14 Philosophical Introduction

The Background Theory 13
having one concept never requires satisfying the metaphysically necessary
conditions for having any other concept. (Well, hardly ever. See below.)
Now, the status of conceptual atomism depends, rather directly, on
whether coreference implies 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 to draw 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 that one’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 BACHELORtokenings
and tokenings of instantiated bachelorhood. Presumably
bachelorhood 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 the metaphysics of the relevant property relations. It follows, trivially,
that having BACHELOR is having a concept which can apply only to
unmarried things; this is the truism that the interdefinability of concept
individuation and concept possession guarantees. But nothing at all about
the epistemic condition of BACHELOR owners (e.g. about their
inferential or perceptual dispositions or capacities) follows from the
necessity of ‘bachelors are unmarried’; it doesn’t even follow that you can’t
own BACHELOR unless you own UNMARRIED. Informational semantics
permits atomism about concept possession even if (even though) there
are conceptually necessary truths.8 This is a sort of point that will recur
repeatedly as we go along.
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 a decisive, independent argument against the reduction of
meaning to information. I’m quite prepared to settle for this since I’m
14 Philosophical Introduction
8 What it doesn’t do is guarantee the connection between what’s conceptually necessary
and what’s a priori. But perhaps that’s a virtue.
pretty 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 meaning is 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 am entirely prepared to agree that they are different
concepts. In effect, I’m assuming that coreferential representations are ipso
facto synonyms 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 concept DOG along
both parameters, but it’s distinct from the concept H2O only in respect of
the second.) I’ve diverged from this sort of scheme only in that some
Fregeans (e.g. Frege) identify modes of presentation with senses. By
contrast, I’ve left it open what modes of presentation are, so long as they
are what distinguish distinct but coreferential concepts. So far, then, I’m
less extensively committed than a Fregean, but I don’t think that I’m
committed to anything that a Fregean is required to deny.
Alas, ecumenicism has to stop somewhere. The fifth (and final thesis) of
my version of RTM does depart from the standard Frege architecture.
Fifth Thesis: Whatever distinguishes coextensive concepts is ipso facto
‘in the head’. This means, something like that it’s available to be a
proximal cause (/effect) of mental processes.9
As I understand it, the Fregean story makes the following three claims
about modes of presentation:
5.1 MOPs are senses; for an expression to mean what it does is for the
expression to have the MOP that it does.
The Background Theory 15
9 I take it that one of the things that distinguishes Fregeans sans phrase from neo-
Fregeans (like e.g. Peacocke 1992) is that the latter are not committed to Fege’s antimentalism
and are therefore free to agree with Thesis Five if they’re so inclined. Accordingly,
for the neo- sort of Fregean, the sermon that follows will seem to be preached to the
converted.
5.2 Since MOPs can distinguish concepts, they explain how it is
possible to entertain one, but not the other, of two coreferential
concepts; e.g. how it is possible have the concept WATER but not
the concept H2O, hence how it is possible to have (de dicto) beliefs
about water but no (de dicto) beliefs about H2O.
5.3 MOPs are abstract objects; hence they are non-mental.
In effect, I’ve signed on for 5.2; it’s the claim about MOPs that everybody
must accept who has any sympathy at all for the Frege programme. But I
think there are good reasons to believe that 5.2 excludes both 5.1 and 5.3.
In which case, I take it that 5.1 and 5.3 will have to go.
—What’s wrong with 5.1: 5.1 makes trouble for 5.2: it’s unclear that you
can hold onto 5.2 if you insist, as Frege does, that MOPs be identified
with senses. One thing (maybe the only one) that we know for sure about
senses is that synonyms share them. So if MOPs are senses and distinct but
coextensive concepts are distinguished (solely) by their MOPs, then
synonymous concepts must be identical, and it must not be possible to
think either without thinking the other. (This is the so-called ‘substitution
test’ for distinguishing modes of presentation.) But (here I follow Mates
1962), it is possible for Fred to wonder whether John understands that
bachelors are unmarried men even though Fred does not wonder whether
John understands that unmarried men are unmarried men. The moral seems
to be that if 5.2 is right, so that MOPs just are whatever it is that the
substitution test tests for, then it’s unlikely that MOPs are senses.
Here’s a similar argument to much the same conclusion. Suppose I tell
you that Jackson was a painter and that Pollock was a painter, and I tell
you nothing else about Jackson or Pollock. Suppose, also, that you believe
what I tell you. It looks like that fixes the senses of the names ‘Jackson’ and
‘Pollock’ if anything could; and it looks like it fixes them as both having
the same sense: viz. a painter. (Mutatis mutandis, it looks as though I have
fixed the same inferential role for both.) Yet, in the circumstances
imagined, it’s perfectly OK—perfectly conceptually coherent—for you to
wonder whether Jackson and Pollock were the same painter. (Contrast the
peculiarity of your wondering, in such a case, whether Jackson was
Jackson or whether Pollock was Pollock.) So, then, by Frege’s own test,
JACKSON and POLLOCK count as different MOPs. But if concepts with
the same sense can be different MOPs then, patently, MOPs can’t be
senses. This isn’t particularly about names, by the way. If I tell you that a
flang is a sort of machine part and a glanf is a sort of machine part, it’s
perfectly OK for you to wonder whether a glanf is a flang.10
16 Philosophical Introduction
10 You can’t, of course, do this trick with definite descriptions since they presuppose