Coming up with novel conceptual distinctions seems indeed valuable. This made me notice that there is a different but related activity, one which many philosophers promote: Engaging in conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis roughly works by trying to find definitions for terms in everyday language which preserves their original meaning. Mostly the terms are general terms like knowledge, probability, meaning, causation, rationality, justification, explanation, property, identity, truth, event etc.
Often that works by someone proposing a definition D for a term T, and others come up with thought experiments which serve as counterexamples: Either one where something intuitively satisfies D but not T, or one where something satisfies T but not D. The former shows that D is not necessary for T, the latter that D is not sufficient for T.
Now I wonder, do you think the above is a useful activity? It seems to contribute to “clearer thinking” by discovering logical relations between concepts, e.g. by noticing that knowledge implies truth and justification. Or is it just some form of fairly pointless game, compared to finding new distinctions? I think the two are closely related in spirit, but I’m not quite sure in which way.
I think it’s also for interpersonal synchronization of the meaning of concepts, to avoid misunderstandings or conflicts. A social, instead of a personal purpose.
I think it’s more like sifting sand for gold and other minerals.
The process of exhaustively looking for all of the conceptual distinctions we can find, in some swath of the territory, is one way (among many) to make sure that we don’t miss any of the ones that are actually useful.
Coming up with novel conceptual distinctions seems indeed valuable. This made me notice that there is a different but related activity, one which many philosophers promote: Engaging in conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis roughly works by trying to find definitions for terms in everyday language which preserves their original meaning. Mostly the terms are general terms like knowledge, probability, meaning, causation, rationality, justification, explanation, property, identity, truth, event etc.
Often that works by someone proposing a definition D for a term T, and others come up with thought experiments which serve as counterexamples: Either one where something intuitively satisfies D but not T, or one where something satisfies T but not D. The former shows that D is not necessary for T, the latter that D is not sufficient for T.
Now I wonder, do you think the above is a useful activity? It seems to contribute to “clearer thinking” by discovering logical relations between concepts, e.g. by noticing that knowledge implies truth and justification. Or is it just some form of fairly pointless game, compared to finding new distinctions? I think the two are closely related in spirit, but I’m not quite sure in which way.
I think it’s also for interpersonal synchronization of the meaning of concepts, to avoid misunderstandings or conflicts. A social, instead of a personal purpose.
I think it’s more like sifting sand for gold and other minerals.
The process of exhaustively looking for all of the conceptual distinctions we can find, in some swath of the territory, is one way (among many) to make sure that we don’t miss any of the ones that are actually useful.