BTW, Sandin (2006) makes the (correct) reply to Ramsey that seeking (stipulated) necessary-and-sufficient-conditions definitions for concepts can be useful even if Ramsey is right that the classical view of concepts is wrong:
Even if we were to accept that no such [intuitive] definition [of a concept] is to be found, the activity of searching for such definitions need not be pointless. It might well be that we gain something else from the search. Here is one obvious example: We gain definitions that are better than the one we had before.
Also, I admit there are philosophers who disagree with me about what philosophers have been doing all along. See, for example, Nimtz (2009):
First, there is no doubt that the conditions implicitly guiding the application of our terms typically aren’t Socratic—i.e., they cannot well be captured by a tidy conjunction of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. But nothing commits a Gricean [conceptual] analysis to Socratic analysanda. It aims for an illuminating general characterisation of a term’s application conditions, however complex and untidy those might turn out to be. Arguing that conceptual analysis is an ill-fated enterprise since it seeks Socratic analysanda which aren’t to be had, as Kornblith (2007, 41ff) and Ramsey (1998, 165) do, amounts to failing to engage with Gricean analysis in the first place.
However, even this statement admits that conceptual analysis grounded in the Socratic analysanda is doomed. There’s been an awful lot of that since Socrates.
Moreover, while I agree that conceptual analysis seeking application conditions for our terms can succeed, this is not the most common notion of what a ‘concept’ is according to 20th century analytic philosophy. The standard notion of what a concept is—the thing being analyzed—is that it is a kind of mental representation. The problem, then, is that mental representations do not occur in neat bundles of necessary and sufficient conditions.
McBain (2008) recognizes that both sorts of conceptual analysis go on. He calls ‘seeking concepts out there’ approach “robust conceptual analysis” and the ‘seeking concepts in our head’ approach “modest conceptual analysis.”
He notes that a third form of conceptual analysis may be the dominant one today: “reflective equilibrium.” That will be the topic of another post of mine.
BTW, Sandin (2006) makes the (correct) reply to Ramsey that seeking (stipulated) necessary-and-sufficient-conditions definitions for concepts can be useful even if Ramsey is right that the classical view of concepts is wrong:
Also, I admit there are philosophers who disagree with me about what philosophers have been doing all along. See, for example, Nimtz (2009):
However, even this statement admits that conceptual analysis grounded in the Socratic analysanda is doomed. There’s been an awful lot of that since Socrates.
Moreover, while I agree that conceptual analysis seeking application conditions for our terms can succeed, this is not the most common notion of what a ‘concept’ is according to 20th century analytic philosophy. The standard notion of what a concept is—the thing being analyzed—is that it is a kind of mental representation. The problem, then, is that mental representations do not occur in neat bundles of necessary and sufficient conditions.
McBain (2008) recognizes that both sorts of conceptual analysis go on. He calls ‘seeking concepts out there’ approach “robust conceptual analysis” and the ‘seeking concepts in our head’ approach “modest conceptual analysis.”
He notes that a third form of conceptual analysis may be the dominant one today: “reflective equilibrium.” That will be the topic of another post of mine.