Wandering Significance This page intentionally left blank Wandering Significance An Essay on Conceptual Behavior MARK WILSON CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD AC Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wilson, Mark. Wandering significance : an essay on conceptual behavior / Mark Wilson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Concepts. 2. Cognition. 3. Philosophy of mind. 4. Thought and thinking. 5. Psycholinguistics. I. Title. BD418.3.W53 2006 1210.4—dc22 2005023339 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 0–19–926925–4 978–0–19–926925–9 13579108642 To the memory of Geof Joseph and Tamara Horowitz Of all the comrades that I’ve had, there’s none that’s left to boast And I’m left alone in my misery like some poor rambling ghost. And as I travel from town to town, they call me the wandering sign: ‘‘There goes Tom Moore, that bummer shore, from the days of ’forty-nine.’’ American folk song, apparently adapted from a music hall original by Charles Rhodes Adam names the animals This page intentionally left blank SUMMARY CONTENTS 1. WIDE SCREEN 1 2. LOST CHORDS 46 3. CLASSICAL GLUE 87 4. THEORY FACADES 147 5. THE PRACTICAL GO OF IT 223 6. THE VIRTUES OF CRACKED REASONING 287 7. LINGUISTIC WAYFARING 377 8. SONG OF THE MASTER IDEA 476 9. SEMANTIC MIMICRY 567 10. THE CRITIC OF NATURE AND GENIUS 599 This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments xiii 1. WIDE SCREEN 1 (i) Our topics introduced 1 (ii) The classical picture of concepts 4 (iii) Conceptual evaluation 6 (iv) Science should be used but not mentioned 13 (v) Ur-philosophical currents 16 (vi) Semantic finality 18 (vii) Lessons of applied mathematics 26 (viii) Why study concepts? 29 (ix) Mitigated skepticism 31 (x) Exaggerated worries 38 (xi) Our prospects 43 2. LOST CHORDS 46 (i) Ur-philosophy’s beckoning muse 46 (ii) Objective extremism 51 (iii) Tropospheric complacency 54 (iv) Tools and tasks 59 (v) Subjective extremism 65 (vi) Amphibolic reveries 74 (vii) Seasonality in conceptual evaluation 84 3. CLASSICAL GLUE 87 (i) Under a predicate’s sheltering wing 87 (ii) Classical gluing 89 (iii) Conceptual directivities 93 (iv) Custodians of the conceptual realm 96 x Table of Contents (v) Wandering significance 102 (vi) Overloaded contents 104 (vii) Core directivities 112 (viii) Relieving conceptual strain 121 (ix) Attribute and concept 130 (x) Explanation and understanding 136 Appendix: Chief theses of the classical framework 139 4. THEORY FACADES 147 (i) Strange latitudes 147 (ii) Inferential overexuberance 157 (iii) Salvation through syntax 161 (iv) A home in axiomatics 166 (v) Distributed normativity 171 (vi) Theory facades 177 (vii) Variable reduction 184 (viii) A funny thing happened on the way to the formalism 193 (ix) Helpful troublemakers 203 (x) The vicissitudes of rule validity 212 5. THE PRACTICAL GO OF IT 223 (i) Pre-pragmatist hunch 223 (ii) Strands of practical advantage 227 (iii) Linguistic engineering 230 (iv) Pre-pragmatist prospects 233 (v) Quine’s rejection of classical gluing 236 (vi) The flight from intension 240 (vii) Honorable intensions 242 (viii) Ill-founded philosophical projects 258 (ix) Fear of attribute naming 262 (x) Naming attributes ain’t easy 266 (xi) Ghost properties 273 (xii) Hazy holism 279 Table of Contents xi 6. THE VIRTUES OF CRACKED REASONING 287 (i) Interfacial accommodation 287 (ii) Representational personality 289 (iii) Presented contents 296 (iv) Intimations of intensionality 299 (v) Unsuitable personalities 308 (vi) Analytic prolongation 312 (vii) The Stokes phenomenon 319 (viii) Weight 328 (ix) Hardness 335 (x) Linguistic management 345 (xi) Foundational looping 353 (xii) Mechanical torsions 355 (xiii) Beads on a wire 369 7. LINGUISTIC WAYFARING 377 (i) Atlases and facades 377 (ii) Quantities and quasi-quantities 383 (iii) The veil of predication 390 (iv) Machinal ideas 401 (v) Lifts and free assertion 416 (vi) Evolutionary shaping 421 (vii) Nostalgia for lost empire 429 (viii) The contextual control of data 433 (ix) A paradox of classical grasp 445 (x) Redness 454 (xi) Naturally evolved linguistic systems 468 8. SONG OF THE MASTER IDEA 476 (i) The beckoning concept 476 (ii) Semantic epiphany 481 (iii) Intimations of intensionality 488 (iv) Our spying attention 497 (v) True thought rigorization 502 xii Table of Contents (vi) Teenage victory 509 (vii) Correlational pictures 515 (viii) I heard the voice of an algorithm 518 (ix) Putting a picture to it 529 (x) Retooling at sea 534 (xi) Semantic detoxification 545 (xii) Through conceptual thick and thin 552 (xiii) Design imperatives 562 9. SEMANTIC MIMICRY 567 (i) The varieties of linguistic strategy 567 (ii) Marching methods 571 (iii) Algorithmic borrowing 575 (iv) Struggling with a word 583 (v) Newtonian counterfeits 589 10. THE CRITIC OF NATURE AND GENIUS 599 (i) Mitigated expectations 599 (ii) Sublime imagination 605 (iii) The philosophical investigation of concepts 610 (iv) Pursuits of ‘‘truth’’ 617 (v) A logical chicken or egg 623 (vi) The critical role of ‘‘truth-condition’’ 629 (vii) Understanding others 638 (viii) The schedules of our time 649 (ix) An isthmus of a middle state 661 Index of topics 663 Index of authors 667 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Any work this prolonged demands both an apology and a map for navigating its expanses efficiently. As to the former, although my fondness for digressive curios contributes its share of extraneous pages here, the largest blame for the book’s verbal exuberance can be laid at the door of the prevailing state of philosophy, which has long depended, without seeming adequately aware of the reliance, upon a collection of innocuous-looking evaluative notions: concept, property, theory, possibility. Within their proper compass, these words serve us as useful assistants, toiling busily within the humble rounds of everyday application. However, they are also surprisingly complic- ated in their ministrations, for their descriptive successes typically depend upon a complicated patchwork of diverse strategies that easily pass unrecognized by their employers. That surface simplicity often trades upon hidden complexity is not an unfamiliar phenomenon: the effective operations of a hand tool such as a screwdriver demand the confluence of quite subtle supportive factors to work properly. Despite this de facto complexity, we are naturally, but falsely, inclined to look upon ‘‘concepts’’ as rather simple in their inherent constitution. This innocent faith then tempts us to presume that the shifting soils arrayed under the heading of ‘‘concept’’ provide firm and fixed ground upon which great projects can be confidently founded. Trusting to this ill- situated confidence, we frame blueprints of our intellectual capacities that, although flattering to our vanity, prove misguided in their execution and, on occasion, trick us into truly unfortunate decisions when our real life buttresses and piers begin to shift inevitably within the sands in which they have been posted. In my opening chapters, I attempt to supply some sense of the harm wrought, for ‘‘concept’’ and ‘‘theory’’- induced misapprehensions adversely affect many walks of life, even those far removed from the realms of the overtly ‘‘philosophical.’’ Ideally, the counsel of academic philosophy should temper these missteps somewhat but, in fact, my profession has more often served as an avid cheerleader to excess. The essential background to this odd situation is this: near the start of the twentieth century a host of quite substantive concerns, including some troubling practicalities arising within the mathematical and physical practices of the day, became quite critical. A number of important thinkers suggested that a certain blend of themes, drawn from both ordinary life and longstanding philosophical tradition, might provide exactly the tonic required to cure these woes. Although many of the tenets they emphasized continue to quietly dominate current thinking in philosophy, no scientific worker approaching their original array of practical concerns would recommend the same remedies today, anymore than we still entrust our health to Carter’s Little Liver Pills or Harness’ Electropathic Belts (undoubtedly, many of the nostrums we presently cherish will appear equally ridiculous a hundred years hence). For reasons I will outline next, much of this old conceptual xiv Preface and Acknowledgments consensus congealed into tacit dogma and has lumbered on more or less intact ever since. These persisting doctrines, in their sundry varieties, will be labeled the classical view of concepts in the book.