Conceptuality and Generality: A Criticism of an Argument for Content Dualism

Abstract

In this paper I discuss Heck’s (2007) new argument for content dualism. This argument is based on the claim that conceptual states, but not perceptual states, meet Evans’s Generality Constraint. Heck argues that this claim, together with the idea that the kind of content we should attribute to a mental state depends on which generalizations the state satisfies, implies that conceptual states and perceptual states have different kinds of contents. I argue, however, that it is unlikely that there is a plausible reading of the Generality Constraint under which it is non-trivially true both that conceptual states meet it and that perceptual states do not. Therefore, the soundness of Heck’s argument is dubious.