198 Chapter 8

requires
Navigation and Spatial Reasoning 197
b. grasping that what is experienced exists at times other than those at
which it is experienced, which requires
c. the exercise of recognitional abilities involving conscious memory,
which is most primitively manifested in
d. feature-based recognition of places.
The spatial awareness component (putting place recognition to work for
navigational purposes) requires
a. awareness that one is navigating through the environment, which
requires
b. an understanding of the nature of space, which requires
c. a grasp of the distinction between the spatial relations that hold between
places and the spatial relations that hold between things.
8.2 Spatial Awareness and Self-Consciousness
The issues raised by the close relationship between spatial awareness, selfconsciousness,
and an understanding of the mind-independence of the
objects of experience has been discussed in the philosophical literature
relatively frequently since Kant opened the debate in the Critique of Pure
Reason. Two recent and influential treatments of the issues will be found
in Christopher Peacocke’s A Study of Concepts (1992) and John Campbell’s
Past, Space, and Self (1994). The juxtaposition of their respective
positions poses an important challenge, which it will be the aim of the
rest of this chapter to answer.
Christopher Peacocke has argued that any well-founded attribution to
a creature of a capacity for the reidentification of places presupposes that
the creature in question has mastery of the first-person concept.1 If sound,
this argument will have disastrous implications for the argument of this
book, for it directly entails the incoherence of the notion of a nonconceptual
point of view. Let me schematize his argument:
1. The attribution of genuine spatial representational content to a creature
is justified only if that creature is capable of reidentifying places
over time.
2. Reidentifying places requires the capacity to identify one’s current location
with a location previously encountered.
3. Reidentifying places in this way involves building up an integrated representation
of the environment over time.
198 Chapter 8
4. Neither (3) nor (4) would be possible unless the subject possessed at
least a primitive form of the first-person concept.
To appreciate the significance of (4), it is important to remember the Priority
Thesis, discussed and endorsed in chapter 2:
The Priority Principle Conceptual abilities are constitutively linked with
linguistic abilities in such a way that conceptual abilities cannot be possessed
by nonlinguistic creatures.
According to the Priority Principle, concept possession goes hand in hand
with linguistic mastery. Thus if Peacocke’s argument is sound, it entails
that what he is calling place reidentification cannot be available either to
nonlinguistic creatures or to linguistic creatures that lack mastery of the
first-person pronoun. Hence, on the assumption that Peacocke’s place reidentification
is an element in what I term possession of a nonconceptual
point of view on the world, his argument is a direct threat to the position
that I am developing.
Let us look more carefully at how Peacocke understands place reidentification.
Place reidentification is the ability to identify a current place with
a previously encountered place. This seems comparable to what I have
been describing as place recognition involving conscious memory. In (3),
however, the notion of place reidentification is made rather richer with the
suggestion that place reidentification is available only to those creatures
capable of building up an integrated representation of the environment
over time:
To identify places over time requires the subject to be able to integrate the representational
contents of his successive perceptions into an integrated representation
of the world around him, both near and far, past and present. I label this the
ability to engage in spatial reasoning. . . . Spatial reasoning involves the subject’s
building up a consistent representation of the world around him and of his location
in it. (Peacocke 1992, 91)
Although Peacocke does not go into details about what is to count as “a
consistent representation of the world around the subject,” it is plausible
to assume that it is rather comparable to elements (b) and (c) of what I
term the spatial awareness component, namely, that a representation of
the spatial layout of the environment registers an understanding of the
nature of space, and in particular, of the distinction between the spatial
relations that hold between places and those that hold between things.
Navigation and Spatial Reasoning 199
So it is only with (4) that the position I am developing differs from Peacocke’s
position. It is clear, therefore, that Peacocke’s argument presents
a challenge that has to be met: the challenge of showing how the ability
to engage in spatial reasoning is available to creatures who do not possess
the capacity for reflexive self-reference.
One way of trying to meet this challenge would be to deny the strong
conditions that Peacocke places on the capacity for place reidentification.
In particular, one might query his suggestion that place reidentification is
available only to creatures who have the capacity to construct suitably
integrated representations of their environment and to engage in spatial
reasoning in a way that necessarily involves grasp of the first-person pronoun.
This could be done, for example, by appealing to the notion of
causally indexical comprehension developed by John Campbell (1994).2
Grasping a causally indexical notion just is grasping its implications for
one’s own actions. Examples of such causally indexical notions are that
something is too heavy for one to lift, or that something else is within
reach. As Campbell points out, grasp of causally indexical notions may
be linked with a reflective understanding of one’s own capacities and of
the relevant properties of the object. On the other hand, it need not be so
linked: he maintains that it makes sense to ascribe to creatures a grasp of
such causally indexical notions without ascribing to them any grasp of
notions that are not causally indexical (even though those causally nonindexical
notions might be essential to characterize the causally indexical
notions), because the significance of such notions is exhausted by their
implications for perception and action. And as such, causally indexical
mental states qualify as states with nonconceptual content.
In the present context, then, one might suggest that there is no need to
place the theoretical weight that Peacocke does on disengaged reflective
and reasoning abilities. Rather, we should be looking at how a given creature
interacts with its surroundings, because that will be how it manifests
its grasp of the spatial properties of its environment (of the connectedness
of places, for example). On such a view, a creature could be capable of
spatial reasoning in the absence of any capacity to reflect on its interactions
with its environment. If this line is pursued, then it seems to provide
a way in which we can hang on to the idea of place reidentification without
accepting Peacocke’s claim that it implicates possession of a primitive