Philosophers from Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein to the recent realists and antirealists have sought to answer the question, What are concepts? This book provides a detailed, systematic, and accessible introduction to an original philosophical theory of concepts that Christopher Peacocke has developed in recent years to explain facts about the nature of thought, including its systematic character, its relations to truth and reference, and its normative dimension. Particular concepts are also treated within the general framework: perceptual concepts, logical (...) concepts, and the concept of belief are discussed in detail. The general theory is further applied in answering the question of how the ontology of concepts can be of use in classifying mental states, and in discussing the proper relation between philosophical and psychological theories of concepts. Finally, the theory of concepts is used to motivate a nonverificationist theory of the limits of intelligible thought. Peacocke treats content as broad rather than narrow, and his account is nonreductive and non-Quinean. Yet Peacocke also argues for an interactive relationship between philosophical and psychological theories of concepts, and he plots many connections with work in cognitive psychology. (shrink)

The notion of explanatory priority is clarified. For A to be explanatory prior to B is for the correct account of the individuation of B to mention A, but not conversely. Exploring the relations of explanatory priority between entities does not involve the impossible enterprise of explaining why individuating conditions are as they are. Use-theoretic accounts of meaning and content are consistent with the claims of The Primacy of Metaphysics if they essentially involve a reference relation; and otherwise not. In (...) the case of thought about abstract objects, we must distinguish between the enterprise of defining an expression and individuating an entity. When we do so, Fregean complaints about the project endorsing the principle “Individuation Precedes Representation” evaporate. The treatment of subjects of mental states in The Primacy of Metaphysics does not let in Johnston’s problematic ‘personites’, proper temporal segments of genuine subjects, once we distinguish: between multiplicity over time and multiplicity at a given time; between metaphysical conditions of individuation and merely ‘conceptual connections’; between the conditions under which something comes into existence, and the nature of that thing. (shrink)

What is involved in the consciousness of a conscious, "occurrent" propositional attitude, such as a thought, a sudden conjecture or a conscious decision? And what is the relation of such consciousness to attention? I hope the intrinsic interest of these questions provides sufficient motivation to allow me to start by addressing them. We will not have a full understanding either of consciousness in general, nor of attention in general, until we have answers to these questions. I think there are constitutive (...) features of these states which can be identified by broadly philosophical investigation, and in the early part of this paper I will try to do some of that identification. -/- Beyond the intrinsic interest of the topic, the nature of such conscious attitudes is highly pertinent to a philosophical account of psychological self-knowledge. So I will also say something about the significance of the constitutive features of these conscious attitudes for a philosophical account of how it can be that a thinker has a distinctive kind of knowledge of some of his mental states. The general challenge in this area is to find anything intermediate between the unexceptionable but uninformative, on the one hand, and the absolutely unbelievable on the other. (shrink)

Introduction This book is about the nature of the content of psychological states. Examples of psychological states with content are: believing today is a ...

The Realm of Reason develops a new, general theory of what it is for a thinker to be entitled to form a given belief. The theory locates entitlement in the nexus of relations between truth, content, and understanding. Peacocke formulates three principles of rationalism that articulate this conception. The principles imply that all entitlement has a component that is justificationally independent of experience. The resulting position is thus a form of rationalism, generalized to all kinds of content. To show (...) how these principles are realized in specific domains, Peacocke applies the theory in detail to several classical problems of philosophy, including the nature of perceptual entitlement, induction, and the status of moral thought. These discussions involve an elaboration of the structure of entitlement in ways that have applications in many other areas of philosophy. He also relates the theory to classical and recent rationalist thought, and to current issues in the theory of meaning, reference and explanation. In the course of these discussions, he proposes a general theory of the a priori. The focus of the work lies in the intersection of epistemology, metaphysics, and the theory of meaning, and will be of interest both to students and researchers in these areas, and to anyone concerned with the idea of rationality. (shrink)

Being Known is a response to a philosophical challenge which arises for every area of thought: to reconcile a plausible account of what is involved in the truth of statements in a given area with a credible account of how we can know those statements. Christopher Peacocke presents a framework for addressing the challenge, a framework which links both the theory of knowledge and the theory of truth with the theory of concept-possession.

States and defends the third principle of rationalism, The Generalised Rationalist Thesis, which holds that all instances of the entitlement relation, both absolute and relative, are fundamentally a priori. Even if a thinker's entitlement to a transition is provided by certain experiences of hers, her entitlement to make that transition from those experiences cannot itself be provided by certain experiences of hers. The author defends the third principle by appeal to two considerations: first, if the epistemological significance of experience was (...) itself not knowable a priori, then making any particular transition on the basis of that experience could not be rational, and so a thinker could not be entitled to make that transition. Thus, if we are to be entitled to make any transition on the basis of experience, the principle that entitles us to make that transition must be knowable a priori, whether or not we happen to know it. The second consideration in defence of the third principle rests on a general conception of what it is for a proposition or transition to be a priori. According to this conception, a proposition or transition is a priori just in case its truth or truth‐conduciveness can be explained from the nature of its content, or of the states that it involves. According to this conception, the third principle is a corollary of the first two principles, and so our defence of those two principles should serve to defend the third principle as well. (shrink)

The conclusion to The Realm of Reason gives briefly examples of other areas a fully developed rationalism has to elucidate. These include, amongst others, explaining self‐ and other‐ascriptions of mental states and the possibility of conforming to the normative requirements of rationality, and further elucidating the notion of knowing what it is for a given content to be true.

The objectivity of some area of thought can often be acknowledged without postulating an exotic metaphysics. Statements that may seem to be the merest truisms may have previously hidden metaphysical or epistemological significance. No conclusions about the mind‐dependence of some subject matter can be drawn from the fact that in certain circumstances, it is a priori that a thinker will be right about that subject matter. The notion of an implicit conception with a certain content looms large in an account (...) of understanding. We can learn more about metaphysics and epistemology by considering them not in isolation, but in the light of the relations they must bear to one another. (shrink)

Traces out some of the ramifications the explanation of the character and source of perceptual entitlement has and indicates some applications beyond the case of perceptual entitlement. These extensions concern the relations between rationality and truth; the possibility of Gettier examples in the domain of perceptual knowledge; Moore's Proof; the relationship between entitlement and factive states; the individuation of concepts; moral thought; and the philosophy of action.

States and defends the first principle of rationalism, The Special Truth‐Conduciveness Thesis, which illustrates the connection between entitlement to form a given belief and the belief's truth. The principle holds that a fundamental and irreducible part of what makes a transition one to which a thinker is entitled is that the transition tends to lead to true judgements in a distinctive way characteristic of rational transitions. The author then defends this principle and its commitments against a variety of challenges, notably (...) against two extreme views on the role the notion of evidence plays in the individuation of concepts and meanings. On one view evidence has no part at all to play in the individuation of concepts, and on the other, Quinean, view meanings are not merely partially, but exclusively a matter of certain evidential relations. The author challenges both views and suggests a middle way which his Generalised Rationalism is able to tread. (shrink)

A reflective person is free to do something just in case there is a close possibility in which he tries to do it, and he would do it if he tried to. On this account, it can be shown that this inference is invalid: ‘If someone is not free not to be F, and it is causally necessary that if he is F, then he is G, then: he is not free not to be G’. This account of freedom is (...) compatibilist, and attributions of freedom involve a substantive metaphysical commitment, rather than being a non‐factual or practical matter. (shrink)

The introduction introduces the subject matter and the main argument of The Realm of Reason and situates the work in relation to a number of the author's previous works.

Argues that the same principles of complexity reduction that he used to explain principles of perceptual entitlement in the preceding chapter can be used to explain the principles of inductive inference. When we have a sound, non‐conclusive inductive inference from a variety of Fs being G to the conclusion that all Fs are G, this holds because the easiest way for the evidence to hold is one that also makes it the case that all Fs are G. Clarifies and elaborates (...) this thesis and traces out its consequences. (shrink)

The penultimate chapter of The Realm of Reason discusses the relation between the author's moral rationalism and a thorough moral realism and the question of whether a moral rationalist can hold that moral properties are sometimes involved in causal explanations. In reply, The author introduces what he calls the Eirenic Combination, which holds that causal explanation of a priori moral beliefs by moral facts is excluded by the a priori status of those beliefs; but this is compatible with the moral (...) properties mentioned in the a priori principles playing a significant part in empirical explanations, which they sometimes do. He then defends his moral rationalism against the charge that it is incompatible with the extensive role moral emotions play in our ordinary first‐level moral thought. (shrink)

There is a set of principles, the Principles of Possibility, that constrains whether a description picks out a genuinely possible world. To grasp the concept of metaphysical necessity is to have tacit knowledge of this set of Principles and to apply them in evaluating modal statements and thoughts. For a statement to be necessary is for it to hold in all descriptions that are not excluded as possible by the principles of possibility. This integrates the metaphysics and epistemology of necessity, (...) without collapsing into mind‐dependence and without a commitment to modal realism. The treatment of the metaphysics validates the modal systems T and S4. (shrink)

A conscious occurrent propositional attitude contributes to the content of consciousness by occupying attention, rather than by being its object. Externally individuated concepts contribute to the nature of this conscious occupation of attention. Those same externally individuated concepts are redeployed when the occurrence of these conscious states gives a subject a reason for self‐ascribing a propositional attitude. This account, involving both conscious states and conceptual redeployment, steers a middle course between accounts of self‐ascription that involve introspection and those accounts under (...) which a subject does not have reasons when she makes such a self‐ascription. (shrink)

States and defends the second principle of rationalism, The Rationalist Dependence Thesis, which holds that the rational truth‐conduciveness of any given transition to which a thinker is entitled is to be philosophically explained in terms of the nature of the intentional contents and states involved in the transition. The second principle, therefore, explains what it means for a transition to lead to true judgements in ‘a distinctive way characteristic of rational transitions’: if the reliability of that transition can be seen (...) to follow from the nature of those contents and states, then the transition is one to which the thinker is entitled. The remainder of Ch. 2 elucidates and paves the way for the author's argument for the Rationalist Dependence Thesis: the author identifies two tasks for a rationalist to support the thesis for content‐endorsing transitions, namely to show why the content of perceptual entitling states will tend to be true and to show why the transition to the judgement of the content made rational by the entitling perceptual state is truth‐conducive when the entitling state has a correct content. The first task is judged to be the greater challenge and three levels of the entitlement relation are distinguished from one another, each level differing from the others in terms of generality and explanatory power. (shrink)

Some concepts can be individuated partly or wholly in terms of the conditions for knowing certain contents containing those concepts. For these concepts, the conditions for outright judgement mentioned in their possession conditions suffice both for the truth of the contents in question and for the knowledge of those contents. Proper analysis of these conditions provides a means of meeting the Integration Challenge in cases in which the Linking Thesis holds. The model of constitutive causal sensitivity and the model of (...) implicitly known principles are distinguished. Indicators of which model is appropriate for a given domain include a priori status, the role of causal explanation of knowledgeable judgement about the domain, and the role of principles concerning the identity of properties. (shrink)

The Integration Challenge is the task of reconciling a plausible account of what is involved in the truth of statements of a given kind with a credible account of how we can know those statements, when we do know them. Reconciliation in a given domain may be achieved by re‐conceiving the metaphysics of that domain, or its epistemology, or both. More radically, reconciliation may involve offering slimmed‐down truth conditions, or abandoning the notion of truth conditions altogether for the domain. Options (...) that reject the possibility of integration are scepticism and the denial that an apparent domain involves any genuine subject matter at all. Illustrations of these strategies are given in the cases of necessity, the past, self‐knowledge, and freedom of the will. (shrink)

Understanding statements containing the past tense involves tacit knowledge of the generalization of such principles as this: ‘Yesterday it rained’ is true if and only if yesterday had the same property as today is required to have for a present‐tense thought ‘It is now raining’ to be true when evaluated with respect to today. This is a variant of the truth‐value link. This tacit knowledge integrates with realism about the past because present‐tense statements are as categorical as their past‐tense counterparts (...) and cannot be reduced to counterfactuals without circularity. An externalist model of the perception of temporal properties and relations can be given, one involving a constitutive sensitivity to instances of those temporal properties and relations themselves. This can contribute to an explanation of how memory supplies knowledge of the past. (shrink)

This paper is built around a single, simple idea. It is widely agreed that there is a distinctive kind of awareness each of us has of his own bodily actions. This action-awareness is different from any perceptual awareness a subject may have of his own actions; it can exist in the absence of such perceptual awareness. The single, simple idea around which this paper is built is that the distinctive awareness that subjects have of their own mental actions is a (...) form of action-awareness. Subjects’ awareness of their own mental actions is a species of the same genus that also includes the distinctive awareness of bodily actions. More specifically, I claim. (shrink)

Christopher Peacocke presents a new theory of subjects of consciousness, together with a theory of the nature of first person representation. He identifies three sorts of self-consciousness--perspectival, reflective, and interpersonal--and argues that they are key to explaining features of our knowledge, social relations, and emotional lives.

What is the relation between the nature of the things you think about, and the ways you think about them? Christopher Peacocke argues that meaning is never prior to metaphysics - to the nature of the world. He shows that this view holds for a wide range of topics, including magnitudes, time, the self, and abstract objects such as numbers.

There are three independent properties of a mode of presentation of a number: being specific; being recognitional; and being canonical. A perceptual m.p. of the form that many Fs is specific although it is neither recognitional nor canonical. The literature has not distinguished noncanonical from nonspecific m.p.s of numbers. Ratios are fundamentally ratios of magnitudes.

Tyler Burge, Christopher Peacocke; Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 117–158, h.

INTRODUCTION The philosophy of action and the philosophy of space and time may well seem to be unconnected areas. I will argue that in each of these areas ...

A theory of understanding -- Truth's role in understanding -- Critique of justificationist and evidential accounts -- Do pragmatist views avoid this critique? -- A realistic account -- How evidence and truth are related -- Three grades of involvement of truth in theories of understanding -- Anchoring -- Next steps -- Reference and reasons -- The main thesis and its location -- Exposition and four argument-types -- Significance and consequences of the main thesis -- The first person as a case (...) study -- Fully self-conscious thought -- Immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first person -- Can a use of the first-person concept fail to refer? -- Some conceptual roles are distinctive but not fundamental -- Implicit conceptions -- Implicit conceptions : motivation and examples -- Deflationary readings rejected -- The phenomenon of new principles -- Explanation by implicit conceptions -- Rationalist aspects -- Consequences : rationality, justification, understanding -- Transitional -- Applications to mental concepts -- Conceiving of conscious states -- Understanding and identity in other cases -- Constraints on legitimate explanations in terms of identity -- Why is the subjective case different? -- Attractions of the interlocking account -- Tacit knowledge, and externalism about the internal -- Is this the myth of the given? -- Knowledge of others' conscious states -- Communicability : between Frege and Wittgenstein -- Conclusions and significance -- 'Another I' : representing perception and action -- The core rule -- Modal status and its significance -- Comparisons -- The possession-condition and some empirical phenomena -- The model generalized -- Wider issues -- Mental action -- The distinctive features of action-awareness -- The nature and range of mental actions -- The principal hypothesis and its grounds -- The principal hypothesis : distinctions and consequences -- How do we know about our own mental actions? -- Concepts of mental actions and their epistemological significance -- Is this account open to the same objections as perceptual models of introspection? -- Characterizing and unifying schizophrenic experience -- The first person in the self-ascription of action -- Rational agency and action-awareness -- Representing thoughts -- The puzzle -- A proposal -- How the solution treats the constraints that generate the puzzle -- Relation to single-level treatments -- An application : reconciling externalism with distinctive self-knowledge. (shrink)

This note aims to clarify which arguments do, and which arguments do not, tell against Conceptualism, the thesis that the representational content of experience is exclusively conceptual. Contrary to Sean Kelly’s position, conceptualism has no difficulty accommodating the phenomena of color constancy and of situation-dependence. Acknowledgment of nonconceptual content is also consistent with holding that experiences have nonrepresentational subjective features. The crucial arguments against conceptualism stem from animal perception, and from a distinction, elaborated in the final section of the paper, (...) between content which is objective and content which is also conceived of by its subject as objective. (shrink)