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whether it contains a dog. That, in some circumstances, perception
primitively compels one to think of dogs is a psychophysical fact of capital
significance: perception is one of the core mechanisms by which one s
semantic access to dogs is sustained. But the necessity of the connection
between having the concept and having perceptually driven dog-thoughts
Chaps. 3 & 4 11/3/97 1:11 PM Page 80
80 The Demise of Definitions, Part II
is itself empirical, not metaphysical. It entails no constitutive constraints
either on the content of one s concept, or on the conditions for possessing
it. If informational semantics is anywhere near to being right, Empiricism
is dead.
OK; kindly hold onto all that. There s one more ingredient I want to
add.
One-Criterion Concepts
Back in 1983, Putnam wrote a paper about analyticity that one can see in
retrospect to have been motivated by many of the same considerations
that I ve been discussing here. Putnam was an early enthusiast for Quine s
polemic against analyticities, definitions, constitutive conceptual
connections, and the like. But he was worried about bachelors being
unmarried and Tuesdays coming before Wednesdays. These struck
Putnam as boringly analytic in a way that F = MA, or even dogs are
animals, is not. So Putnam had trouble viewing Tuesday before Wednesday
and the like as bona fide cases of theoretical centrality; and, as remarked
above, theoretical centrality was all Quine had on offer to explain why
some truths seem to be conceptual. Putnam therefore proposed to tidy up
after Quine.
Strictly speaking, according to Putnam, there are definitions,
analyticities, and constitutive conceptual connections after all. But that
there are isn t philosophically interesting since they won t do any of the
heavy duty epistemological or metaphysical work that philosophers have
had in mind for them, and that they won t is intrinsic to the nature of
conceptual connection. According to Putnam s story, analyticity works
only for concepts that lack centrality; only for concepts that fail to exhibit
any substantial intricacy of attachment to the rest of the web of belief; in
short, only for concepts that lack precisely what philosophers care about
about concepts. The very facts that permit there to be conceptual truths
about bachelors and Tuesdays prohibit there being such truths in the case
of more amusing concepts like DOG, CAUSE, or TRIANGLE; to say
nothing of PHYSICAL OBJECT, GOD, PROTON, or GOOD. So,
anyhow, Putnam s story was supposed to make it turn out.
Putnam s idea was that, out at the edge of the web, and hence connected
to nothing very much, there is a fringe of one-criterion concepts. Criteria
are ways of telling, so you re a one-criterion concept only if there is just
one way to tell that you apply. BACHELOR qualifies because the only
way to tell whether Jones is a bachelor is by finding out if he s an
unmarried man. TUESDAY qualifies because the only way to tell that it s
Chaps. 3 & 4 11/3/97 1:11 PM Page 81
The Philosopher s Tale 81
Tuesday is by finding out if it s the second day of the week. And so on.
Well, according to Putnam, if a concept has, in this sense, only one
criterion, then it is conceptually necessary (viz. constitutive of the content
of the concept) that if the criterion is satisfied then the concept applies. So
there is, after all, an epistemic clause in the theory of concept constitutivity.
Old timers will recognize this treatment of BACHELOR and the like as
close kin to the then-popular theory that DOG, CAUSE, PAIN, FORCE,
WATER, INFLUENZA, and the like are cluster concepts. In effect, a
cluster concept is one for whose application there are lots of criteria.
So, then, according to Putnam, analyticity just is one-criterionhood.
The problems with this account by now seem pretty obvious; we ll return
to them in a moment. First, however, a word or two in its praise.
To begin with, it deconfounds analyticity from centrality, thereby
freeing embarrassed Quineans from having to assimilate bachelors are
unmarried to F = MA. It also deconfounds analyticity from mere necessity
in a way that intuition applauds. As I remarked above, it s necessary that
bachelors are unmarried, and it s again necessary that two is prime, but
only the first seems to be a good candidate for a conceptual necessity since
one isn t much tempted by the thought that not having the concept
PRIME entails not having the concept TWO. Putnam s story works very
well here. It is precisely because two is enmeshed in a rich indeed an
infinite network of necessities that one hesitates to choose among them
the ones that constitute the content of the concept. Given the plethora of
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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