134 Innateness and Ontology, Part I

134 Innateness and Ontology, Part I
Second Try at a Metaphysical Solution to the d/D Problem
Maybe what it is to be a doorknob isn’t evidenced by the kind of experience
that leads to acquiring the concept DOORKNOB; maybe what it is to be
a doorknob is constituted by the kind of experience that leads to acquiring
the concept DOORKNOB. A Very Deep Thought, that; but one that
requires some unpacking. I want to take a few steps back so as to get a
running start.
Chapter 3 remarked that it’s pretty clear that if we can’t define
“doorknob”, that can’t be because of some accidental limitation of the
available metalinguistic apparatus; such a deficit could always be remedied
by switching metalanguages. The claim, in short, was not that we can’t
define “doorknob” in English, but that we can’t define it at all. The implied
moral is interesting: if “doorknob” can’t be defined, the reason that it can’t
is plausibly not methodological but ontological; it has something to do with
what kind of property being a doorknob is. If you’re inclined to doubt this,
so be it; but I think that you should have your intuitions looked at.
Well, but what could it be about being a doorknob that makes
‘doorknob’ not definable? Could it be that doorknobs have a “hidden
essence” (as water, for example, is supposed to do); one that has eluded our
scrutiny so far? Perhaps some science, not yet in place, will do for
doorknobs what molecular chemistry did for water and geometrical optics
did for mirrors: make it clear to us what they really are? But what science,
for heaven’s sake? And what could there be for it to make clear? Mirrors
are puzzling (it seems that they double things); and water is puzzling too
(what could it be made of, there’s so much of it around?). But doorknobs
aren’t puzzling; doorknobs are boring. Here, for once, “further research”
appears not to be required.
It’s sometimes said that doorknobs (and the like) have functional
essences: what makes a thing a doorknob is what it is (or is intended to be)
used for. So maybe the science of doorknobs is psychology? Or sociology?
Or anthropology? Once again, believe it if you can. In fact, the intentional
aetiology of doorknobs is utterly transparent: they’re intended to be used
as doorknobs. I don’t at all doubt that’s what makes them what they are,
but that it is gets us nowhere. For, if DOORKNOB plausibly lacks a
conceptual analysis, INTENDED TO BE USED AS A DOORKNOB
does too, and for the same reasons. And surely, surely, that can’t, in either
case, be because there’s something secret about doorknobhood that depth
psychology is needed to reveal? No doubt, there is a lot that we don’t know
about intentions towards doorknobs qua intentions; but I can’t believe
there’s much that’s obscure about them qua intentions towards doorknobs.
Look, there is presumably something about doorknobs that makes