The Implicit Conception of Implicit Conceptions. Reply to Christopher Peacocke
Abstract
Peacocke's characterization of what he calls implicit conceptions
recognizes the significance of a subset of contentful states in making
rational behavior intelligible. What Peacocke has to offer in this
paper is an account of (i) why we need implicit conceptions; (ii) how
we can discover them; (iii) what they explain; (iv) what they are;
and (v) how they can help us to better understand some issues in
the theory of meaning and the theory of knowledge. The rationalist
tradition in which Peacocke's project ought to be located is
concerned with the nature of understanding. His notion of implicit
conceptions is invoked to explain non-straightforwardly inferential
but rational patterns of concept-involving behavior. We come to
know about implicit conceptions because we treat the thinker's
practices as having a certain representational content. They are
implicit in what the thinker does.
I intend to focus on the question of what implicit conceptions
are (although in doing so some of the other aspects will also come to
the fore). I will argue for the following position: that —even at the
personal level— certain inferential principles underlie the process
that leads to the thinker's reliably differential responses and that
subsequently point us in the direction of a notion such as that of an
implicit conception. More precisely, I will argue that practical
inferential processes are involved in the understanding-based
capacities that support our ascription of personal-level implicit
conceptions to the thinker. If I am right, then Peacocke's implicit
conceptions don't preclude acceptance of personal-level conceptual role
theories because that practical inferential articulation, i.e. that
conceptual role, is the implicit conception itself.