Abstract
I critically assess Stephen Yablo’s claim that “cassinis are ovals” is an a posteriori conceptual necessity. One does not know it simply by mastering the relevant concepts but by substantial empirical scrutiny. Yablo represents narrow content by “would have turned out”-conditionals. An epistemic reading of such conditionals does not bear Yablo’s claim. Two metaphysically laden readings are considered. In one reading, Yablo’s conditionals test under what circumstances concepts remain the same while their extensions diverge. As an alternative, I develop a more literal metaphysical interpretation: Yablo’s conditionals draw on scenarios which are qualitatively identical to some original situation. None of these interpretations sustains Yablo’s core thesis.
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Notes
One initial concern: Yablo’s analysis has the following come out true: (a) Hesperus would have turned out not to be Phosphorus, had Hesperus-appearances turned out to be due to Mars. (b) Hesperus would have turned out not to be Phosphorus, had ‘Hesperus’ turned out to mean Mars. Now Yablo insists that “…it is not the case that [c)] horses would have turned out to lack tails, had it turned out that ‘tail’ meant wing.” (Yablo 2002, p. 453). The narrow content of the concept Hesperus allows for Hesperus to be different from Phosphorus; in contrast, the narrow content of the concept tail does not allow for tails to be wings. But does our natural understanding of (b) and (c) really lead us to endorse (b) but reject (c)? A normal speaker might treat both cases alike.
Unlike Yablo, I use “cognitive” in a loose sense which covers all epistemic capacities.
On the one hand, perceptible properties of heat ensure that heat is caused by HME. On the other, they do not ensure that a table that merely appears wooden is wooden (Yablo 2006, p. 336, ann. 9).
Instead of further pursuing this issue, I suggest to avoid the conundrum of aprioricity by attending to the position Yablo attacks. According to rationalism, the possession conditions of a concept F can be known a priori as expressed by conditionals of the form: For a certain world w, if w, such and such objects are F (Yablo 2002, p. 456). Yablo contends that response-enabled concepts do not allow for such conditionals to be known a priori. In order to evaluate them, we exert perceptual capacities in their natural environment. However, the challenge should not be that we need perceptual capacities to appreciate these concepts, but that we can only within limits off-line simulate endowments and environments which diverge from ours. Hence we can only to a certain extent detach from our situation, for instance maintain modal claims involving diverging grokking concepts. Contrary to rationalism, there are metaphysical modalities we cannot evaluate. This inability is not limited to grokking concepts like oval. Yablo surmises that theoretical concepts depend on what strikes one as reasonable. As an evaluative term, “reasonable” in turn is grokking (Yablo 2002, pp. 478–479).
Timothy Williamson argues that for any single condition of possessing a concept, someone may fail to meet it and nevertheless master the concept (Williamson 2007, p. 97). Williamson also criticizes too generous conceptions of “full” grasp. He considers
(UAt) Necessarily, whoever grasps the thought every vixen is a female fox assents to it.
On the simplest view, thinking a thought with any attitude towards it suffices for grasping it. Friends of principles like UAt should beware of straying too far from that simple view, by claiming that ‘full grasp’ of a thought requires much more than the ability to think it… For such a defence of UAt risks trivializing it, by in effect writing the consequent into the antecedent by hand. (Williamson 2007, p. 74)
Nevertheless one might look for a mode of understanding a concept which is more comprehensive than what is required to count as mastering it. Such a mode comprises the conceptual prerequisites of knowing the facts represented by dint of the concept. It recollects competences scattered throughout a community. There is a risk of triviality; yet there might be a way of steering between triviality and denying conceptual knowledge altogether.
For Bealer’s definition of determinate understanding (Bealer 2002, p. 106).
Bealer further claims that, for any true identity statement p which one understands in a determinate way, one must be able to come to rationally believe that p (Bealer 2002, p. 106). However, one does not have to be in a position to know à la Williamson (Williamson 2000, p. 95). For determinately understanding p seems to be reconcilable with contingent obstacles blocking one’s path to knowing p.
To be sure, Yablo ultimately does not endorse an explanation of modal illusions such as “heat could be LME”. But his standards of such an explanation go into his analysis of WTOs.
Cf. (Kripke 1980, p. 103). I owe this proposal to Benjamin Schnieder.
Below I will outline doubts about the heat-example. But here “yellow” would do as well. And what about an amathematical community which does not master “cassini”?
Consider a community which is perfectly like ours, with one exception: The theoretical concept H 2 O is tied to the capacity of figuring out that water is H2O. One does not count as possessing the concept unless one knows a way to verify “water is H2O”. According to the proposal considered, in such a community water could not have turned out not to be H2O.
I use Hill’s approach because it is decidedly epistemic.
By the way: If Yablo is right and a cup of molten lead could not have turned out to contain H2O, is there really a conceptual necessity involved?
One may add more knowledge to the default conditions, for instance what one knew when introducing a concept. I will discuss this alternative as a metaphysical one. Thus presented, it draws on the metaphysical possibility of counterpart situations. But it could as well be presented in purely epistemic terms. Furthermore, one could use deRose’s definition instead of my simple understanding of epistemic possibility. But my counterarguments from Sect. 2.2.1 would apply.
To be sure, one could deny that cassini ovals are ovals. But it rather seems that mathematicians propose to refine the concept oval.
This is a bit idealizing: Probably the following is true: If Hesperus-appearances were due to Mars, the word “Hesperus” would apply to Mars. And is our use of the counterfactual sufficiently well-carved to outrightly reject: If Hesperus-appearances were due to Mars, our concept Hesperus would not apply to Venus?
Using our words with their actual meaning in a normal counterfactual, this situation could be described as a metaphysical possibility; then concepts coined in this situation could be reconstructed.
To Yablo WTOs deal “with suppositions about our world.” (Yablo 2002, p. 453).
It might be doubted that we can evaluate this conditional; we would have to exert abilities diverging from ours. But we can within limits simulate diverging sensibilities.
Instead of cassinis, Yablo may choose a more comprehensive set C of cassini ovals and insist that C could not have turned out not to be oval; that would require banging our sensibilities too far out of shape. However, probably any of the resulting conceptual necessities can be countered: Select a cassini oval belonging to C. Show that this cassini oval could have turned out not to be oval. One may react by providing complex disjunctions which defy this strategy. But the more complex and the less salient they are, the less confident we are of our capacity to evaluate the respective conditionals, and of the latter to provide an interesting narrow content.
What about “if our cognitive endowment and/or conditions of perception had been suitably different from the way they are, heat would have turned out not to be HME/to be LME”? Whether mean molecular energy is low or high probably is determined with regard to our feeling something to be cold or hot. Pace Kripke and Yablo, the relationship might be a priori. What about “heat is a certain molecular motion”? Why should it be metaphysically impossible to devise a mechanism of counterpart particles that mimics the behaviour of molecules within a sufficiently normal environment (say Descartes’ genius malignus creates some extra particles in our world)? So perhaps heat could have turned out to be something other than molecular motion.
Often narrow content is characterized by its function to provide truth conditions when conjoined with a context. It is open whether the conditional test tracks this function.
Cf. Kripke 1980, pp. 103–104, and Bealer’s proposal how to understand the “‘could’-of-qualitative-evidential-neutrality: the proposition that ◊qual-evid-neutp is true iff it is possible for there to be a population c with attitudes toward p and if it is possible for there to be a population c′ whose epistemic situation is qualitatively identical to that of c such that the proposition which in c′ is the epistemic counterpart of p in c is true.” (Bealer 2002, p. 80).
This is not so in a purely epistemic version of the counterpart reading.
Cf. a Cartesian-minded epistemic internalist drawing the boundary of the evidence one has for one’s knowledge with regard to one’s seemings, excluding environment (for criticism Williamson 2000, pp. 170–178).
Subjective indiscriminability allows for several variants. It can be confined to the way the subject is appeared to in the original situation. Or it can comprise what must be the case in order for these appearances to be present.
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Acknowledgment
Acknowledgements to Peter Fritz, Brian Leahy, Robert Michels, Benjamin Schnieder, and an unknown referee.
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Dohrn, D. Are there a posteriori conceptual necessities?. Philos Stud 155, 181–197 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9568-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9568-2