The Standard Argument 135

The Standard Argument 135
them doorknobs, and either it’s something complex or it’s something
simple. If it’s something complex, then ‘doorknob’must have a definition,
and its definition must be either “real” or “nominal” (or both). If
‘doorknob’ has a nominal definition, then it ought to be possible for a
competent linguist or analytical philosopher to figure out what its nominal
definition is. If ‘doorknob’ has a real definition, then it ought to be
possible for a science of doorknobs to uncover it. But linguists and
philosophers have had no luck defining ‘doorknob’ (or, as we’ve seen,
anything much else). And there is nothing for a science of doorknobs to
find out. The direction this is leading in is that if ‘doorknob’ is undefinable,
that must be because being a doorknob is a primitive property. But, of
course, that’s crazy. If a thing has doorknobhood, it does so entirely in
virtue of others of the properties it has. If doorknobs don’t have hidden
essences or real definitions, that can’t possibly be because being a doorknob
is one of those properties that things have simply because they have them;
ultimates like spin, charm, charge, or the like, at which explanation ends.
So, here’s the riddle. How could ‘doorknob’ be undefinable (contrast
‘bachelor’ =df ‘unmarried man’) and lack a hidden essence (contrast
water = H2O) without being metaphysically primitive (contrast spin,
charm, and charge)?
The answer (I think) is that ‘doorknob’ works like ‘red’.
Now I suppose you want to know how ‘red’ works.
Well, ‘red’ hasn’t got a nominal definition, and redness doesn’t have a
real essence (ask any psychophysicist), and, of course, redness isn’t
metaphysically ultimate. This is all OK because redness is an appearance
property, and the point about appearance properties is that they don’t raise
the question that definitions, real and nominal, propose to answer: viz.
‘What is it that the things we take to be Xs have in common, over and above
our taking them to be Xs?’ This is, to put it mildly, not a particularly
original thing to say about red. All that’s new is the proposal to extend this
sort of analysis to doorknobs and the like; the proposal is that there are lots
of appearance concepts that aren’t sensory concepts.10 That this should be
so is, perhaps, unsurprising on reflection. There is no obvious reason why
10 So, then, which appearance properties are sensory properties? Here’s a line that one
might consider: S is a sensory property only if it is possible to have an experience of which
S-ness is the intentional object (e.g. an experience (as) of red) even though one hasn’t got the
concept S. Here the test of having the concept S would be something like being able to think
thoughts whose truth conditions include . . . S . . . (e.g. thoughts like that’s red). I think this
must be the notion of ‘sensory property’ that underlies the Empiricist idea that RED and
the like are learned ‘by abstraction’ from experience, a doctrine which presupposes that a
mind that lacks RED can none the less have experiences (as) of redness. By this test,
DOORKNOB is presumably not a sensory concept since, though it is perfectly possible to