Probably of CognitiveScientists too.

Jean-marc pizano Probably of CognitiveScientists too.

 

But, between friends: nothing of the sort is going to happen. In which case, what’s left to a notion of conceptual analysis that’s detached from its traditional polemical context? And what on earth are conceptual analyses for?

Second objection: The informational part of IA says that content is constituted by nomic symbol-world connections. If that is true, then there must be laws about everything that we have concepts of. Now, it may be there are laws aboutsome of the things that we have concepts of (fish, stars, grandmothers(?!)). But how could there be laws about, as itmight be, doorknobs?27 Notice that it‘s only in conjunction with conceptual atomism that informational semantics incursthis objection. Suppose the concept DOORKNOB is definitional^ equivalent to the complex concept . . . ABC . . .Then we can think the former concept if there are laws about each of the constituents of the latter. In effect, allinformational semantics per se requires for its account of conceptual content is that there be laws about the propertiesexpressed by our primitive concepts. However, IA says that practically every (lexical) concept is primitive. So,presumably, it says that DOORKNOB is primitive.28 So there must be laws about doorknobsqua doorknobs, as it were, not qua ABCs. But how could there be laws about doorknobs? Doorknobs, of all things!

Third objection: If most lexical concepts have no internal structure, then most lexical concepts must be primitive. But primitive concepts are, ipso facto, unlearned; and if a concept is unlearned, then it must be innate. But how couldDOORKNOB be innate? DOORKNOB, of all things!! Prima facie, this objection holds against (not just IA but) anyversion of RTM that is not heavily into conceptual reduction; that is, against any theory that says that the primitiveconceptual basis is large. In particular, it holds prima facie against any atomistic version of RTM, whether or not it isinformational.

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Objections two and three both turn on the peculiarly central roles that primitive concepts play in RTMs. Primitive concepts are supposed to be the special cases that problems about conceptual content and concept acquisition reduceto. But if not just RTM but also conceptual atomism is assumed, then the special case becomes alarmingly general. If,for example, DOORKNOB is primitive, then whatever metaphysical story we tell about the content of primitiveconcepts has to work for DOORKNOB. And so must whatever psychological story we tell about the acquisition ofprimitive concepts. And the metaphysical story has to work in light of the acquisition story, and the acquisition storyhas to work in light of the metaphysical story. Hume wouldn’t have liked this at all; he wanted the primitives to be justthe sensory concepts, and he wanted them to be acquired by the stimulation of an innate sensorium. Pretty clearly, hegets neither if DOORKNOB is among the primitives.

I propose, in this chapter, to explore some of the ways that these issues play out in IA versions of RTM. We’ll consider how, because of the way it construes conceptual content, IA is maybe able to avoid some extremes of conceptualnativism to which other atomistic versions of RTM are prone. (Though at a price, to be sure. No free lunches hereeither.) In Chapter 7, I’ll take up the question about laws.

The Standard Argument

There is a plausible argument which says that informational atomism implies radical conceptual nativism; I’ll call it the ‘Standard Argument’ (SA). Here, in very rough form, is how the Standard Argument is supposed to go.

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SA begins by assuming that learning a concept is an inductive process; specifically, that it requires devising and testing hypotheses about what the property is in virtue of which things fall under the concept. This is

relatively unproblematic when the concept to be acquired is a definition. If the concept BACHELOR is the concept UNMARRIED MALE, you can learn BACHELOR by learning that things fall under it in virtue of being male and beingunmarried. But, on pain of circularity, the (absolutely) primitive concepts can’t themselves be learned this way. Supposethe concept RED is primitive. Then to learn RED inductively you’d have to devise and confirm the hypothesis thatthings fall under RED in virtue of being red.Jean-marc pizano

Statistical Theories of Concepts

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The general character of the new theory of concepts is widely known throughout the cognitive science community, so the exegesis that follows will be minimal.

Imagine a hierarchy of concepts ordered by relations of dominance and sisterhood, where these obey the intuitive axioms (e.g. dominance is antireflexive, transitive and asymmetric; sisterhood is antireflexive, transitive, and symmetric,etc.). Figure 5.1 is a sort of caricature.

The structural complexity of definitions was of some use to philosophers too: it promised the (partial?) reduction of conceptual to logical truth. So, for example, the conceptual truth that if John is a bachelor then John is unmarried, and the logical truth that if John is unmarried and John is a man then John is unmarried, are supposed tobe indistinguishable at the ‘semantic level’.

Fig. 5.1 An Entirely Hypothetical ‘Semantic Hierarchy’ Showing the Position and Features Of Some Concepts For Vehicles.

. . . ARTEFACTS (-hnade objects)

CHAIRS

vehicles (■+■ used for transport)

(-tlies). . .

WHEELED VEHICLES

CAR

BCYC .1

RL k

SPORTS CAR COUPE…

MACK ARTICULATED L-JIACL (+tO rent)

(+self drive)

The intended interpretation is that, on the one hand, if something is a truck or a car, then it’s a vehicle; and, on the other hand, if something is a vehicle, then it’s either a truck, or a car, or . . . etc. (Let’s, for the moment, take for grantedthat these inferences are sound but put questions about their modal status to one side.) As usual, expressions in caps(‘VEHICLE’ and the like) are the names of concepts, not their structural descriptions. We continue to assume, as withthe definition theory, that lexical concepts are typically complex. In particular, a lexical concept is a tree consisting ofnames of taxonomic properties together with their features (or ‘attributes’; for the latter terminology, see Collins andQuillian 1969), which I’ve put in parentheses and lower case.47 In a hierarchy like 5.1, each concept inherits the featuresof the concepts by which it is dominated.

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What, exactly, the distinction between semantic features and taxonomic classes is supposed to come to is one of the great mysteries of cognitive science. There is much to be said for the view that it doesn’t come to anything. I shall, in any case, not discuss this issue here; I come to bury prototypes, not to exposit them.

Thus, vehicles are artefacts that are mobile, intended to be used for transport, . . . etc.; trucks are artefacts that are mobile, intended to be used for transport of freight (rather than persons), . . . etc. U-Haul trucks are artefacts that aremobile, intended to be rented to be used for transport of freight (rather than persons), . . . and so forth.

The claims of present interest are that when conceptual hierarchies like 5.1 are mentally represented:

i. There will typically be a basic level of concepts (defined over the dominance relations);and

ii. There will typically be a stereotype structure (defined over the sisterhood relations).

Roughly, and intuitively: the basic level concepts are the ones that receive relatively few features from the concepts that immediately dominate them but transmit relatively many features to the concepts that they immediately dominate. So,for example, that it’s a car tells you a lot about a vehicle; but that it’s a sports car doesn’t add a lot to what ‘it‘s a car’already told you. So CAR and its sisters (but not VEHICLE or SPORTS CAR and their sisters) constitute a basic levelcategory. Correspondingly, the prototypical sister at a given conceptual level is the one which has the most features incommon with the rest of its sisterhood (and/or the least in common with non-sisters at its level). So, cars are theprototypical vehicles because they have more in common with trucks, buses, and bicycles than any of the latter do withany of the others.

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Such claims should, of course, be relativized to an independently motivated account of the individuation of semantic features (see n. 3). Why, for example, isn’t the feature bundle for VEHICLE just the unit set +vehicle? Well may youask. But statistical theories of concepts are no better prepared to be explicit about what semantic features are thandefinitional theories used to be; in practice, it‘s all just left to intuition.Jean-marc pizano

Then you will find it intuitively plausible thatthe relation between C and C* is conceptual; specifically, that you can’t have C unless you also have C*. And the moreyou think that it is counterfactual supporting that the only epistemic route from C to the property it expresses depends ondrawing inferences that involve the concept C*, the stronger your intuition that C and C* are conceptually connectedwill be.16

Jean-marc pizano Then you will find it intuitively plausible thatthe relation between C and C* is conceptual; specifically, that you can’t have C unless you also have C*. And the moreyou think that it is counterfactual supporting that the only epistemic route from C to the property it expresses depends ondrawing inferences that involve the concept C*, the stronger your intuition that C and C* are conceptually connectedwill be.16

 

The best way to see how this account of analyticity intuitions is supposed to work is to consider some cases where it doesn’t apply. Take the concepts DOG and ANIMAL; and let’s suppose, concessively, that dogs are animals is necessary.Still, according to the present story, ‘dogs are animals’ should be a relatively poorish candidate for analyticity asnecessities go. Why? Well, because there are lots of plausible scenarios where your thoughts achieve semantic access todoghood but not via your performing inferences that deploy the concept ANIMAL. Surely it’s likely that perceptualidentifications of dogs work that way; even if dog perception is always inferential, there’s no reason to suppose thatthat ANIMAL is always, or even often, deployed in drawing the inferences. To the contrary, perceptual inferences fromdoggish-looking to dog are no doubt direct in the usual case. So, then, deploying ANIMAL is pretty clearly not a necessarycondition for getting semantic access to dog; so the strength of the intuition that dogs are animals is analytic ought to bepretty underwhelming according to the present account. Which, I suppose, it is.

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I suppose, to continue the previous example, that the same holds for concepts like WATER and H2O. No doubt, water is H2O is metaphysically necessary. But, there’s a plethora of reliable ways of determining that stuff is water; outside thelaboratory, one practically never does so by inference from its being H2O. So, even if they express the same property,my story says that the relation between the concepts ought not to strike one’s intuition as plausibly constitutive. Which,I suppose, it doesn’t. (See also the old joke about how to tell how many sheep there are: you count the legs and divideby four. Here too the crucial connection is necessary; presumably it’s a law that sheep have four legs. But the necessityisn’t intuitively conceptual, even first blush. That’s because there are lots of other, and better, ways to get epistemic (afortiori, semantic) access to the cardinality of one’s flock.)

But offhand, I can’t imagine how I might determine whether John is a bachelor except by determining that he’s male and un- (viz. not) married. Or by employing some procedure that I take to be a way of determining that he is male andunmarried . . . etc. Just so, offhand, I can‘t imagine how I might determine whether it’s Tuesday except by determiningthat it‘s the second day of the week; e.g. by determining that yesterday was Monday and/or that tomorrow will beWednesday. Hence the intuitive analyticity of bachelors are unmarried, Tuesday just before Wednesday, and the like. I’msuggesting that it’s the epistemic property of being a one-criterion concept—not a modal property, and certainly not asemantic property—that

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putative intuitions of analyticity detect. A fortiori, such intuitions do not detect the constituent structure of complex concepts.

TUESDAY is especially engaging in this respect. It pays to spend some time on TUESDAY. I suppose the intuition that needs explaining is that “Tuesday” is conceptually connected to a small circle of mutually interdefinable terms, atleast some of which you must have to have it. This kind of thing is actually a bit embarrassing for the standard,semantic account of analyticity intuitions. Since there’s no strong intuition about which of the Tuesday-related conceptsyou have to have to have “Tuesday”, it’s correspondingly unclear which of the concepts deployed in the variousnecessary truths about Tuesdays should count as constitutive; i.e. which of them should be treated as part of thedefinition of “Tuesday”. (Correspondingly, there’s no clear intuition about which of this galaxy of concepts should beconstituents of TUESDAY, assuming you hold a containment theory of definition.)

And Tuesday-intuitions raise another embarrassing question as well: suppose you could somehow decide which Tuesday-involving necessities are definitional and which aren’t.Jean-marc pizano

And, given the intimate relation between intrinsic conceptual connections and definitions, perhapswe had also better not take for granted that there are none of the latter.

Jean-marc pizano And, given the intimate relation between intrinsic conceptual connections and definitions, perhapswe had also better not take for granted that there are none of the latter.

 

There is quite a lot that one might say here, both on matters of exegesis and on matters of substance. I am, myself, inclined to think it’s pretty clear after all how Quine’s main argument against analyticity is supposed to run: namely, thatnobody has been able to draw a serious and unquestion-begging distinction between conceptual connections that arereliable because they are intrinsic/constitutive and conceptual connections that are reliable although they aren’t; andthat it would explain the collapse of this project if there were, in fact, no such distinction. Moreover, since I supposeinformational semantics to be more or less true, I think we can now see why Quine was right about there not being ananalytic/synthetic distinction. Informational semantics is atomistic; it denies that the grasp of any interconceptualrelations is constitutive of concept possession. (More on this below)

I don’t, however, propose to refight these old battles here. Rather, I want to concentrate on the argument that the very fact that we have intuitions of analyticity makes a formidable case for there being intrinsic conceptual connections. I amsympathetic to the tactics of this argument. First blush, it surely does seem plausible that bachelors are unmarried is adifferent kind of truth from, as it might be, it often rains in January; and it‘s not implausible, again first blush, that thedifference is that the first truth, but not the second, is purely conceptual. I agree, in short, that assuming thatthey can’t be otherwise accounted for, the standard intuitions offer respectable evidence for there being cases ofintrinsic conceptual connectedness. Sheer goodness of heart prompts me also to concede the stipulation that if aconceptual connection is constitutive, then it constrains concept possession. (Note that it doesn’t follow, and that I don’tconcede, that if a conceptual connection is necessary it constrains concept possession. More about this presently too.)

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I also agree that the standard deflationary account of analyticity intuitions, viz. Quine’s appeal to ‘theoretical centrality,’ is unpersuasive for many cases. If ‘F = MA strikes one as true by definition, that may be because so much of one’sfavourite story about the mechanics of middle-sized objects depends on it. But appeal to centrality doesn’t seem nearlyso persuasive to explain why we’re conservative about bachelors being unmarried and Tuesdays coming beforeWednesdays. Quite the contrary; if one is inclined to think of these as ‘merely’ conceptual truths, that’s preciselybecause nothing appears to hang on them. It is, to speak with the vulgar, just a matter of what you mean by ‘bachelor’and by ‘Tuesday’.

So, here’s what I take the geography to be: on the one hand, concepts can‘t be definitions unless some sense can be made of intrinsic conceptual connection, analyticity, and the like; and there are the familiar Quinean reasons to doubt that anysense can be. But, on the other hand, there are lots of what would seem to be intuitions of intrinsic conceptualconnectedness, and that’s a prima face argument that perhaps there are intrinsic conceptual connections after all. Ifthere are, then a crucial necessary condition for concepts to be definitions is in place. If there aren’t, then what areusually taken to be intuitions of intrinsic conceptual connectedness must really be intuitions of something else and theywill have to be explained away. As between these options, you pay your money and you place your bets.

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I propose, in the rest of this chapter, to try to explain the intuitions away. I’ll sketch an account of them which, like Quine’s story about centrality, is loosely epistemic, but which seems to me to work well just where appealing tocentrality doesn’t. The next to the bottom line will be that soi-disant intuitions of conceptual connectedness are perhapsa mixed bag, sometimes to be explained by appealing to centrality, sometimes to be explained by appealing to myFactor X, but rarely, if ever, to be explained by appealing to the constitutive conditions for concept possession. Thebottom line will be that the existence of the putative intuitions of analyticity offers no very robust evidence thatconceptual connectedness can be made sense of, so probably the Quinean arguments hold good, so probably notionslike definition can’t be sustained, so probably the conclusion that we should draw from the available philosophicalevidenceis that concepts aren’t definitions.Jean-marc pizano

There is, however, a widespread consensus (and not only among conceptual relativists) that intentional explanation can, after all, be preserved without supposing that belief contents are often—or even ever—literally public. The idea isthat a robust notion of content similarity would do just as well as a robust notion of content identity for the cognitivescientist’s purposes. Here, to choose a specimen practically at random, is a recent passage in which Gil Harmanenunciates this faith:

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There is, however, a widespread consensus (and not only among conceptual relativists) that intentional explanation can, after all, be preserved without supposing that belief contents are often—or even ever—literally public. The idea isthat a robust notion of content similarity would do just as well as a robust notion of content identity for the cognitivescientist’s purposes. Here, to choose a specimen practically at random, is a recent passage in which Gil Harmanenunciates this faith:

Sameness of meaning from one symbol system to another is a similarity relation rather than an identity relation in the respect that sameness of meaning is not transitive … I am inclined to extend the point to concepts, thoughts,and beliefs . . . The account of sameness of content appeals to the best way of translating between two systems,where goodness in translation has to do with preserving certain aspects of usage, with no appeal to any more‘robust’ notion of content or meaning identity. . . [There’s no reason why] the resulting notion of sameness ofcontent should fail to satisfy the purposes of intentional explanation. (1993: 169—79)7

It’s important whether such a view can be sustained since, as we’ll see, meeting the requirement that intentional contents be literally public is non-trivial; like compositionality, publicity imposes a substantial constraint upon one’stheory of concepts and hence, derivatively, upon one’s theory of language. In fact, however, the idea that contentsimilarity is the basic notion in intentional explanation is affirmed a lot more widely than it’s explained; and it’s quiteunclear, on reflection, how the notion of similarity that such a semantics would require might be unquestion-begginglydeveloped. On one hand, such a notion must be robust in the sense that it preserves intentional explanations prettygenerally; on the other hand, it must do so without itself presupposing a robust notion of content identity. To the best of myknowledge, it’s true without exception that all the construals of concept similarity that have thus far been put on offeregregiously fail the second condition.

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Harman, for example, doesn’t say much more about content-similarity-cum-goodness-of-translation than that it isn’t transitive and that it “preserves certain aspects of usage”. That’s not a lot to go on. Certainly it leaves wide openwhether Harman is right in denying that his account of content similarity presupposes a “ ‘robust’ notion of content ormeaning identity”. For whether it does depends on how the relevant “aspects ofusage” are themselves supposed to be individuated, and about this we’re told nothing at all.

Harman is, of course, too smart to be a behaviourist; ‘usage’, as he uses it, is itself an intentional-cum-semantic term. Suppose, what surely seems plausible, that one of the ‘aspects of usage’ that a good translation of ‘dog’ has to preserveis that it be a term that implies animal, or a term that doesn’t apply to ice cubes, or, for matter, a term that means dog Ifso, then we’re back where we started; Harman needs notions like same implication, same application, and same meaningin order to explicate his notion of content similarity. All that’s changed is which shell the pea is under.

At one point, Harman asks rhetorically, “What aspects of use determine meaning?” Reply: “It is certainly relevant what terms are applied to and the reasons that might be offered for this application … it is also relevant how some termsare used in relation to other terms” (ibid.: 166). But I can‘t make any sense of this unless some notion of ‘sameapplication’, ‘same reason’, and ‘same relation of terms’ is being taken for granted in characterizing what goodtranslations ipso facto have in common. NB on pain of circularity: same application (etc.), not similar application (etc.).Remember that similarity of semantic properties is the notion that Harman is trying to explain, so his explanation mustn’tpresuppose that notion.

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I don’t particularly mean to pick on Harman; if his story begs the question it was supposed to answer, that is quite typical of the literature on concept similarity. Though it’s often hidden in a cloud of technical apparatus (for a detailedcase study, see Fodor and Lepore 1992: ch. 7), the basic problem is easy enough to see.Jean-marc pizano

See below.) Now, the status of conceptual atomism depends, rather directly, on whether coreferenceimplies synonymy. For, if it doesn’t, and if it is inferential role that makes the difference between content and reference,then every concept must have an inferential role. But it’s also common ground that you need more than one concept todraw an inference, so if IRS is true, conceptual atomism isn’t. No doubt this line of thought could use a little polishing,but it’s surely basically sound.

Jean-marc pizano See below.) Now, the status of conceptual atomism depends, rather directly, on whether coreferenceimplies synonymy. For, if it doesn’t, and if it is inferential role that makes the difference between content and reference,then every concept must have an inferential role. But it’s also common ground that you need more than one concept todraw an inference, so if IRS is true, conceptual atomism isn’t. No doubt this line of thought could use a little polishing,but it’s surely basically sound.

 

So, then, if I’m going to push for an atomistic theory of concepts, I must not hold that one’s inferential dispositions determine, wholly or in part, the content of one’s concepts. Pure informational semantics allows me not to hold thatone’s inferential dispositions determine the content of one’s concepts because it says that content is constituted,exhaustively, by symbol—world relations.

It’s worth keeping clear on how the relation between concept possession and concept individuation plays out on an informational view: the content of, for example, BACHELOR is constituted by certain (actual and/or counterfactual)causal-cum-nomic relations between BACHELOR-tokenings and tokenings of instantiated bachelorhood. Presumablybachelorhood is itself individuated, inter alia, by the necessity of its relation to being unmarried. So, ‘bachelors are unmarried’is conceptually necessary in the sense that it’s guaranteed by the content of BACHELOR together with themetaphysics of the relevant property relations. It follows, trivially, that having BACHELOR is having a concept whichcan apply only to unmarried things; this is the truism that the interdefinability of concept individuation and conceptpossession guarantees. But nothing at all about the epistemic condition of BACHELOR owners (e.g. about theirinferential or perceptual dispositions or capacities) follows from the necessity of ‘bachelors are unmarried’; it doesn’t evenfollow that you can’t own BACHELOR unless you own UNMARRIED. Informational seman tics permits atomism aboutconcept possession even if (even though) there are conceptually necessary truths.9 This is a sort of point that will recurrepeatedly as we go along.

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So much for why I want an informational semantics as part of my RTM. Since it is, of course, moot whether I can have one, the best I can hope for is that this book will convince you that conceptual atomism is OK unless there is adecisive, independent argument against the reduction of meaning to information. I’m quite prepared to settle for thissince I’mpretty sure that there’s no such argument. In fact, I think the dialectic is going to have to go the other way around:what settles the metaphysical issue between informational theories of meaning and inferential role theories of meaningis that the former, but not the latter, are compatible with an atomistic account of concepts. And, as I’ll argue at length,there are persuasive independent grounds for thinking that atomism about concepts must be true.

In fact, I’m going to be more concessive still. Given my view that content is information, I can’t, as we’ve just seen, afford to agree that the content of the concept H2O is different from the content of the concept WATER. But I amentirely prepared to agree that they are different concepts. In effect, I’m assuming that coreferential representations are ipso factosynonyms and conceding that, since they are, content individuation can’t be all that there is to concept individuation.

It may help make clear how I’m proposing to draw the boundaries to contrast the present view with what I take to be a typical Fregean position; one according to which concepts are distinguished along two (possibly orthogonal)parameters; viz. reference and Mode of Presentation. (So, for example, the concept WATER is distinct from the conceptDOG along both parameters, but it‘s distinct from the concept H2O only in respect of the second.) I’ve diverged fromthis sort of scheme only in that some Fregeans (e.g. Frege) identify modes of presentation with senses. By contrast, I’veleft it open what modes of presentation are, so long as they are what distinguish distinct but coreferential concepts. Sofar, then, I’m less extensively committed than a Fregean, but I don’t think that I’m committed to anything that aFregean is required to deny.

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Probably of CognitiveScientists too.

Jean-marc pizano Probably of CognitiveScientists too.

 

But, between friends: nothing of the sort is going to happen. In which case, what’s left to a notion of conceptual analysis that’s detached from its traditional polemical context? And what on earth are conceptual analyses for?

Second objection: The informational part of IA says that content is constituted by nomic symbol-world connections. If that is true, then there must be laws about everything that we have concepts of. Now, it may be there are laws aboutsome of the things that we have concepts of (fish, stars, grandmothers(?!)). But how could there be laws about, as itmight be, doorknobs?27 Notice that it‘s only in conjunction with conceptual atomism that informational semantics incursthis objection. Suppose the concept DOORKNOB is definitional^ equivalent to the complex concept . . . ABC . . .Then we can think the former concept if there are laws about each of the constituents of the latter. In effect, allinformational semantics per se requires for its account of conceptual content is that there be laws about the propertiesexpressed by our primitive concepts. However, IA says that practically every (lexical) concept is primitive. So,presumably, it says that DOORKNOB is primitive.28 So there must be laws about doorknobsqua doorknobs, as it were, not qua ABCs. But how could there be laws about doorknobs? Doorknobs, of all things!

Third objection: If most lexical concepts have no internal structure, then most lexical concepts must be primitive. But primitive concepts are, ipso facto, unlearned; and if a concept is unlearned, then it must be innate. But how couldDOORKNOB be innate? DOORKNOB, of all things!! Prima facie, this objection holds against (not just IA but) anyversion of RTM that is not heavily into conceptual reduction; that is, against any theory that says that the primitiveconceptual basis is large. In particular, it holds prima facie against any atomistic version of RTM, whether or not it isinformational.

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Objections two and three both turn on the peculiarly central roles that primitive concepts play in RTMs. Primitive concepts are supposed to be the special cases that problems about conceptual content and concept acquisition reduceto. But if not just RTM but also conceptual atomism is assumed, then the special case becomes alarmingly general. If,for example, DOORKNOB is primitive, then whatever metaphysical story we tell about the content of primitiveconcepts has to work for DOORKNOB. And so must whatever psychological story we tell about the acquisition ofprimitive concepts. And the metaphysical story has to work in light of the acquisition story, and the acquisition storyhas to work in light of the metaphysical story. Hume wouldn’t have liked this at all; he wanted the primitives to be justthe sensory concepts, and he wanted them to be acquired by the stimulation of an innate sensorium. Pretty clearly, hegets neither if DOORKNOB is among the primitives.

I propose, in this chapter, to explore some of the ways that these issues play out in IA versions of RTM. We’ll consider how, because of the way it construes conceptual content, IA is maybe able to avoid some extremes of conceptualnativism to which other atomistic versions of RTM are prone. (Though at a price, to be sure. No free lunches hereeither.) In Chapter 7, I’ll take up the question about laws.

The Standard Argument

There is a plausible argument which says that informational atomism implies radical conceptual nativism; I’ll call it the ‘Standard Argument’ (SA). Here, in very rough form, is how the Standard Argument is supposed to go.

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SA begins by assuming that learning a concept is an inductive process; specifically, that it requires devising and testing hypotheses about what the property is in virtue of which things fall under the concept. This is

relatively unproblematic when the concept to be acquired is a definition. If the concept BACHELOR is the concept UNMARRIED MALE, you can learn BACHELOR by learning that things fall under it in virtue of being male and beingunmarried. But, on pain of circularity, the (absolutely) primitive concepts can’t themselves be learned this way. Supposethe concept RED is primitive. Then to learn RED inductively you’d have to devise and confirm the hypothesis thatthings fall under RED in virtue of being red.Jean-marc pizano

And, given the intimate relation between intrinsic conceptual connections and definitions, perhapswe had also better not take for granted that there are none of the latter.

Jean-marc pizano And, given the intimate relation between intrinsic conceptual connections and definitions, perhapswe had also better not take for granted that there are none of the latter.

 

There is quite a lot that one might say here, both on matters of exegesis and on matters of substance. I am, myself, inclined to think it’s pretty clear after all how Quine’s main argument against analyticity is supposed to run: namely, thatnobody has been able to draw a serious and unquestion-begging distinction between conceptual connections that arereliable because they are intrinsic/constitutive and conceptual connections that are reliable although they aren’t; andthat it would explain the collapse of this project if there were, in fact, no such distinction. Moreover, since I supposeinformational semantics to be more or less true, I think we can now see why Quine was right about there not being ananalytic/synthetic distinction. Informational semantics is atomistic; it denies that the grasp of any interconceptualrelations is constitutive of concept possession. (More on this below)

I don’t, however, propose to refight these old battles here. Rather, I want to concentrate on the argument that the very fact that we have intuitions of analyticity makes a formidable case for there being intrinsic conceptual connections. I amsympathetic to the tactics of this argument. First blush, it surely does seem plausible that bachelors are unmarried is adifferent kind of truth from, as it might be, it often rains in January; and it‘s not implausible, again first blush, that thedifference is that the first truth, but not the second, is purely conceptual. I agree, in short, that assuming thatthey can’t be otherwise accounted for, the standard intuitions offer respectable evidence for there being cases ofintrinsic conceptual connectedness. Sheer goodness of heart prompts me also to concede the stipulation that if aconceptual connection is constitutive, then it constrains concept possession. (Note that it doesn’t follow, and that I don’tconcede, that if a conceptual connection is necessary it constrains concept possession. More about this presently too.)

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I also agree that the standard deflationary account of analyticity intuitions, viz. Quine’s appeal to ‘theoretical centrality,’ is unpersuasive for many cases. If ‘F = MA strikes one as true by definition, that may be because so much of one’sfavourite story about the mechanics of middle-sized objects depends on it. But appeal to centrality doesn’t seem nearlyso persuasive to explain why we’re conservative about bachelors being unmarried and Tuesdays coming beforeWednesdays. Quite the contrary; if one is inclined to think of these as ‘merely’ conceptual truths, that’s preciselybecause nothing appears to hang on them. It is, to speak with the vulgar, just a matter of what you mean by ‘bachelor’and by ‘Tuesday’.

So, here’s what I take the geography to be: on the one hand, concepts can‘t be definitions unless some sense can be made of intrinsic conceptual connection, analyticity, and the like; and there are the familiar Quinean reasons to doubt that anysense can be. But, on the other hand, there are lots of what would seem to be intuitions of intrinsic conceptualconnectedness, and that’s a prima face argument that perhaps there are intrinsic conceptual connections after all. Ifthere are, then a crucial necessary condition for concepts to be definitions is in place. If there aren’t, then what areusually taken to be intuitions of intrinsic conceptual connectedness must really be intuitions of something else and theywill have to be explained away. As between these options, you pay your money and you place your bets.

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I propose, in the rest of this chapter, to try to explain the intuitions away. I’ll sketch an account of them which, like Quine’s story about centrality, is loosely epistemic, but which seems to me to work well just where appealing tocentrality doesn’t. The next to the bottom line will be that soi-disant intuitions of conceptual connectedness are perhapsa mixed bag, sometimes to be explained by appealing to centrality, sometimes to be explained by appealing to myFactor X, but rarely, if ever, to be explained by appealing to the constitutive conditions for concept possession. Thebottom line will be that the existence of the putative intuitions of analyticity offers no very robust evidence thatconceptual connectedness can be made sense of, so probably the Quinean arguments hold good, so probably notionslike definition can’t be sustained, so probably the conclusion that we should draw from the available philosophicalevidenceis that concepts aren’t definitions.Jean-marc pizano

Then you will find it intuitively plausible thatthe relation between C and C* is conceptual; specifically, that you can’t have C unless you also have C*. And the moreyou think that it is counterfactual supporting that the only epistemic route from C to the property it expresses depends ondrawing inferences that involve the concept C*, the stronger your intuition that C and C* are conceptually connectedwill be.16

Jean-marc pizano Then you will find it intuitively plausible thatthe relation between C and C* is conceptual; specifically, that you can’t have C unless you also have C*. And the moreyou think that it is counterfactual supporting that the only epistemic route from C to the property it expresses depends ondrawing inferences that involve the concept C*, the stronger your intuition that C and C* are conceptually connectedwill be.16

 

The best way to see how this account of analyticity intuitions is supposed to work is to consider some cases where it doesn’t apply. Take the concepts DOG and ANIMAL; and let’s suppose, concessively, that dogs are animals is necessary.Still, according to the present story, ‘dogs are animals’ should be a relatively poorish candidate for analyticity asnecessities go. Why? Well, because there are lots of plausible scenarios where your thoughts achieve semantic access todoghood but not via your performing inferences that deploy the concept ANIMAL. Surely it’s likely that perceptualidentifications of dogs work that way; even if dog perception is always inferential, there’s no reason to suppose thatthat ANIMAL is always, or even often, deployed in drawing the inferences. To the contrary, perceptual inferences fromdoggish-looking to dog are no doubt direct in the usual case. So, then, deploying ANIMAL is pretty clearly not a necessarycondition for getting semantic access to dog; so the strength of the intuition that dogs are animals is analytic ought to bepretty underwhelming according to the present account. Which, I suppose, it is.

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I suppose, to continue the previous example, that the same holds for concepts like WATER and H2O. No doubt, water is H2O is metaphysically necessary. But, there’s a plethora of reliable ways of determining that stuff is water; outside thelaboratory, one practically never does so by inference from its being H2O. So, even if they express the same property,my story says that the relation between the concepts ought not to strike one’s intuition as plausibly constitutive. Which,I suppose, it doesn’t. (See also the old joke about how to tell how many sheep there are: you count the legs and divideby four. Here too the crucial connection is necessary; presumably it’s a law that sheep have four legs. But the necessityisn’t intuitively conceptual, even first blush. That’s because there are lots of other, and better, ways to get epistemic (afortiori, semantic) access to the cardinality of one’s flock.)

But offhand, I can’t imagine how I might determine whether John is a bachelor except by determining that he’s male and un- (viz. not) married. Or by employing some procedure that I take to be a way of determining that he is male andunmarried . . . etc. Just so, offhand, I can‘t imagine how I might determine whether it’s Tuesday except by determiningthat it‘s the second day of the week; e.g. by determining that yesterday was Monday and/or that tomorrow will beWednesday. Hence the intuitive analyticity of bachelors are unmarried, Tuesday just before Wednesday, and the like. I’msuggesting that it’s the epistemic property of being a one-criterion concept—not a modal property, and certainly not asemantic property—that

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putative intuitions of analyticity detect. A fortiori, such intuitions do not detect the constituent structure of complex concepts.

TUESDAY is especially engaging in this respect. It pays to spend some time on TUESDAY. I suppose the intuition that needs explaining is that “Tuesday” is conceptually connected to a small circle of mutually interdefinable terms, atleast some of which you must have to have it. This kind of thing is actually a bit embarrassing for the standard,semantic account of analyticity intuitions. Since there’s no strong intuition about which of the Tuesday-related conceptsyou have to have to have “Tuesday”, it’s correspondingly unclear which of the concepts deployed in the variousnecessary truths about Tuesdays should count as constitutive; i.e. which of them should be treated as part of thedefinition of “Tuesday”. (Correspondingly, there’s no clear intuition about which of this galaxy of concepts should beconstituents of TUESDAY, assuming you hold a containment theory of definition.)

And Tuesday-intuitions raise another embarrassing question as well: suppose you could somehow decide which Tuesday-involving necessities are definitional and which aren’t.Jean-marc pizano

Statistical Theories of Concepts

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The general character of the new theory of concepts is widely known throughout the cognitive science community, so the exegesis that follows will be minimal.

Imagine a hierarchy of concepts ordered by relations of dominance and sisterhood, where these obey the intuitive axioms (e.g. dominance is antireflexive, transitive and asymmetric; sisterhood is antireflexive, transitive, and symmetric,etc.). Figure 5.1 is a sort of caricature.

The structural complexity of definitions was of some use to philosophers too: it promised the (partial?) reduction of conceptual to logical truth. So, for example, the conceptual truth that if John is a bachelor then John is unmarried, and the logical truth that if John is unmarried and John is a man then John is unmarried, are supposed tobe indistinguishable at the ‘semantic level’.

Fig. 5.1 An Entirely Hypothetical ‘Semantic Hierarchy’ Showing the Position and Features Of Some Concepts For Vehicles.

. . . ARTEFACTS (-hnade objects)

CHAIRS

vehicles (■+■ used for transport)

(-tlies). . .

WHEELED VEHICLES

CAR

BCYC .1

RL k

SPORTS CAR COUPE…

MACK ARTICULATED L-JIACL (+tO rent)

(+self drive)

The intended interpretation is that, on the one hand, if something is a truck or a car, then it’s a vehicle; and, on the other hand, if something is a vehicle, then it’s either a truck, or a car, or . . . etc. (Let’s, for the moment, take for grantedthat these inferences are sound but put questions about their modal status to one side.) As usual, expressions in caps(‘VEHICLE’ and the like) are the names of concepts, not their structural descriptions. We continue to assume, as withthe definition theory, that lexical concepts are typically complex. In particular, a lexical concept is a tree consisting ofnames of taxonomic properties together with their features (or ‘attributes’; for the latter terminology, see Collins andQuillian 1969), which I’ve put in parentheses and lower case.47 In a hierarchy like 5.1, each concept inherits the featuresof the concepts by which it is dominated.

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What, exactly, the distinction between semantic features and taxonomic classes is supposed to come to is one of the great mysteries of cognitive science. There is much to be said for the view that it doesn’t come to anything. I shall, in any case, not discuss this issue here; I come to bury prototypes, not to exposit them.

Thus, vehicles are artefacts that are mobile, intended to be used for transport, . . . etc.; trucks are artefacts that are mobile, intended to be used for transport of freight (rather than persons), . . . etc. U-Haul trucks are artefacts that aremobile, intended to be rented to be used for transport of freight (rather than persons), . . . and so forth.

The claims of present interest are that when conceptual hierarchies like 5.1 are mentally represented:

i. There will typically be a basic level of concepts (defined over the dominance relations);and

ii. There will typically be a stereotype structure (defined over the sisterhood relations).

Roughly, and intuitively: the basic level concepts are the ones that receive relatively few features from the concepts that immediately dominate them but transmit relatively many features to the concepts that they immediately dominate. So,for example, that it’s a car tells you a lot about a vehicle; but that it’s a sports car doesn’t add a lot to what ‘it‘s a car’already told you. So CAR and its sisters (but not VEHICLE or SPORTS CAR and their sisters) constitute a basic levelcategory. Correspondingly, the prototypical sister at a given conceptual level is the one which has the most features incommon with the rest of its sisterhood (and/or the least in common with non-sisters at its level). So, cars are theprototypical vehicles because they have more in common with trucks, buses, and bicycles than any of the latter do withany of the others.

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Such claims should, of course, be relativized to an independently motivated account of the individuation of semantic features (see n. 3). Why, for example, isn’t the feature bundle for VEHICLE just the unit set +vehicle? Well may youask. But statistical theories of concepts are no better prepared to be explicit about what semantic features are thandefinitional theories used to be; in practice, it‘s all just left to intuition.Jean-marc pizano