Conceptual Systems

Harold I. Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134003600
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

New concepts are constantly being introduced into our thinking. Conceptual Systems explores how these new concepts are entered into our systems along with sufficient continuity with older ideas to ensure understanding. The encyclopedic breadth of this text highlights the many different aspects and disciplines that together present an insightful view into the various theories of concepts.

Harold Brown, a reputable author in the philosophy of science examines several historically influential theories of concepts as well as presenting a clear view on the general theory of conceptual change. Case studies discuss examples of conceptual change in the history of physics including the move in seventeenth century physics from Galileo to Descates to Newton; and the conceptual framework of the 'standard model' in the late twentieth century high-energy physics.

The key central themes in the philosophy of science that are explored in detail in this enormous book make it an essential read for academics in this field.

1 Studying Concepts

Concepts are the glue that holds our mental world together.

(Murphy 2002: 1)

1.1 Orientation

Studies of concepts are central to several disciplines including, at least, anthropology, cognitive neurobiology, intellectual history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. This is as it should be since concepts play a central role in human thought. Yet this last claim is fraught with ambiguities since how we understand it, and whether we think it true, depends on our view of the nature of concepts. At the same time, our view of the nature of concepts will typically be constrained by the specific questions we are asking – which, in turn, may be a function of the discipline we are coming from and the state of that discipline. For example, when the physiological psychologist Hebb (1949) wrote about concepts he was mainly concerned with identifying neural structures at the basis of what psychologists refer to as concepts. Once he identified these structures he attempted to use them as the starting point for a purely neurological account of thought. Literally, for Hebb, concepts are in the head.

Other researchers, such as Fodor (e.g., 1975, 1988, 1998), agree that concepts are in the head – in the sense that they are mental particulars possessed by individuals – but do not study them in physiological terms. Fodor’s work straddles linguistics, philosophy, and psychology; much of this work is focused on language, and thus on the theory of meaning. As a result, one can easily be led to wonder if Hebb and Fodor are studying the same subject; an example will underline the contrast. One of Hebb’s key claims is that the neural basis of a concept is a series of neurons that form a closed loop; one of Fodor’s key claims is that concepts are semantically evaluable. It is not immediately clear how these views relate. They may be complementary, at odds with each other, or independent parts of a single account.

While Fodor and Hebb view concepts as individual possessions, others reject this thesis. One line of argument is found among philosophers and sociologists influenced by Wittgenstein’s later work (1953). On this approach concepts are social entities so that it is impossible in principle for an isolated individual to have concepts (cf., Kripke 1982; Winch 1958). For Fodor and Hebb the existence of other people is irrelevant to the question of what concepts I possess – although others may be relevant to an account of how I acquired these concepts. Others reject both psychological and sociological theories of concepts for a quite different reason. Frege (1997), for example, held that concepts are abstract entities that exist independently of what occurs in any mind. He sought to eliminate all psychological considerations from the study of concepts, and it is clear that he would have extended his views to sociological considerations had that been a subject of discussion in his day.

Consider another contrast. Students of intellectual history are often strongly impressed by differences in the concepts we find in various historical settings; many anthropologists and sociologists are equally impressed by variations across societies. But the current practice of conceptual analysis by philosophers assumes that there is some deep sense in which concepts – or, at least, certain key concepts – are universal and unchanging. Philosophers who make this assumption are content to analyze concepts by armchair reflection, and are prepared to debate such questions as whether Aristotle or Descartes got the concept of knowledge right.

Some of these disparities arise because of differences in the focal questions of different disciplines. It would be helpful if we had a wider perspective for examining the outcomes of these disparate approaches and assessing whether they contribute to some common project, conflict, or deal with different questions altogether. My main goal in this book is to contribute to this wider project by developing a theory of concepts and using that theory to resolve some of the problems about concepts that are currently in play. Since I do not claim to transcend normal disciplinary limitations, I think it appropriate to give the reader fair warning about the directions from which I approach the topic. My interest in understanding concepts comes largely from studies of the history of science. It seems to me that attempts to find the right concepts for thinking about various aspects of the world constitutes a major theme in the development of science. In pursuing this goal scientists invent concepts, try them out, sometimes improve them, and sometimes abandon them. We will see that such conceptual change occurs in fields besides the sciences. Thus one major task for a theory of concepts is to provide an account of how new concepts are introduced into ongoing research in a coherent manner. Those familiar with the literature of philosophy of science since the late 1950s will recognize the kinds of problems that concern me; I will say a bit more about the nature of these problems in Sec. 1.6. In my view, discussions of conceptual development typically underestimate the scope of conceptual innovation in human thought. Thus in Ch. 2 I will provide a large number of examples of conceptual change in several fields, and a preliminary discussion of some of the forms of conceptual innovation that we find.

I have a second major concern in this book that derives from my professional concerns as a philosopher. Acknowledging large-scale conceptual change in the course of human cognitive history raises fundamental problems about the nature and purpose of conceptual analysis. Studies of conceptual change require analysis of the concepts being studied, but philosophers typically hold that the outcome of a conceptual analysis is not just a description of a local mode of thought. Indeed, such historical study is an empirical endeavor, and many philosophers maintain that their studies of concepts are, in some deep sense, a priori. I examine the nature of conceptual analysis in some detail in Chs 7 and 8, after I have developed the theory of concepts I wish to propose. In the present chapter I will give a somewhat more extended sketch of the main issues that I plan to address in this book, and explain my own philosophical approach in more detail. Still, what I say in this chapter should be read as a preliminary orientation; my views on many of the topics I am now discussing will become fully clear only as my detailed theory of concepts develops. I return to several of these issues throughout the book, but I want to stress two features of my approach at the outset.

First, many studies of concepts, particularly in philosophy and psychology, focus on relatively simple concepts and on the ways in which these are learned – with special emphasis on how they are learned by young children. This is important work, but I will not pursue it here. My primary focus will be on some of the most sophisticated concepts in our repertoire, and the theory I propose will be developed to handle sophisticated adult thought.¹ This approach need not be viewed as a competitor to the more common approach since an adequate theory of concepts will have to encompass both ends, as well as the middle ground. I prefer to think of the relation between studies of conceptual development in children and studies of highly sophisticated concepts as analogous to driving a tunnel under a mountain from both ends. In modern tunnel building it is reasonable to expect that the two parts will meet, and if we are really lucky something like this will happen with studies of concepts that start from these opposite ends. At the present stage in studies of concepts it is more likely that the two strands will miss and that adjustments to each will be needed. I will not attempt anything quite so grandiose here. Although I will propose a general theory of concepts, I think of this theory as an attempt to contribute to a larger project whose completion lies in the future.

Second, I want to state where I stand on three types of questions that are commonly raised about concepts. Consider first two ontological questions: what kinds of entities concepts are, and where in reality they are located. In this book I will treat concepts as mental entities – items that exit in the minds of individual cognitive agents whatever minds ultimately turn out to be. (Thus I will leave the first of my two ontological questions open.) In treating concepts as mental entities I will be following a practice that is standard in psychology, but rejected by many contemporary philosophers – although not by all (e.g., Prinz 2002; Rey 1999). Whatever role society plays in an individual’s acquisition and use of concepts, there is still a distinction between individuals who have a particular concept and those who do not. Something must occur in an individual when a concept is acquired, and whatever this is, it may remain in place if that individual leaves the society in which that concept was acquired. Next, given this view of the ontological status of concepts, the key question in dispute is the nature of conceptual content. Thus the expression “theory of concepts” should be read as an abbreviation for “theory of conceptual content” unless explicit reasons are given for some other reading. Finally, there is an epistemological question: What reasons do we have for believing that concepts, understood as mental entities, exist? In my view concepts are a theoretical postulate introduced to explain a variety of cognitive phenomena; the explanatory success of this postulate provides the grounds for accepting it. Thus I will propose a theory of conceptual content and defend that theory on the basis of its explanatory power. The assumption that concepts are mental entities will be central to that theory, and the argument for this theory will thus constitute an argument for the claim that concepts exist.

1.2 Conceptual Variation

Even brief reflection suggests that new concepts are introduced both in the course of individual lives and across human history. That individuals acquire concepts as they mature from infancy seems beyond doubt. Even if one holds that there is some set of basic, perhaps innate, concepts that all humans share, it seems clear that people are not born with full mastery of such concepts as boson, isotope, fuel injector, split infinitive, corn futures, standard deviation, transcendental argument, coming-out party, royal flush, or balk. These concepts and many others are acquired in the course of a life. Moreover, these examples include concepts that are not learned by all people, and that are not found in all contemporary cultures or in all historical periods of our own culture. As already indicated, this study will focus on those who are sufficiently mature to have acquired a native language and a body concepts that is rich enough to deal with the objects and situations they encounter in the normal course of their lives. But even adults enter into situations in which they acquire new concepts, for example, as they learn a vocation, adopt an avocation, pursue a wider education, or encounter people from different cultures and sub-cultures. In a society of any complexity there will be considerable variation in the conceptual repertoires of various people. Those in a particular profession – say, electricians, arbitragers, sculptors, neurosurgeons, or astrophysicists – will have specialized bodies of concepts for dealing with objects, situations, materials, tools, and processes they encounter in their professional activities. In a similar way, those interested in opera, stamp collecting, antiques, horse racing, and so forth will also acquire specialized concepts that are not universally shared. Since human beings are social creatures, a significant part of our conceptual repertoires will be concerned with social arrangements and practices. Examples include capitalism, freshman, citizen, legislature, secretary of state,² prime minister, commissar, civil right, and eminent domain. Which of these concepts each of us acquires depends on the society we live in, the depth of our understanding of that society, and the scope of our education concerning other societies.

The introduction of new concepts is especially striking as we run our gaze over the course of human history. From an historical perspective we encounter myriad examples of concepts that are not part of contemporary thought and that will be familiar only to those who have studied the relevant history. Examples include phlogiston, telegony, radioactive induction, N ray, vassal, and the god of war. Different fields of human endeavor have different developmental histories. Some fields have a history that goes back well before we have any clear records, but some appeared within historical time and have a documentable history in which new concepts were introduced by creative individuals and passed along to their successors. Often new concepts were introduced as part of an attempt to solve outstanding problems, and when we look at the contemporary world we can reasonably project that the resolution of some currently recalcitrant problems will require ways of thinking that are not yet available.

Typical adults living in a society have a body of concepts and beliefs that allow them to deal fairly successfully with the common situations they are liable to encounter. The exact relation between concepts and beliefs is one of the topics to be explored in this book, but we should be able to agree that beliefs about a particular topic require concepts for thinking about that topic. Many of our concepts concern items we can detect with the senses we evolved on the surface of this planet, senses that allow us to pick out objects, properties of objects, and processes that occur in the environments in which humans have lived for most of our history.³ But people also introduce concepts for items that are not available to normal perception. Common examples include deities, spirits, angels, and worlds beyond the range of common experience. The development of science led to the massive postulation of items that cannot be detected by unaided perception as it became strikingly clear that the world is full of such items. These include X rays, bacteria, specific toxins (e.g., in mushrooms or the soil on which a housing sub-division was constructed), genes, and electrons, among others. Every such postulation involves the introduction of a concept, and the fact that I can direct the thoughts of many readers to these items just by using a word or phrase is powerful evidence that we share the relevant concepts. The means by which such concepts are introduced, and the ways in which adults can learn them, are among the topics to be addressed by a theory of concepts.

To be sure, not everybody associates a concept with every expression I have used. For each of us there are subjects about which we lack concepts and thus have no beliefs at all. It is easiest to illustrate this point by contrasting earlier people with ourselves, although the point applies to us as well. Consider just a few examples of subjects on which many of us have beliefs that could not be formulated using the concepts available to an ancient African or Athenian or Australian: the use of radiation to sterilize food, the amount of RAM needed to run Windows XP efficiently, the pitfalls of investing in complex derivatives, the imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe, the difference between ordinary and partial differential equations, the constitutionality of using sampling techniques in a national census, and the significance of solar neutrino experiments for the question of whether neutrinos have mass. These examples all derive from modern western society, but it is more than likely that people living in nonwestern societies have concepts that I cannot presently describe. Someone who is capable of surviving without modern technology in the African or Australian bush, or in the Arctic, has a great deal of knowledge that I lack, and this knowledge may well involve concepts that I do not possess.

Some of the concepts I have mentioned in the course of these introductory remarks have no corresponding instances in the world; as philosophers are wont to say, they are not instantiated. However, an uninstantiated concept may still be a genuine concept. It will be a persistent theme of this book that we must distinguish an account of the content of a concept from an assessment of whether it has instances. Indeed, any attempt to show that a concept lacks instances requires a grasp of the content of that concept. At the same time, the fact that some group has a well-developed practice of using and teaching a particular concept does not guarantee that this concept has instances. While both of these points strike me as obvious, there are important philosophical theories of concepts that challenge these claims; I will consider such theories as we proceed, especially in Chs 3 and 6.

I have been illustrating the enormous range of conceptual variation among people within a society, in various parts of the world at a given time, and in the course of human history. It is an immediate corollary that conceptual change occurs as people learn – both in the course of history and in the course of an individual life. Before proceeding I want to emphasize that I am using the phrase conceptual change to cover any change in a conceptual repertoire; the expression is intended to be neutral on the question whether such change always involves replacement of one concept by another, or if there is a significant sense in which concepts can themselves be altered. Now, one major task – and test – for a theory of concepts is to provide a basis for understanding how conceptual repertoires change. Two problems must be addressed in considering this topic. One of these is a psychological problem: it concerns the cognitive means by which individuals invent and acquire new concepts. Since I will discuss only those who already have a substantial conceptual repertoire, one approach to this question is to show how new concepts can be constructed out of previously available concepts. How this occurs will depend on the details of a theory of conceptual content. For example, some theories of concepts postulate a set of basic concepts that is largely shared by human beings. New concepts are introduced by constructing them out of subsets of these basic concepts; people learn the new concepts by following out this construction. Other theories of concepts that we will encounter reject the existence of such basic concepts, but still hold that new concepts are constructed out of previously existing concepts. Advocates of these different theories will give different accounts of this construction process, and of how newly introduced concepts are learned.

The second problem arises because we can also consider concepts as abstract structures, apart from their embodiment in individuals. (I will return to this topic in Sec. 1.5.) We adopt this perspective, for example, when we compare the content of concepts in order to clarify ways in which they are the same, and ways in which they differ. Questions of this sort typically arise in situations where we have competing concepts for dealing with the same subject matter; the concepts of space and time found in classical physics and in relativity theory provide a much-discussed example. How we carry out this comparison – and whether such a comparison can be carried out at all – depends on our view of conceptual content.

1.3 Conceptual Analysis

Conceptual analysis is a major philosophical industry, especially in the twentieth century English-speaking world where many hold it to be the only legitimate philosophical endeavor. Whatever one’s view on this strong claim, conceptual analysis is an important philosophical concern, and is important in other fields as well. For example, those who study the conceptual development of a science must engage in conceptual analysis in order to compare the content of concepts at various points in time. Those who seek to understand the thinking of people from other cultures must also carry out conceptual analyses as part of their research. In addition, those who propose a conceptual innovation must engage in analyses of the existing concepts and of the new concepts they seek to introduce. But any attempt to carry out a conceptual analysis requires a theory of how conceptual content is determined. Without such a theory we have no way of deciding what counts as an analysis and no way of judging whether a proposed analysis is adequate. Competing theories of conceptual content often give different answers to these questions. I want to mention some preliminary examples, subject to more detailed discussion in later chapters.

One issue is the relation between concepts and propositions. A common view is that concepts are fundamental and that propositions are built out of concepts. The general point can be seen with particular clarity if we look at the analogous relation between words and sentences. The common view holds that words have meaning independently of the sent...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Notation
• 1 Studying Concepts
• 2 Conceptual Journeys
• 3 Some Theories of Concepts
• 4 Sellars: Exposition, Interpretation, and Critique
• 5 Reconstruction
• 6 Clarifications, Responses, and Refinements
• 7 Conceptual Analysis I: Causation
• 8 Conceptual Analysis II: Epistemic Concepts
• 9 Historical Studies I: Seventeenth-Century Physics
• 10 Historical Studies II: Interactions
• 11 Conceptual Change, Incommensurability, and Progress
• Notes
• References