Abstract
The paper is a critical examination of Peacocke’s pioneering work on concepts as grounding the possibility of a priori knowledge. It focuses upon his more recent turn to reference and referential domain, and the two enlargements of the purely conceptual bases for apriority, namely appeal to conceptions and to direct referential sensitivity. I argue that the two are needed, but they produce more problem for the strategy as a whole than they solve. I conclude by suggesting that they point to a possible Benacerraf-like dilemma for conceptualist accounts of armchair knowledge: if concepts are akin to representational contents and/or conceptions, they certainly do not metaphysically determine anything. At best, they fallibly guide our inquiry and get corrected almost by each new important discovery about the nature of their referents. If what is meant by “concept” is a Fregean, objectively correct and metaphysically potent entity, there is little doubt in its power to determine its referent(s), but there is a huge epistemic problem of how we grasp such Platonic concepts. Peacocke’s early metaphysics of concept, which offered beginnings of an answer, is put in jeopardy by the new referential turn, and his valiant attempts to pass between the multiple horns of this dilemma seem to face a lot of difficulties.
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Notes
The ancestor of this paper has been presented in summer 2008 at the conference in Varna, Bulgaria, in parallel with the paper of W. Davis (the same issue). I would like to thank Wayne for enjoyable discussion, support and criticisms. Special thanks go to Nenad Smokrović of Rijeka for detailed criticism.
The turn is well documented in Boghossian and Peacocke (Eds.) (2000), where one can find papers by all the conceptualists mentioned, and further references.
Since I need a handy name, I am here stipulating the way I shall use “conceptualist” and “conceptualism” for characterizing this version of the rationalist theory of armchair knowledge. It has little or nothing to do with ontological conceptualism, which attempts to reduce universals to concepts.
I discuss the details of a priori justification, for the central case of logic, criticizing some leading conceptualists, in Miscevic (to appear)
The fact is sometimes obscured by ambiguities in the use of the term “concept,” since some referentialists use it, in a Fregean tradition, to mean “abstract property,” the item in the reference of the predicate term, not the predicate sense.
The assumption is normally shared even by tough empiricists, most notably Quine, who accept that being conceptual-analytic entails being a priori and then deny that there are truths that are purely conceptual-analytic. I criticize the assumption in Miscevic 2005.
“/T/he reflection involves a simulation exercise. The thinker imagines—to start with one of the cases—that A is true and B is false. His aim is to address the question of whether the alternation ‘A or B’ should be regarded as true or false in the imagined circumstances. As in any other simulation exercise, he then exercises a capacity off-line. This capacity is the very same, understanding-based capacity he would be exercising in a real case in which he had the information that A is true and B is false and has to evaluate the alternation ‘A or B.’ As in the corresponding real case, in the imaginative exercise he goes on to hold that ‘A or B’ will be true in the imagined circumstances. In coming to hold that ‘A or B’ is true in the simulated circumstances, our thinker employs only the information about the truth-values, within the simulation, of A and of B, together with his understanding of alternation. He does not draw on any other resources.” (2008:115).
The same applies equally in empirical cases. Take a case in which a thinker applies an observational concept to a perceptually given object, in accordance with the possession condition for that observational concept. That is, the thinker’s application of the concept to the object is an exercise of exactly that sensitivity to perceptual experience mentioned in the possession condition for the concept. The natural Determination Theory for an observational concept C implies this: the semantic value of C maps any object x to the True if x has the property required for veridicality of a perceptual experience of x of the sort mentioned in C’s possession condition. If the thinker is indeed perceiving properly, that fact together with the natural Determination Theory for observational concepts will imply that in such a case the semantic value of the observational concept will map the perceived object to the truth-value True. The truth of the thinker’s judgment in this empirical case, when made in accordance with the possession condition for the concept, is equally a consequence of an account of what it is for the content in question to be true. Again, the relation between the way of coming to judge and the account of what it is for the content to be true is so close that this is enough for knowledge. Once again, the relation goes far beyond reliability. (2005a: 754)
Of course, Peacocke has insisted on some sort of referential connection since his earliest work in the field [e.g. (1987)], in which he insists that justification of human understanding of logical constants derived from the rules of use be supplemented by more “referential” information from and about truth-tables. But he leaves it open whether the knowledge of truth-tables is independent from the narrow conceptual ability or not. At this stage the danger is already apparent: if truth-tables just summarize the information from the rules of use, the circle of justification is too narrow; if they are known independently the questions are first, how, and second, is not this independent reference-related knowledge more important than the conceptual one. For more on Peacocke’s early work, see Miscevic (to appear).
W. Davis notes the relevant distinction:
In English, the term “concept” is often used in a markedly different sense (especially when modified by a possessive) to denote conceptions, which can be characterized as systems of belief about a subject. Thus, Copernicus’s conception of the earth (“his concept”) differed markedly from Ptolemy’s. One believed that the earth moved; the other believed that the earth stood still. Both Copernicus and Ptolemy possessed the concept of the earth in the sense in which Peacocke and I use the term “concept.” (Davis 2005:142)
Consider an ordinary person’s possession of the concept of a whole number. I would say that underlying this person’s grasp of the concept is possession of an implicit conception with the content: 0 is a whole number; the successor of a whole number is a whole number; only what is determined to be a whole number on the basis of the preceding two conditions is a whole number. Now consider the principle that any whole number has only finitely many predecessors. This principle cannot follow from what the ordinary thinker explicitly accepts. What he explicitly accepts has non-standard models, in which some objects within the extension of “whole number” in those models do have infinitely many predecessors. (2005: 757)
The text continues:
Under this approach using implicit conceptions, we explain the phenomenon of new principles consistently with the metasemantic theory. Unlike Gödel himself, we also remain within the bounds of a moderate rationalism. (Ibid: 756)
The correct response to the phenomena is rather to acknowledge the existence of what I call implicit conceptions. In some cases, possessing a concept involves having tacit knowledge of some condition for something to fall under the concept, a condition the thinker may not be able to articulate correctly. Cases of this phenomenon run from the most humble, such as our possession of a condition for something to be a chair (a condition that it is very easy to misarticulate), through understanding of moral and political concepts, which can have a rich, hidden structure, to the early use of mathematical and scientific concepts. That tacit knowledge of one condition rather than another underlies understanding is shown by the thinker’s pattern of application of the concept in question. The tacit knowledge of the condition explains that pattern of application. Such implicit conceptions are also capable of explaining the phenomenon of understanding-based a priori knowledge of new principles that do not follow from those previously accepted. (Ibid: 756)
Here is the crucial text:
Fix also on a given color – red, say. Then if s is a shade that is clearly within the color red, it is essentially and constitutively true of the color red that s is clearly within it. (If s is a borderline case, that it is so also essentially and constitutively true of the color red.) The color red is individuated by which shades fall within it, which fall outside it, and arguably by its pattern of borderline cases in respect of shades.
Since these phenomenal properties of the color red are constitutive of it, they hold in all possible circumstances. It is a constraint on the genuine possibility of a world, or a world-description, that it respect the constitutive properties of objects, including colors. Hence, whichever world is the actual world, these phenomenal properties will hold of the color red. They hold both necessarily and fixedly. So far, these points all concern the level of reference, the level at which colors and shades themselves are located.
Now let us move to the level of concepts, sense, and thought. The possession conditions for the concept red of the color red are tied to these very conditions that individuate the color red. Suppose a shade s is clearly a shade of red. If a thinker possesses the concept red, is taking his visual experience at face value, and if the experience represents an object as having shade s, then the thinker must be willing to judge ‘That’s red’ of the presented object. We can relativize this to a part or region of the object; the point will still go through under such relativization. The thought ‘That shade s (given in perception) is red’ is not informative to the thinker who fully possesses the concept red.
Similarly, if a shade is clearly not a shade of red, the thinker must in those given circumstances be willing to judge ‘That’s not red.’Next, take a given shade s that is a shade of red and is not a shade of green.By the same reasoning again, applied both to the color concept red and to the color concept green, the thinker will be willing to judge, when taking perceptual experience at face value, when something is perceived as being shade s, ‘That’s red and not green.’ The conditions for possessing the concepts red and green require the thinker to be willing to make this judgment, and it will be true.
It will also be relatively a priori that something with that shade (perceptually given) is red and not green. What I mean here by the claim of relative a priority is that the thinker’s entitlement to this belief does not rely on the content of her perceptual experiences, beyond that content needed for having the relevant concepts in the first place. There is away of thinking of a particular shade that is made available only by perceiving that shade. Such experience is necessary to have any demonstrative thoughts about that shade, including for instance such thoughts as ‘That shade is or is not displayed on my color chart,’ which are equally properly classified as relatively a priori. Such relatively a priori judgments contrast with ‘The book with that shade is closed,’ which is not relatively a priori. What matters is that no further feature of the experience, beyond experience of the shade itself, is needed for the thinker’s entitlement to judge, knowledgeably, “That shade is red.” (New Essays 267)
And he goes on to say:
If the reasons and norms distinctive of a concept can be explained only by the rule that determines the reference of the concept, reference does have an essential role to play in concept-individuation and in understanding. More generally, if the hypothesis linking reference and reasons is correct, the norms distinctive of a particular concept cannot be elucidated solely at the level of sense, independently of considerations at the level of reference. (2008:53)
And he continues:
It is a consequence of the nature of conjunction that Simplification and Conjunction are valid as well as compelling inferences. That is, because of the nature of the concept, it is necessary that conjunctions are true if and only if both of their conjuncts are true. If facts about which forms of inference are primitively compelling are what individuate the concept of conjunction, as Peacocke maintains, then it must be the concept of conjunction in virtue of those facts. This means that facts about which forms of inference are primitively compelling must account for the fact that Simplification and Conjunction are valid for conjunction. How could they? From the fact that people find a certain inference to be compelling, justified, valid, or anything, nothing follows about the validity of the inference. As Peacocke (1998:55) put the problem, “How can a nonnormative possession condition individuate something with an essentially normative dimension, a concept? (Ibid.)
Peacocke typically insists that there are no “special faculties” involved, and, more importantly, that any causal explanation is bound to be irrelevant. In his recent book, The Realm of Reason, he writes:
The fact that the truth that p explains one’s belief that p, and perhaps by some special causal route, involving some postulated special faculty, fails to imply a crucial feature of some cases of the a priori, which is that p will hold in the actual world, whichever world is the actual world. In short, any faculty conceived on a quasi-causal model, far from helping to explain the phenomena of rational intuition and a priori knowledge, is actually incompatible with the nature of the phenomena to be explained. 2004: 167
Here, he suggests, “we are well rid of any attempt at a causal epistemology. Attempts to develop the epistemology of the a priori or the modal in causal terms can only encourage the view that defenders of the a priori and of necessity must be committed to unacceptably non-naturalistic conceptions. One motivation for that charge is removed if our epistemology of these two notions is not causal” (168). Interestingly, in the same book he argues at length for a different proposal for the case of perception. There is rationale for perceivers being entitled to appearance-reality transition, and it is a version of inference to the best explanation.. And the more detailed story will appeal to evolutionary considerations as contributing to simplicity and the high quality of explanation (2004:208). He never explains the asymmetry between the two cases.
The characterization “apparently” is misleading, since Peacocke does not deny that discourses in question are in fact about abstract object. He must have meant “ostensibly.”
Peacocke is, of course, adamant about not wanting to appeal to innateness, see for instance (2008: 151 ff).
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Miščević, N. Can Concepts Ground Apriori Knowledge? Peacocke’s Referential Turn and its Challenges. Acta Anal 23, 233–256 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0032-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0032-2