82 The Demise of Definitions, Part II

except
The Philosopher’s Tale 81
that it is, alas, hopelessly circular. Putnam’s ‘one criterion’ test does no
work unless a way to count criteria is supplied. But you can’t count what
you can’t individuate, and there looks to be no principle of individuation
for criteria that doesn’t presuppose the notion of analyticity. Does
‘bachelor’ have one criterion (viz. unmarried man) or two (viz. unmarried
man and not married man)? That depends, inter alia, on whether
“unmarried man” and “not married man” are synonyms. But if there are
troubles about understanding analyticity there are the same troubles about
understanding synonymy, the two being trivially interdefinable (as Quine
rightly remarked in “Two dogmas”). So, it looks as though Putnam’s
construal of analytic connection in terms of one-criterion concept leaves
us back where we started; in a tight circle of interdefined semantic-cumconceptual
vocabulary. I first heard this objection to Putnam’s proposal
from Jerry Katz when we were both graduate students. It struck me then
as conclusive, and it continues to do so now.
So, then, the notion of a one-criterion term does nothing to clarify the
metaphysics of analyticity. But I think it can perhaps be co-opted for a less
ambitious purpose. Because I’m into atomistic informational semantics, I
have to tell a story that explains what the object of our soi-disant intuitions
of analyticity and intrinsic conceptual connectedness is, and explains why
we have such intuitions, without admitting that there are analytic truths or
intrinsically connected concepts. Since, moreover, the robustness of the
intuitions seems undeniable, I want my story to make them intuitions of
something real. Being a one-criterion concept is a godsend for my purpose;
it’s my candidate for Factor X. Notice that since what I’m aiming for is not
an account of the individuation of meanings, but just a diagnosis of some
faulty intuitions, telling my story doesn’t presuppose a prior or a
principled account of the individuation of criteria. Unlike Putnam, I can
make do with what I imagine everyone will grant: that for some concepts
there are, de facto, lots of ways of telling that they apply and for other
concepts there are, de facto, very few.
Auntie (back again): I’m back again. Tell me just why am I supposed to
grant that for some concepts there are lots of ways of telling that they
apply and that for others there are very few. Isn’t it rather that if there’s any
way at all to tell, there’s sure to be a lot? If I can tell that the dog is at the
door by listening for the bell to ring, then I can tell that the dog is at the
door by getting Jones to listen for the bell to ring. And if I can tell that the
dog is at the door by getting Jones to listen for the bell to ring, then I can
tell that the dog is at the door by getting Jones to ask Smith to listen for
the bell to ring . . . And so on. There aren’t, even de facto, any one-criterion
terms according to my way of counting.
—: Yes, all right, but not a sympathetic reading. What Putnam must
82 The Demise of Definitions, Part II
have had in mind, and what I too propose to assume, is that some ways of
telling pretty clearly depend on others. It’s the latter—the pretty clearly
independent ones—that you are supposed to count when you decide
whether something’s a one-criterion concept, or a cluster concept, or
whatever. In your example, one’s own listening for the bell to ring is pretty
clearly at the bottom of the heap.
Auntie: Why do you keep saying ‘pretty clearly’ in that irritating way?
—: Because I want to emphasize that the kind of dependence I have in
mind isn’t metaphysical, or conceptual, or even nomic, but just epistemic.
What rationalizes your asking Jones to ask Smith to listen for the bell is
your knowledge that Smith has ways of telling that don’t depend on his
asking Jones to listen for the bell. Compare the sort of contrast cases that
Putnam had in mind: the so-called cluster concepts. You can tell, pretty
reliably, whether stuff is water by, for example, how it looks, how it tastes,
where it’s located, its specific heat, its specific gravity, what it says on the
bottle, which tap it came from, and so on and on. No doubt, the fact that
all these ways of telling work depends on a bundle of metaphysical and
nomic necessities; but your employing the tests doesn’t depend on, and
isn’t usually rationalized by, your knowing that this is so; pretty clearly, the
various tests for being water are largely epistemically independent.
I agree that this is all quite loose and unprincipled; but, as remarked, it’s
not required to bear much weight. All I need it for is to explain away some
faulty intuitions. Can I proceed?
Auntie: You may try.
Then here’s my story in a nutshell: suppose you think the only epistemic
route from the concept C to the property that it expresses depends on
drawing inferences that involve the concept C*. Then you will find it
intuitively plausible that the relation between C and C* is conceptual;
specifically, that you can’t have C unless you also have C*. And the more
you think that it is counterfactual supporting that the only epistemic route
from C to the property it expresses depends on drawing inferences that
involve the concept C*, the stronger your intuition that C and C* are
conceptually connected will be.5
The Philosopher’s Tale 83
5 Sober (1984: 82) makes what amounts to the converse point: “In general, we expect
theoretical magnitudes to be multiply accessible; there should be more than one way of
finding out what their values are in a given circumstance. This reflects the assumption that
theoretical magnitudes have multiple causes and effects. There is no such thing as the only
possible effect or cause of a given event; likewise, there is no such thing as the only possible
way of finding out whether it occurred. I won’t assert that this is somehow a necessary
feature of all theoretical magnitudes, but it is remarkably widespread.” Note the suggestion
that the phenomena in virtue of which a “theoretical magnitude” is multiply epistemically
accessible are naturally construed as its “causes and its effects”. In the contrasting case,
when there is only one access path (or, anyhow, only one access path that one can think of)
The best way to see how this account of analyticity intuitions is
supposed to work is to consider some cases where it doesn’t apply. Take the
concepts DOG and ANIMAL; and let’s suppose, concessively, that dogs
are animals is necessary. Still, according to the present story, ‘dogs are
animals’ should be a relatively poorish candidate for analyticity as
necessities go. Why? Well, because there are lots of plausible scenarios
where your thoughts achieve semantic access to doghood but not via your
performing inferences that deploy the concept ANIMAL. Surely it’s likely
that perceptual identifications of dogs work that way; even if dog
perception is always inferential, there’s no reason to suppose that that
ANIMAL is always, or even often, deployed in drawing the inferences. To
the contrary, perceptual inferences from doggish-looking to dog are no
doubt direct in the usual case. So, then, deploying ANIMAL is pretty
clearly not a necessary condition for getting semantic access to dog; so the
strength of the intuition that dogs are animals is analytic ought to be pretty
underwhelming according to the present account.Which, I suppose, it is.
I suppose, to continue the previous example, that the same holds for
concepts like WATER and H2O. No doubt, water is H2O is metaphysically
necessary. But, there’s a plethora of reliable ways of determining that stuff
is water; outside the laboratory, one practically never does so by inference
from its being H2O. So, even if they express the same property, my story
says that the relation between the concepts ought not to strike one’s
intuition as plausibly constitutive. Which, I suppose, it doesn’t. (See also
the old joke about how to tell how many sheep there are: you count the legs
and divide by four. Here too the crucial connection is necessary;
presumably it’s a law that sheep have four legs. But the necessity isn’t
intuitively conceptual, even first blush. That’s because there are lots of
other, and better, ways to get epistemic (a fortiori, semantic) access to the
cardinality of one’s flock.)
But offhand, I can’t imagine how I might determine whether John is a
bachelor except by determining that he’s male and un- (viz. not) married.
Or by employing some procedure that I take to be a way of determining
that he is male and unmarried . . . etc. Just so, offhand, I can’t imagine how
I might determine whether it’s Tuesday except by determining that it’s the
second day of the week; e.g. by determining that yesterday was Monday
and/or that tomorrow will be Wednesday. Hence the intuitive analyticity
of bachelors are unmarried, Tuesday just before Wednesday, and the like.
I’m suggesting that it’s the epistemic property of being a one-criterion
concept—not a modal property, and certainly not a semantic property—
84 The Demise of Definitions, Part II
the intuition is generally that the magnitude at issue isn’t bona fide theoretical, and that its
connection to the criterion is conceptual rather than causal.