70 The Demise of Definitions, Part II

The Demise of Definitions, Part II:
The Philosopher’s Tale
[A] little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them
cheats. [They] may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb
of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.
—Scrooge
inferences that can be known a priori to be sound are prized by
philosophers because they are useful for bopping sceptics over the head
with. Thus:
Sceptic: You can’t ever infer with certainty from how things look to
how they are.
Antisceptic: Can too, because there is an intrinsic conceptual connection
between how-things-look concepts and how-things-are concepts
(between behaviour-concepts and mind-concepts; between isconcepts
and ought-concepts, etc. etc.). Bop. I win.
Sceptic: I don’t acknowledge such intrinsic connections.
Antisceptic: Then you don’t have the concepts! Bop. I still win.
And even philosophers who don’t care much about scepticism sometimes
get hooked on intrinsic conceptual connectedness out of their concern for
full employment.What else but constitutive connections among concepts
is there for a philosophical analysis to be the philosophical analysis of ?
And, if there are no philosophical analyses, what are analytic philosophers
for?
In short, when philosophers opt for definitions it’s usually less because
they’re independently convinced that the theory of language or the theory
of mind requires them than because constitutive conceptual connectedness
seems worth having if buying into definitions is the cost. There may be
some other way to get such connections (see Appendix 5A), but definitions
are a convenient way, and one which, unlike criteriology, can be scrupulous
about keeping epistemology out of semantics.
So, if you’re interested in what philosophers have to say that bears on
whether concepts are definitions, it’s their discussions of conceptual
connectedness that are most likely to be relevant. These days, what one
often hears listening in on such discussions is some version of the
following line of thought:
—It’s right that you can’t infer that there are intrinsic conceptual
connections simply from the premiss that if there were, they would
be useful for antisceptical employment.
—However, Quine’s arguments that there are no such connections aren’t
conclusive; in fact, nobody seems to be able to agree about exactly
what Quine’s arguments are.
—There is a field of data for the explanation of which the notion of
intrinsic conceptual connection appears to be well suited. These data
include intuitions that certain propositions are analytic (hence
necessary, hence a priori). Paradigms are no bachelors are married,
Tuesdays precede Wednesdays, and so on. There are, as you’d expect,
70 The Demise of Definitions, Part II
also the corresponding intuitions about concept possession; no one
who lacked the concept MARRIED could have the concept
BACHELOR; no one who lacked the concept WEEKDAY or the
concept WEDNESDAY could have the concept TUESDAY, and so
on. This is all as it should be. If a connection between two concepts
is constitutive, you can’t have the one unless you have the other.
—Given that there are these intuitions, we are justified in appealing to
a notion of intrinsic conceptual connectedness as a sort of
theoretical posit, even if we can’t produce a satisfactory account of
such connections cash in hand.
—Maybe whatever explication of intrinsic conceptual connection proves,
eventually, to account for these intuitions will correspondingly
elucidate such notions as definition, analyticity, a prioricity, and the
rest. Maybe it will even do some work against sceptics, who knows?
Anyhow, since the intuitions are strong and the a priori arguments
against analyticity aren’t conclusive, it’s not reasonable to take for
granted that there are no intrinsic conceptual connections. And,
given the intimate relation between intrinsic conceptual connections
and definitions, perhaps we had also better not take for granted that
there are none of the latter.
There is quite a lot that one might say here, both on matters of exegesis
and on matters of substance. I am, myself, inclined to think it’s pretty
clear after all how Quine’s main argument against analyticity is supposed
to run: namely, that nobody has been able to draw a serious and
unquestion-begging distinction between conceptual connections that are
reliable because they are intrinsic/constitutive and conceptual connections
that are reliable although they aren’t; and that it would explain the collapse
of this project if there were, in fact, no such distinction. Moreover, since
I suppose informational semantics to be more or less true, I think we can
now see why Quine was right about there not being an analytic/synthetic
distinction. Informational semantics is atomistic; it denies that the grasp
of any interconceptual relations is constitutive of concept possession.
(More on this below.)
I don’t, however, propose to refight these old battles here. Rather, I want
to concentrate on the argument that the very fact that we have intuitions
of analyticity makes a formidable case for there being intrinsic conceptual
connections. I am sympathetic to the tactics of this argument. First blush,
it surely does seem plausible that bachelors are unmarried is a different
kind of truth from, as it might be, it often rains in January; and it’s not
implausible, again first blush, that the difference is that the first truth, but
not the second, is purely conceptual. I agree, in short, that assuming that
The Philosopher’s Tale 71
they can’t be otherwise accounted for, the standard intuitions offer
respectable evidence for there being cases of intrinsic conceptual
connectedness. Sheer goodness of heart prompts me also to concede the
stipulation that if a conceptual connection is constitutive, then it constrains
concept possession. (Note that it doesn’t follow, and that I don’t concede,
that if a conceptual connection is necessary it constrains concept
possession. More about this presently too.)
I also agree that the standard deflationary account of analyticity
intuitions, viz. Quine’s appeal to ‘theoretical centrality,’ is unpersuasive
for many cases. If ‘F = MA’ strikes one as true by definition, that may be
because so much of one’s favourite story about the mechanics of middlesized
objects depends on it. But appeal to centrality doesn’t seem nearly so
persuasive to explain why we’re conservative about bachelors being
unmarried and Tuesdays coming before Wednesdays. Quite the contrary;
if one is inclined to think of these as ‘merely’ conceptual truths, that’s
precisely because nothing appears to hang on them. It is, to speak with the
vulgar, just a matter of what you mean by ‘bachelor’ and by ‘Tuesday’.
So, here’s what I take the geography to be: on the one hand, concepts
can’t be definitions unless some sense can be made of intrinsic conceptual
connection, analyticity, and the like; and there are the familiar Quinean
reasons to doubt that any sense can be. But, on the other hand, there are
lots of what would seem to be intuitions of intrinsic conceptual
connectedness, and that’s a prima face argument that perhaps there are
intrinsic conceptual connections after all. If there are, then a crucial
necessary condition for concepts to be definitions is in place. If there
aren’t, then what are usually taken to be intuitions of intrinsic conceptual
connectedness must really be intuitions of something else and they will
have to be explained away. As between these options, you pay your money
and you place your bets.
I propose, in the rest of this chapter, to try to explain the intuitions
away. I’ll sketch an account of them which, like Quine’s story about
centrality, is loosely epistemic, but which seems to me to work well just
where appealing to centrality doesn’t. The next to the bottom line will be
that soi-disant intuitions of conceptual connectedness are perhaps a mixed
bag, sometimes to be explained by appealing to centrality, sometimes to be
explained by appealing to my Factor X, but rarely, if ever, to be explained
by appealing to the constitutive conditions for concept possession. The
bottom line will be that the existence of the putative intuitions of
analyticity offers no very robust evidence that conceptual connectedness
can be made sense of, so probably the Quinean arguments hold good, so
probably notions like definition can’t be sustained, so probably the
conclusion that we should draw from the available philosophical evidence