringing,which instills he appropriate hape intotheir ives.Theresultinghabits of thoughtand action are second nature.'6McDowell hen generalizesAristotle'saccount of the productionof secondnature:

Imposinga specific shape on the practicalintellect is a particularcase ofa generalphenomenon:initiationntoconceptualcapacities,which include responsiveness to other rationaldemands besidesthose of ethics. 1'The phenomenon McDowellhas in mind is clearest in phronesis, usuallytranslated"practicalwisdom."He tellsus:

"Practicalwisdom"is the rightsortof thingto serve as a model forthe understanding,the faculty that enables us to recognize andcreate the kind of intelligibilityhatis a matter of placement in thespace of reasons.'"

McDowellconcludes that,givenoursecond nature,we can "see ourselvesas animalswhose naturalbeing is permeated with rationality."'9hankstoour inculcation into our culture,we become sensitive to reasons, whichthen influence our "habitsof thoughtand action."20


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Presidential ddress PacificDivision 51One can easily accept that in learningto be wise we learn to followgeneralreasonsas guidesto acting appropriately. ut t does not followthat,once we have gottenpast the learningphase, these reasons in the formofhabits still nfluenceour wise actions.Indeed,a phenomenological readingsuggests that Aristotle'saccount ofphronesisis actuallya counterexampleto McDowell'sconceptualism.Heidegger,ikeMcDowell,s interested nAristotle's ccountofphronesisas a paradigmcase of humanperceptionandaction,but he has a decidedlydifferent take on it from McDowell's emphasis on the role of reasons.Heidegger describes phronesis as a kind of understandingthat makespossible an immediate response to the full concrete situation:[Thephronimos] ..is determinedbyhis situationnthelargestsense....The circumstances, hegivens,the times and thepeoplevary.Themeaningof the action...variess well. ...It sprecisely he achievementof phronesis to disclose the [individual]as actingnow in the fullsituationwithin which he acts.21

Ofcourse, therewill be problematiccases of conflicting goods where thephronimos does not see immediatelywhat must be done. Thus,Aristotlesays the phronimos must be able to deliberate well.22But, according toHeidegger,most of our ethical life consists insimplyseeing the appropriatethingto do and respondingwithoutdeliberation,as when we help a blindpersoncross the street orwhen, afteryearsof experience,we unreflectivelybalance, case by case, the demands of ourprofessionaland personallives.As Aristotle ays:"Phronesis...involvesknowledgeof the ultimateparticularthing, which cannot be attained by systematic knowledge but only by'perception'."23Heideggerhus claimsthatAristotle's ccountofphronesisdoes notassume,as McDowelldoes, that,ethicalexpertisecan be conceptuallyarticulated.On the contrary, hronesisshows that socializationcan producea kindof masterwhose actionsdo notrelyon habitsbased on reasons oguidehim.Indeed,thanks osocialization, person'sperceptionsand actionsat theirbest would be so responsiveto the specific situationthattheycouldnot be capturedin generalconcepts.Relative o suchspecificity, ll reasons advancedtojustify n actioncouldonlybe retroactiveationalizations.cDowelleems toagreewhenhenotes,"I construe Aristotle's discussion of deliberation as aimed at thereconstruction of reasons for action not necessarily thoughtout inadvance."24ut peaking f areconstruction,atherhana construction,freasons suggests that these reasons must have been implicit all along,whereas, for Heidegger,the phronimos's actions are not in the space ofreasonsat all.AsHeidegger ums itup:"In phronesis] here s accomplishedsomethinglike a pureperceiving,one thatno longerfallswithinthe domainof logos."25McDowell,however, would no doubt replythat there couldn't be anysuch logos-free pure perception. So, in taking perception out of the space ofreasons, Heidegger can only be imposing on Aristotle a version of the Mythof the Given. Heidegger could counter, however, that in assuming that allintelligibility,even perception and skillful coping, must be, at least implicitly,conceptual-in effect, that intuitions without concepts must be blind, and


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52 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2that there must be a maxim behind every action26-Sellarsand McDowelljoin Kant n endorsingwhat we mightcall the Mythof the Mental.

Merleau-Ponty akes a similarpointplayingoff the intellectualist gainsttheempiricist.For heintellectualist, judgmentseverywherepuresensationis not,which is to say everywhere.""ForMcDowell,mind is everywherethepuregiven is not,that s to say,"all heway out."Preciselybecause the mythof the pure Given is dead, we must understand our experience asconceptuallypermeatedthroughandthrough.Thus, ike avulture, he Mythof the Mental eeds off the carcass of the Mythof the Given.IV.What is expertise?McDowelland Heideggerbothagree with Aristotle hatpracticalwisdom isa kind of expertise acquiredas second nature. So I suggest thatto decidewho is rightas to whetherskilledperceptionandaction mustbe permeatedbyconceptualrationalitywe turn o the phenomena and take a lookat howone becomes an expert in any domain, and at what capacities an experttherebyacquires.While infantsacquireskillsbyimitationand trialanderror,nourformalinstructionwe startwith rules.Therules, however,seem togive way to moreflexibleresponsesas we become skilled.We shouldthereforebe suspiciousof the cognitivistassumptionthat as we become expertsour rules becomeunconscious. Indeed, our experience suggests that rules are like trainingwheels. Wemayneed such aids when learning oridea bicycle,but we musteventually et them aside ifwe are to become skilledcyclists.Toassume thatthe rules we once consciously followed become unconscious is likeassumingthat,when we finally earnto ride a bike, the trainingwheels thatwere requiredfor us to be able to ridein the firstplace must have becomeinvisible.Theactualphenomenon suggeststhatto become expertswe mustswitch fromdetachedrule-followingo a more involvedandsituation-specificway of coping.Indeed, if learners feel that they can act only if they have reasons toguide them, this attitudewill stunt their skillacquisition.Astudyof studentnurses, for example, showed that those who remained detached andfollowed rules neverprogressedbeyondcompetence, while onlythosewhobecame emotionally nvolvedand took to heart theirsuccesses and failuresdevelopedintoexperts.28 his inding uggeststhat, fsomething goes wrong,thewayto achieveexpertise s to resista disinterested,objectiveexaminationof theproblemandthetemptation o formulate ophisticatedrules topreventit from happening again, and, instead, to stay involved, takingfailures toheart and glorying n one's successes. Such emotional involvement seemsto be necessary to facilitate the switchoverfromdetached, analyticalrulefollowingto an entirelydifferentengaged, holistic mode of experience-from left to righthemisphere processing,one mightsay.

If the learner stays involved, he develops beyond competence bysharpeninghis perceptual abilityto make refined discriminations.Amongmany situations, all seen as similar with respect to a plan or perspective, theexpert learns to discriminate those situations requiring one reaction in orderto succeed from those demanding another. That is, with enough experiencein a variety of situations, all seen from the same perspective but requiringdifferent tactical decisions, the expert, without awareness of the process,


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PresidentialAddress- Pacific Division 53graduallydecomposes this class of situations ntosubclasses, each ofwhichrequiresa specific response. Thisallows the successful intuitivesituationalresponse that is characteristicof expertise.A chess Grandmaster acing a position, for example, experiences acompellingsense of the issue and thebest move. In a popularkind of chesscalled lightningchess, the whole game has to be played in two minutes.Under such time pressure,Grandmastersmust make some of theirmovesas quicklyas theycan move theirarms-less than a second a move-and yetthey can stillplay Master evel games. When the Grandmaster s playinglightningchess, as faras he can tell,he is simplyrespondingto the patternson the board.At thisspeed he must depend entirelyon perceptionand notat all on analysisand comparisonof alternatives.

Thus,phenomenologysuggests that,althoughmanyforms of expertisepass througha stage in which one needs reasons to guide action, aftermuch involvedexperience, the learnerdevelops a way of coping in whichreasonsplayno role. Afterresponding o an estimated millionspecificchesspositionsintheprocess ofbecominga chess master, hemaster,confrontedwith a new position, spontaneouslydoes something similar to what haspreviouslyworked and, lo andbehold, itusuallyworks. Ingeneral,insteadof relyingon rules and standardsto decide on or to justifyher actions, theexpertimmediatelyrespondsto the currentconcrete situation.Recent brain magingresearch confirmsthat amateurandexpertchessplayersuse differentpartsof their brain. Researchers concluded that "Thedistribution f focal brainactivityduringchess playingpointsto differencesin the mechanisms of brainprocessing and functional brainorganizationbetween grandmastersand amateurs."29To make thispointclear,we need to distinguishbetween two kinds ofrules. There are firstof all the rules of thegame. Inchess, these rulesincludetheparticularmoves each piece is allowed tomake, the time limitplacedonthegame,rulesagainstcheating,etc. Therearesecondly, acticalrules.Theseheuristic rules provideguidelines for how one can best respond to eachtypeof situation. Theyare acquiredthrough essons and coaching.It s misleadingto thinkthat the rules of the game must be internalized,thatis, storedin the mind. Rather, hese rulesare normallyexperienced inthe backgroundas a limit on what appearsas worthdoing. In thisway theexpert is sensitive to the rules of the game even if he is not followingtherules consciously or unconsciously.Even if he can't remember the rules,theynonetheless governhiscoping by determiningwhat lookspermissible.But he normallycan be led to remember or at least acknowledge the ruleswhen he is toldthem,and he knowshe must conform o themor be penalized.In the special case of games, then, we can profitfrom McDowell'ssuggestionthatwe thinkof such rules as havingbecome second nature.Butwe should bear inmindthat,when theyfunctionas second nature,theydonot function as rules we consciously or unconsciously follow but as alandscape on the basis of which skilled coping and reasoning takes place.Only in this sense can the rules of the game be said to guide thought andaction.


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54 ProceedingsndAddressesf theAPA,9:2Inthe case of tacticalrules,however,the mastermaymake moves thatareentirelyntuitive ndcontraryoanypreconceivedplan.Insuchinstances,when asked why he did what he did, he may be at a loss to reconstruct areasoned account of his actions because there is none. Indeed,as we haveseen, the phenomena suggest that an expert has long since abandonedgeneralrules as bikerssets aside their rainingwheels. Thus,when an expertis forced togivethereasons that ed to hisaction,his accountwillnecessarilybe a retroactive ationalization hatshows atbest thattheexpertcan retrievefrommemory the generalprinciplesand tactical rules he once followed asa competent performer.Consequently, fone followed the reconstructed rules articulatedbyanexpert,one would not exhibitexpertisebut mere competence, and that isexactlywhat has happened. "Expert ystems"based on the rulesso-calledknowledge engineers elicited from experts were at best competent. 30 It

seems that, instead of using rules they no longer remembered, as the Alresearcherssupposed, the expertswere forced to rememberrules theynolongerused. Indeed,as faras anyonecouldtell,theexpertsweren'tfollowinganyrules at all.31So it seems clear thatrules needn't play any role inproducingskilledbehavior.This s bad news forCognitivists, ut McDowell s nota cognitivist.He rightly rejects the idea that skilled behavior is actually caused byunconscious rules. His view is much more subtle and plausible,namely,that, thanks to socialization, experts conform to reasons that can beretroactivelyeconstructed.Afterall,there must be one structurencommonto situationsthatreliably olicit one typeof tacticalresponse and another tothose situations hatreliably olicit another.Itseems one oughtto,at least inprinciple,be able to articulate his structure n terms of reasons. Butall wehave a right o conclude fromourphenomenology of expertiseis thattheremust be some detectable invariant eatures in what J. J. Gibsoncalls theambientopticarray nd thathumanbeingsandanimalscan learntorespondtothem. Thesefeatures,althoughavailable to theperceptual ystem,needn'tbe availableto the mind.

We can understand hisinaccessibility f we consider theway simulatedneural networks can be programmedto produce reliable responses. Forexample, nets have been programmedto distinguishsonar echoes frommines fromthose fromrocks.Suchnets aregivenno rules,nor aretheytoldwhat featuresof the signalare relevant.Theyare simplyexposed to tens ofthousands of examples and their at-first-randomcorrect responses arereinforced.

Inone verylimitedsense, anysuccessfullytrainedmultilayerneuralnetcan be interpreted n terms of features-not everydayfeaturesbut highlyabstract ones. But in the case of multilayerednets that are devoted toimplementingexpertise,these highlyabstract eaturesare notinterpretableas featuresthata mind could possiblyexperience. To constructa semanticaccount of what a network that has learned certain discriminations haslearned, each node one level above the input nodes could, on the basis ofconnections to it, be interpreted as detecting when one of a certain set ofinput patterns is present. (Some of the patterns will be the ones used intrainingand some will never have been used.) Ifthe set of input pattemrnshat


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Presidential Address - Pacific Division 55a particular ode detects isgivenan inventedname (italmostcertainlywon'thave a name in ourvocabulary), he node could be interpretedas detectingthehighlyabstract eatureso named.Hence,everynode one level above theinput evel can be characterizedas a featuredetector.Similarly, verynode alevel abovethese nodes can be interpreted s detectinga higher-ordereaturethat is defined as the presence of one of a specified set of patternsamongthe first evel featuresdetectors.Andso on upthehierarchy.Thetopfeaturescould be those in an ambient optic array that corresponded to thesignificanceof a situation,and the net's outputwould then correspondtothe response solicitedbythat situation.HerbertSimon has estimatedthatanexpertchess playercan distinguishroughly 50,000 types of positions. This estimate presupposes theunsupportedassumptionthatthe masterperceives an alphabetof chunksthat he puts together byruleinorderto recognizetypesofpositions.But thespeed of lightningchess suggestsrather hat the master isn'tfollowingrulesat all. She is able to directlydiscriminateperhapshundreds of thousands oftypes of whole positions.Isay "perhaps"ince thereis, inprinciple,no wayto count the types.Iftherewere, we would have to define the typesin termsof theirfeatures,but,since these would have to be very highorder nvariantsin the opticarraydetected by highlevel hiddennodes in our neuralnet,we,in principle,have no access to them except to see that a certainpositionsolicits a certainmove.

Phenomenologists therefore disagree with conceptualists in thatphenomenologists claim that a study of expertise shows that nameablefeatures are irrelevant o the currentstate of mind of the master when heacts. Grantedone could,inprinciple,name each positionor at leastpointtoit,thereis no reason to thinkthatone could name orpointto what itis abouta position that makes it the type of position that requires this particularresponse. Abstracthigher-ordereatures detected bythe hiddenlayersof aneural networkwould explainthat fwe could understand hem. But,as wehavejustseen, there is no reason to believe thatthese higher-ordereaturesmust be the sortof featureswe can think.Nothingabout thepositionneed benameable and thinkableas a reason foracting.Ifthis is so, expert copingisn'teven implicitly ational nthe sense of beingresponsiveto reasons thathave become habitualbut could be reconstructed.

If, as RobertBrandomclaims, "Sellars'principle [is] thatgrasping aconcept is masteringthe use of a word,"32hen, according to Sellarsians,master chess playis nonconceptual.Yet,clearly,what is givento the chessmasterinhisexperience of the board isn'ta bare Given.Inbeingsolicited torespond to a chess-position,the chess master has a take on "thelayoutofreality."33tfollowsthathe can be mistaken.Thus,thepureperceivingof thechess master,as well as thatof thephronimosand, indeed, theexpertinanyskilldomain,even everydaycoping,has a kind of intentionalcontent;itjustisn'tconceptualcontent.A"bareGiven"and the "thinkable" re not ouronlyalternatives.We must accept the possibilitythat our ground-level copingopens up the world by opening us to a meaningful Given-a Given that isnonconceptual but not bare.How, then, should we characterize this conceptually pure yet meaningfulgiven? Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty hold, in effect, that embodied copers


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56 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2directly respond to what Gibson,who was influenced by Merleau-Ponty,callsaffordances.34oodaffordseating,doors affordgoinginand out,floorsaffordwalkingon, etc. CharlesTaylordescribes the phenomenon:As I navigate my way along the path up the hill, my mind totallyabsorbed nanticipatinghe difficult onversationI'mgoingto haveat my destination, I treat the different features of the terrainasobstacles, supports,openings, invitations o treadmore warily,orrun freely,and so on. Even when I'm not thinkingof them thesethingshave those relevancies forme.35AsTaylormakes clear,respondingto affordances does notrequirenoticingthem. Indeed, to best respond to affordances (whether animal or social,prelinguisticor linguistic)one must not notice them as affordances, but,rather,as Heideggersays,they"withdraw" nd we simply"press nto" hem.Note too that the affordances detected and responded to by active,involvedbeings are situationspecific. 36This door does not simply affordgoinginand out but affordsgoinginand outcautiously,and/orquickly,and/or silently,and/orunobtrusively,hatis, inwhateverway is called forbythewhole situation.Or,to take anotherexample, given oursocialized secondnature,in dealingwith people, we are drawnto the rightdistance to standfromthis specific person, in this light,in this room, with this backgroundnoise, and so forth.It s thisnecessary situational pecificityof skillful opingthat AristotleandHeideggernoted in the case of thephronimos,and whichled Heidegger o conclude thatskillful opingisnonconceptual.Werespondto affordances nthissituation-specificwaywhen we areintenselyinvolvedin what we are doing, as when negotiatinga dangerous intersection,andalso, as Taylor's xample makes clear,when we arecompletelyabsorbedinsomethingelse. In eithercase, we arecapableof copingconcretelywithoutthinkingat all.Indeed, ntheirdirectdealingwithaffordances,adults, nfants,and animalsrespondalike.37The Space of MotivationsButwhat roomcouldthere be for such a nonconceptualgivenbetween thespace of causes andthespace of reasons?Itseems thateitherone is pushedaround like a thing by meaningless physical and psychological forces, orelse one's reasons,explicitorimplicit,motivateone's actions.Merleau-Pontyfaces this challenge by introducinga thirdway one can be led to cope-away he calls motivation.This is not a psychological concept for him but a perceptual one. Itnames the way we are directly responsive to the other-than-rationaldemands of our situation.In short, it is a name for the way affordancessolicit one to act. As MarkWrathall,who makes thisimportantpoint, putsit:

Thefundamentalworkingsof motivationsare foundintheway thatour environmentandbodyworktogethertodispose us toparticularways of actingand experiencing. Theworld works by drawingonour skillfulbodilydispositions.38

Or,as Merleau-Pontyells us:In perception we do not think the object and we do not thinkourselvesthinking t,we aregivenoverto the objectand we merge


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PresidentialAddress - Pacific Division 57into thisbodywhich is better nformed hanwe are abouttheworld,and about the motiveswe have and the means at ourdisposal."39

Mybody,accordingto Merleau-Ponty,s drawnto get a maximalgripon itsenvironment.As he puts it:Mybodyis geared into the worldwhen myperceptionpresentsmewith a spectacle as variedand as clearlyarticulatedas possible,andwhen my motor intentions,as they unfold,receive the responsestheyexpect from the world.40

Thus,perceptionis, in itsown way,normative.AsSean Kellyputs its:[litispartofmyvisualexperiencethatmybody sdrawntomove, or,at anyrate,thatthe contextshould change, in a certainway.Theseare inherentlynormative,rather handescriptive,features of visualexperience. Theydon't representin some objective, determinatefashion the way the world is, they say something about how theworldoughtto be forme to see it better.41

Or,more generally:[W]e areconstantlysensitive notonlytowhat we perceivebutalso,and essentially,to how well our experience measures up to ourperceptualneeds and desires.42Moregenerallystill:As we cope, we experience ourselves to be gettingabetter or worse gripon the situation.Suchcopinghassatisfactionconditionsbut it does not have success conditions.Rather, t has what one mightcallconditionsof improvement.43tssatisfactionconditionsarenormativeratherthandescriptive.True o the phenomenon of affordanceandresponse, plusthe tendency to achieve maximal grip, Merleau-Pontys led to introduce,between the space of causes and the space ofreasons,what one mightcallthespace ofmotivations.44Animals,prelinguisticnfants,andeverydayexpertslikeus alllivein thisspace. Of course, unlike infants and animals,we can deliberate. When amaster has to deliberatein chess or in any skilldomain, it'sbecause therehas been some sort of disturbance hathasdisruptedherintuitive esponse.Perhapsthe situationis so unusual that no immediate response is calledforth.Orseveralresponses are solicited with equal pull.Insuch cases, there aretwo typesofdeliberationavailable o theexpert.Inthe first ype,the expertstaysinvolvedandtests and refinesher intuition.Forexample, ifthe situationdoes notsolicit an immediateintuitive esponsebecause certainaspects of thesituationareslightly, et disturbingly,ifferentfromwhat would make one completely comfortablewith a specific move,the master chess playercontemplates the differences, lookingfor a movethatkeeps all intuitivelydesirableoptionsopen while reducinghissense ofuneasiness. Thistypeof deliberationyieldsno reasons. It s usefulpreciselybecause itclears theway foran immediate intuitiveresponse.45Ifno response is forthcoming,however,the onlyalternative s a kind ofrationaldeliberationnwhich one becomes detached andviews the situationas an object with decontextualized features and then reasons out what todo. Inchess, such analysis nvolvescountingout the consequences of eachreasonable move. In more general terms, it might mean making a list of


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58 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2options and their utilities and calculatingwhich action is optimal. Suchresponses, however,lose the situationalspecificityof expertise,and so areinferior o an expert'sintuitiveresponse.

Fortunately,he expertusuallydoes not need to calculate. Ifhe has hadenough experience and staysinvolved,he will find himselfrespondinginamasterfulway before he has time to think.Just as Aristotle,Heidegger,andMerleau-Pontyaw, such masteryrequiresa richperceptualrepertoire-theability to respond to subtle differences in the appearance of perhapshundredsofthousandsofsituations-but itrequiresno conceptualrepertoireat all. This holds true for such refined skills as chess, jazz improvisation,sports,martial rts,etc.,butequally oreveryday killssuch as cookingdinner,crossinga busystreet,carryingon a conversation,orjust gettingaround inthe world.46V.Nonconceptual Copingand the Justification of JudgmentsSo farwe have seen that, fwe understand onceptsas context-freeprinciplesor rules thatcould be used toguideactions or atleast make themintelligible,a phenomenologyof expertcopingshows concepts to be absent oreven toget in theway of a masterfulresponse to the specificsituation.Norcan suchthinkable content be reconstruction after the fact by deliberation.Morebasically, fconcepts must be linguistic,Gibson'saccount of ourdirectpick-up of affordances as highorder invariantsn the opticarray,and neural netconsiderations as to how the brainmight detect such invariants,suggestthatexpertisedoes notrequireconcepts. Indeed,the basis of expertcopingmaywell be the sort of features thatthe expert could not be aware of andwould not be able to think. Inboth cases, then, masterfulaction does notseem to requireor even to allow placement in the space of reasons.But these objections may seem to miss McDowell'sbasic pointthat, nso faras perception ustifies our udgments, it must be conceptualall theway out. AsMcDowellputsit:

When we tracejustificationsback,the lastthingwe come to is stillathinkablecontent;not something more ultimatethan that,a barepointingto a bit of the Given.47Lewiswas, indeed, fundamentallymistaken nthinking hatthe Givenhadtobe ineffableand indubitable n order to groundjudgments,but,as we haveseen, the Givenneedn't be understoodas bare.Itcan bepureinthe sense ofnonconceptual, and yet, like affordances,still have motivationalcontent.Conceptualistslike McDowellpoint out, however, that the idea that anynonconceptual given, be it intuitive,practical,normative, skillful,or whathaveyou, could make a contribution ojustification s unintelligible.This isan important objection to the view Lewis defended but not to thephenomenologists' claim that to perform its world-disclosing functionperceptionmust be nonconceptual.In so far as McDowellspeaks of "ourunproblematicopenness to theworld"48 nd of how "we findourselves always already engaged with theworld"49-he seems to agree with the phenomenologists that perceptionhas a function more basic than justification. As Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (as well as Wittgenstein) have argued, we can only relate to objectsand make judgments about them insofar as they show up on the background


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Presidential ddress PacificDivision 59of the world-and the worldis not a belief system butis opened to us onlythroughourunthinkingand unthinkableengaged perceptionand coping.

McDowell,however,onlyseems to be inagreementwith these existentialphenomenologists.ForMcDowell,he worldcanonlybe thetotality fobjects,events, and states of affairs.Manyof these are, indeed, directlyperceivable,and we do depend on beliefs based on perceptionto justifyourjudgmentsabout them. But this sort of openness to the world is not the most basicfunction of perception.We directly perceive affordancesand respond tothem without beliefs and justificationsbeing involved. Moreover,theseaffordances are interrelated,and it is ourfamiliaritywith the whole contextof affordances thatgives us ourability o orient ourselves and find ourwayabout. As Heideggerputs it:[W]hatis firstof all "given"...is he "forwriting," he "forgoing inandout,"..."foritting."That s,writing,going-in-and-out,itting,andthe like are whatwe area priori nvolvedwith. Whatwe know whenwe "knowourway around." 0

Heidegger might seem to be a conceptualisthimself since he continues:"Mybeing in the world is nothingother than this already-operating-with-understanding."51But when he introduces the term "understanding,"Heideggerexplains (with a littlehelp from the translator) hat he means akind of know-how:InGermanwe saythatsomeone can vorstehensomething-literally,stand in frontof orahead of it,thatis, stand at itshead, administer,manage, presideover it. This s equivalentto sayingthat he verstehtsich darauf,understands nthe sense ofbeingskilled orexpertatit,has the know-how of it.52

Merleau-Pontylso appeals to a nonintellectualkind of understanding:We understand he thingas we understanda new kind of behavior,not, thatis, throughanyintellectualoperationof subsumption,butby taking up on our own account the mode of existence that theobservablesigns adumbratebefore us.53And,of course, such givensare not baregivens.AsHeidegger nsists:Everyact ofhavingsomethinginfrontof oneself andperceiving tis,inandof itself,a "having"omethingas something. ...However,thisas-structures notnecessarilyrelatedtopredication.Indealingwithsomething,Ido notperformanythematicalpredicativeassertions.54VI.Where Concepts Come InIfnonconceptualperceptionand coping is necessary forworlddisclosing,and there is no way nonconceptual perceivingcould ground judgments,then we must ask how the nonconceptual given is converted into a givenwith conceptual content so that perception can do its justificatoryjob.McDowell seems to rely on the Mythof the Mental,the idea that pureperception is impossible so perception and coping must somehow alwaysalready be conceptual, to avoid facing this question. In his book Body andWorld,Samuel Todes, however, sees the question of how conceptual contentarises from nonconceptual content as the central puzzle bequeathed tophilosophers by Kant.55He, therefore, proposes to work out a detailed


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60 Proceedings and Addresses of the APA,79:2phenomenological account of how our embodied, nonconceptualperceptualand coping skillsopen a world, and then to suggest a possibleanswer to how such skills could be transformed ntoskillswith conceptualcontent.Tobegin with,Todesgoes beyond Merleau-Pontyn showing how ourworld-disclosingperceptualexperience is structuredbytheactual structureof our bodies. As we have seen, for Merleau-Ponty,he lived body is thesource of the motor intentionalitywhereby we move to get a better andbettergripon oursurroundings.ButMerleau-Ponty ever tells us what ourbodies areactually ike and how theirstructureaffects ourexperience.Todesnotes thatourbody has a front/backand up/down orientation.Itcan moveforwardmore easily than backward and can successfully cope only withwhat is in frontof it.He then describes how, in order to explore features ofour surroundingworld and orient ourselves in it,we have to be balancedwithin a vertical field that we do not produce, effectively directed in acircumstantial ield (towardone aspect of that field ratherthan another),and appropriatelyet to respond to the specific thingwe are encounteringwithin that field. Perceptualreceptivity s thus an embodied, normative,skilledaccomplishment.Todes then works out twelve perceptualcategories thatcorrespondtoKant'sconceptual categoriesand suggests how ournonconceptualcopingcategoriescan be transformed ntothe conceptual ones. But this makes allthe more urgent the question: Grantedthat, when we are transparentlyresponding oaffordances,we do not encountercontext-independent bjectswith reidentifiablepropertiesaboutwhich we can then make judgments,how can our transparentcopingwith affordancesbecome explicitcopingwith objects?

Heideggerbriefly akesupthequestioninBeingand Time.Hepointsoutthat we have skillsthatenable us, step bystep, to transformourperceptionof affordances into the perceptionof context-freeobjects, and the contentof our skilled responses to perceived whole patterns into articulableconceptual content.Heideggernotes thatwhen there is a problemwith anaffordancewe can change our relation o it.Forexample,when hammeringis goingwell, thehammer is notwhat I focus on. The hammersimplyaffordshammering;the less Iperceive it the better.If, however, the hammeringisunusuallydifficult, may experience the hammer as havingthe situationalaspect of being too heavy under these conditions.And should things goeven more badlyso that I have to abandon my activity, he hammer mayappear as an object that has the context-free propertyof weighing fivepounds.56What makes us special, then,isn'tthat,unlikeanimals,we canresponddirectlyto the conceptual structure of our environment;it's that, unlikeanimals,we can transformourunthinkingnonconceptualengagement,andtherebyencounternew, thinkable, tructures. t s important o be clearthat,pace the rationalist tradition that runs from Hegel to Brandom, theseconceptual structures are not implicit in our involved experience any morethan reasons for our actions are implicit in our expert coping, or than thedetached attitude is implicit in the engaged one. Rather, according toexistential phenomenologists like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Todes,


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Presidential Address - PacificDivision 61analyticattentionbringsabout a radicaltransformation f the affordancesgiven to absorbedcoping.Only hen can we have an experience of objectswith properties,about which we can form beliefs, make judgments,andjustify nferences.Atthe same time,however,this transformation oversupthe nonconceptual perceptionand coping that made ouropenness to theworldpossible in the firstplace.Thiscover-upmayaccount for the factthat McDowelldoes notattemptto explorethe content of nonconceptualcopingthatopens us to the layoutof reality. fhe did,he mightbe led to shake off the Mythof the Mentalandagree with the existentialphenomenologists he cites approvinglyhat ouropening a world-and much of our coping in it-need not be thinkable,but, rather, s nonlinguisticand nonconceptual. Thatwould, indeed, be aframework orreflection hatstood a chance ofmaking raditional hilosophy(includingHegelianrationalism)obsolete!ConclusionMcDowellhas taughtus a lot aboutwhat is specialabout humanexperience,and he has raised the crucial question as to how perception groundsknowledge. But he has left aside how the nonconceptual perceptualandcoping skillswe share with animals and infantsopen us to a realitymorebasic thanknowledge.Given heavailabilityfrichdescriptionsofperceptualaffordances and of everyday know-how, however, couldn't analyticphilosophersprofit rompursuing hequestionof how these nonconceptualcapacities are converted into conceptual ones-how minds grow out ofbeing-in-the-world-rather than denying the existence of thenonconceptual?Conversely, phenomenology needs help from the analysts.Phenomenologists acka detailed andconvincingaccountofhow rationalityand language grow out of nonconceptual and nonlinguistic coping.Heidegger made a start and Todes sharpened the question and madeimportant uggestions,but he didn't iveto work out the details.Thelack ofany worked out step-by-step genesis of the conceptual categories thatstructure he space of reasons from the perceptualones thatstructure hespace of motivationsmightwell encourageallphilosophersto contribute othe task, but so farit seems to have encouraged analyticphilosopherstocontinue their work on the upper stories of the edifice of knowledge,perfecting heirrigorous, ascinating,and detailedaccounts of the linguistic,conceptual,andinferential apacitiesthatareuniquelyhuman,while leavingthe ground floor-the nonlinguistic, nonconceptual discriminations ofeverydayperceiversand copers such as infants,animals,and experts-tothe phenomenologists.The time is ripe to follow McDowelland others in puttingaside theoutmoded oppositionbetween analyticand continentalphilosophyand tobegin the challengingcollaborativetask of showing how our conceptualcapacities grow out of our nonconceptual ones-how the groundfloorofpure perception and receptive coping supports the conceptual upper storiesof the edifice of knowledge. Why not work together to understand our graspof realityfrom the ground up? Surely,that way we are more likely to succeedthan trying to build from the top down.


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62 Proceedings nd Addresses f the APA, 9:2Endnotes

1. I would like to thank Stuart Dreyfus for his contribution to myunderstanding fskilland of neuralnetworks.Iam especially ndebtedto Sean Kelly,Joe Rouse, Charles Taylor,and MarkWrathall,forimportant uggestions,as well as to CorbinCollins,WilliamBlattner,TaylorCarman, DagfinnFollesdal, Beatrice Han, Alva Nod, DavidCerbone, Rick Canedo, John Schwenkler, MartinStokhof, JohnHaugeland,Ted Schatzki, lain Thomson, Dan Turner,and CharlesSpinozafortheirhelpfulcomments on earlierversions of thispaper.2. JohnMcDowell,Mindand World Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress,1994),67.3. MGM ress release for2001:ASpace Odyssey,1968,cited on MichaelKrasny'sKQEDForum.4. Fordetails, see HubertL. Dreyfus,What ComputersStill Can't Do(Cambridge,MA:TheMITPress, 1992),27-62.5. WiredMagazine, 11:08,(August2003).6. JerryA. Fodor,TheModularityf Mind Bradford/MITress,1983),128-29.7. See WhatComputersStillCan'tDo, 265-66.8. RodneyA.Brooks,Flesh and Machines:How RobotsWillChangeUs(VintageBooks,2002), 168.9. Ibid.,42.10. See WalterJ. Freeman,How the Brain Makesup its Mind(ColumbiaUniversityPress,2001).11. MauriceMerleau-Ponty, he Structureof Behavior,trans.A. L. Fisher(Boston:Beacon Press,2nd edition 1966),153.12. Mind and World, 111.13. Ibid.,155.14. Ibid.,134.15. Ibid., 111.16. Ibid.(Mytalics.)17. Ibid.,84.18. Ibid.19. Ibid.,79.20. Ibid.,85.21. Ibid.,84.22. MartinHeidegger,Plato's Sophist,trans.R. Rojcewicz&A. Schuwer(Indiana UniversityPress, 1997), 101. (Myitalics.)23. The Ethics of Aristotle, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (The Penguin Classic,

1955), 180 (1141b 10). Charles Taylorhas suggested that, even whenthe phronimos does deliberate, "his actions will be 'post' or 'ultra'


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PresidentialAddress- Pacific Division 63conceptual, because his traininghas opened him to situationswithrefinedmeanings thathe can sense and respondto, way beyond hisability o articulate hem conceptually." Personalcommunication.)

24. Ibid.,182. (1142a25)Translationlightlymodified.25. John McDowell, "Virtueand Reason,"in Mind, Value,and Reality(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress, 1998),66.26. MartinHeidegger,Plato'sSophist,112.For pecificmentionofthe "non-conceptually understandable," see MartinHeidegger, The BasicProblemsof Phenomenology, trans.A. Hofstadter Bloomington,IN:IndianaUniversityPress,1982),309.27. McDowellnotes: "Kant ays...'intuitionswithoutconcepts are blind'.Similarly...movementsf limbswithoutconceptsaremerehappenings,not xpressionsof agency,"Mindand World,89.28. MauriceMerleau-Ponty,henomenologyofPerception, rans.C.Smith(London:Routledge&KeganPaul,1981),34.29. PatriciaBenner et al., Expertise n NursingPractice:Caring,ClinicalJudgment,andEthics,(NewYork: pringerPublishingCompany,1996).30. OgnjenAmidzic,Hartmut . Riehle,ThorstenFehr,et al., "Patterns ffocal y-burstsin chess players:Grandmasterscall on regions of thebrain not used so much by less skilled amateurs,"Nature: BriefCommunications,Vol.412,9 August2001,603.31. Computers performed miserably at chess when they operatedexclusivelywithheuristicrules.Theycouldn'tplayGrandmaster hessuntiltheywere powerfulenough to look at a millionmoves a secondand calculate all possible moves and responses as faras ten movesinto the future,and onlythen use rulesto evaluate the end positions.Grandmasters,n contrast,facingan unfamiliar ituation,can countout and analyzeonlya few hundred moves.32. Forexample, when AirForce instructorpilotsteach beginningpilotshow to scan their nstruments,heyteachtherulethattheythemselves

were taught,and,as faras theyknow,stilluse. At one point,however,AirForce psychologists studied the eye movements of instructorsduringsimulated flightsand found, to everyone's surprise,that theinstructorpilots were not followingthe rule they were teaching. Infact,as faras thepsychologistscoulddetermine, heyweren'tfollowinganyruleat all. (See, J.DeMaio,et al., "VisualScanning:ComparisonsBetween Students and InstructorPilots,"AFHRL-TR-76-10,D-A023634, WilliamsAFB,AZ, Flying TrainingDivision,AirForce HumanResources Laboratory,une. 1976.)33. RobertBrandom,Articulatingeasons (HarvardUniversity ress,2000),6 (Italics noriginal).34. Mindand World,26.35. There are cases when the affordance is relative to the disembodiedmind. ToKasparov,but not to a merely competent player,a specificsituation on the chessboard affordscheckmate.


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64 Proceedings nd Addresses f theAPA, 9:236. CharlesTaylor, Merleau-Pontynd theEpistemologicalPicture,"TaylorCarman & MarkB.N. Hansen, eds., The CambridgeCompaniontoMerleau-Ponty,Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 2005),34.37. This specificity of coping activity corresponds to the situational

specificity of perception that Sean Kellyuses to demonstrate thatperceptionis nonconceptual. See "TheNon-ConceptualContentofPerceptualExperience:SituationDependence and Fineness ofGrain,"Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (with response byChristopherPeacocke), 62:3(May,2001):601-08.38. There arecases, however,when the affordance s relative owhat themindis capableof.ToKasparov, utnot toa merelycompetentplayer,a specific situationon the chessboard affords checkmate.39. Since such a response is clearly possible foranimals, so it can't be

conceptual in McDowell's sense of the term since, according toMcDowell,animalsdon'thave concepts.40. CharlesTaylor, Merleau-Pontynd theEpistemologicalPicture," aylorCarman & MarkB. N. Hansen, eds. The CambridgeCompaniontoMerleau-PontyCambridgeUniversityPress,2005),34.41. MarkA.Wrathall,"Motives,Reasons,and Causes," n TheCambridgeCompanionto Merleau-Ponty,T.Carmanand M. B. N. Hansen, eds.,(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 2005), 118.42. PhenomenologyofPerception,238.43. Ibid.,250.44. Sean D. Kelly,"Seeing Thingsin Merleau-Ponty,"n The CambridgeCompanionto Merleau-Ponty,T.Carmanand M. B. N. Hansen,eds.,(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2005),87.45. Ibid.,97.46. Fordetails, see HubertL.Dreyfus,"ThePrimacyof Phenomenologyover Logical Analysis,"Philosophical Topics,MarkA. WrathallandHubertL.Dreyfus, ds., Vol.27,No.2, Fall1999,(2001).47. Merleau-Pontyalls the sort of intentionalitydefinitiveof the space ofmotivations,motor intentionality.Sean Kellyworks out the specialfeatures of this kind of intentionality, s opposed to the conceptualkind, in his paper,"TheLogic of MotorIntentionality." he paper isavailableon his website at/-skelly/Research/LogicMI.pdf.48. Formore details see, HubertL. Dreyfusand StuartE. Dreyfus,Mindover Machine:ThePower ofHuman IntuitionandExpertisenthe Eraof the Computer, New York:FreePress,(1988)36-41.49. Sellarsiansmightcounterthatallcoping,even theimmediateresponseto theperceivedsituation nchess, is,nonetheless, conceptual,inthatthe master's play is crucially informed by an understanding of what itis to "win,"to "capture"a piece, legal and illegal moves, etc. Someonewho did not understand these concepts, including having the abilityto use them properly in other contexts, would not be appropriatelyregarded as playing chess. But it is not obvious that the discrimination


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Presidential ddress PacificDivision 65of positions, legal fromillegalmoves, etc. must be linguistic,and soconceptualbyMcDowell'sSellarsian tandards.See JohnHaugeland'simaginarycounter example of super-monkey'sthat play chess butdon'thave languageinHavingThought:Essaysin theMetaphysicsofMind, Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress, 1998),249-57.Inanycase, the kind of conceptualityof the rules of the game is thesort thatwe have seen fallslegitimatelyunder McDowell'saccount of secondnature,but it doesn't show that thereneed be anythinkablecontentunderlying he execution of the skill of playingthe game that can bereconstructedin deliberation.

50. Mindand World,28-29.(My talics.)51. Ibid.,155.52. Ibid.,134.53. Martin Heidegger, Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit,Gesamtausgabe, Band 21 (Frankfurtm Main:VittorioKlostermann,1976),144.(ThomasSheehan, Trans.,Manuscript.)54. This disclosing function of perception we share with animals andinfants.Heidegger,however, connects such understandingwith ourunderstandingof ouridentity. nthatconnection,we should note thatmere copingwith affordancesgivesanimals and humanbeings-whatHeideggercalls an environment but not a world.Toopen a world inHeidegger'ssense requiresthat the affordancesthatmatterto us anddraw us independ notmerelyon our needs andpreviousexperience,as withanimals,but on what matters o us givenour dentities,and weare capable of changingour identitiesand so our world. This is animportantdifference between humanbeings and animals,butsincewe are focusingon the role of perceptionin givingus a backgroundon the basis of which we can perceive objects andjustifyourbeliefsaboutthem,we needn't go into it here.55. MartinHeidegger,TheBasic ProblemsofPhenomenology,276.56. PhenomenologyofPerception,319.57. Heidegger, Logik, 144.58. See SamuelTodes,Bodyand World Cambridge,MA:The MITPress,2001).59. MartinHeidegger,Beingand Time,trans.J.Macquarrie&E.Robinson(New York:Harper& Row, 1962), 98-99, 412. Formore details see,HubertL.Dreyfus,Being-in-the-World:Commentaryon Heidegger'sBeingand Time,DivisionI (MITPress,1991).

dreyfus (2005) computers

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