Welcome to the blog! This post should serve as both an introduction to conceptual analysis as a philosophical method and the blog itself. At the end of this post, you should understand just what “a conceptual analysis of ordinary objects” means, and why I (at least) think it is a good title for the blog.
Conceptual Analysis
So what is conceptual analysis? Conceptual analysis is a popular (and likely the primary) method in analytic philosophy. The output of a conceptual analysis of a concept is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions something must fulfill to count as falling under that concept. In other words, the output is a definition of that concept.
The method of conceptual analysis is best understood by an example. You may have pondered what it takes to be a chair. In philosophical jargon, you are asking: “what does it take for a thing to fall under the concept CHAIR?” You might first propose a definition like “a chair has four legs and is for one person to sit on.” But then you might recall that you’ve called some thing a “chair” despite its having 3 legs. And you might have seen a rather big chair that seats multiple people. You have found counterexamples to your definition. Thus, you have to revise it. Ideally, you rinse and repeat until you find a definition that counts all things which are in fact chairs as chairs, and excludes things that are not chairs.
Now if you’ve tried conceptual analysis of CHAIR, you’ve probably realized that a definition of CHAIR is impossible to reach. Maybe you think to have discovered a trick, but (I can assure you) philosophers have already considered it. Conceptual analysis is ubiquitous in the field, with many (including my advisor) believing that it is more or less just what philosophy is. So let’s go over a tried-and-true example from epistemology:
What is knowledge? Since Plato, the standard definition has been that knowledge is a “justified, true belief.” This, at first glance, is a promising definition. Knowledge seems to be a mental state, and therefore is plausibly a kind of belief. This belief has a further property: that it is justified. For now, we can consider a belief to be justified if the evidence supports endorsing that belief. For example, I am justified in believing that it is Christmas day because my calendar says it is the 25th of December, the local restaurants are closed, and I’ve given and received a few presents. Finally, my belief must be true. If there was a mass conspiracy tricking me into believing it was Christmas today when it wasn’t (perhaps my family changed the date on my computer and phone), then my belief that today was Christmas would be false. However, given how unlikely this conspiracy is, I am justified in believing that it is Christmas nonetheless.
So, the proposed definition, or set of necessary and sufficient conditions, on KNOWLEDGE are that a) it is a belief, b) that it is justified, and c) that it is true. Notice here that all these conditions are independent of each other, and that it (at first glance) captures all the things we’d consider to be knowledge. Sounds like a slam dunk?
Enter the famous Gettier counterexamples. There’s a great deal of philosophical literature (and interesting philosophical lore) about them. The original Gettier counterexample isn’t very intuitive. But, a very clear version (for our purposes) goes like this:
Cow Counterexample. Imagine that you are driving through the countryside. You see what appears to be a lone cow and form the belief that the there’s a cow in the field. Assuming that your perceptual faculties are justification enough for simple beliefs like this (which you should), and there is a lone cow in the field, our definition of knowledge entails that you know there’s a cow in the field. However! In this thought experiment, what you saw was a scarily accurate cardboard cutout of a cow. However again! Behind that cardboard cutout there was, in fact, a cow. The intuition is that, despite having a justified, true belief you did not know there’s a cow in the field. Therefore, the proposed definition is not sufficient for knowledge.
Groundbreaking stuff! I welcome any comments or questions. The philosophical diagnosis on why this doesn’t count as knowledge is because of the disconnect between justification and truth. As I alluded to earlier, a belief might be strongly justified, but–perhaps even because of bad luck–turn out to be false. Typically, philosophers have responded to Gettier cases by proposing a “Gettier condition” to rule out such cases as counting as knowledge. Perhaps you feel this is ad hoc, but perhaps this is the best we can do.
Furthermore, you can argue that some conditions are necessary. While he didn’t frame his work as an objection to Gettier (although he does believe Gettier cases show the traditional definition of knowledge is false), Timothy Williamson presents a defense of knowledge as a fundamental mental state. If he’s right, then knowledge is a mental state that isn’t a kind of belief. Therefore, the belief condition is not necessary for knowledge.
Williamson works out his account of knowledge in Knowledge and its Limits, but I’ll make a similar point in a different way. Certainly I know how to drive a car, but I might not have any beliefs about driving cars. I might just have certain skills sufficient for knowledge, in which case beliefs are not necessary for knowledge (though perhaps sufficient). Typically, this objection isn’t considered relevant. As a rejoinder, someone might assert the relevant question is something like “What does it take for me to know a fact?” I am not aware of any fact when I have certain skills, I just have an expertise. This suggests two different senses of “knowledge,” knowledge that (or propositional knowledge) versus knowledge how. Justified, true belief captures the former and not the latter.
There is obviously a lot more to be said about the vast literature on conditions for knowledge, but let’s stick with examining conceptual analysis as a method.
The Method
Conceptual analysis goes hand in hand with thought experiments. When you propose a definition, you imagine a counterexample which is permitted to be quite fanciful. The only bounds constraining your imagined counterexample seem to be what is possible. This makes sense. Consider again the Cow Example. We should doubt that anything like that actually happened, but it is a possible case where we can coherently ask “does the driver have knowledge?” If the conjured counterexample is incoherent (i.e., contains a contradiction) there seems to be no way that the concept KNOWLEDGE can be applied.
If you are confused about why hypothetical cases carry any weight, consider that you propose the definition of “feudalism” as “the system where lords were granted lands by kings to secure their military service.” However, it could turn out that this system didn’t actually exist in the Middle-ages. This, as a historical fact, is somewhat plausible. But, the concept FEUDALISM still makes sense and we may try (perhaps in vain) to analyze the concept to determine its application conditions, even if nothing ever satisfied the concept FEUDALISM.
Readers might also notice that there’s some deal of subjectivity involved in conceptual analysis. In the method, we try and decide things that should plainly count as falling under a particular concept. However, we might disagree if something really counts. A famous example pertains to the conceptual analysis of GAME. Oftentimes, conceptual analyses of GAME include events that we would consider to be WAR. But, many suggest wars cannot be games. If you are like me, you might disagree with this take. For a more grounded example, I am genuinely unsure whether Lazyboys should count as CHAIRS. The method seems to rely strongly on our intuitions, but intuitions might be unreliable.
As a method, perhaps you feel that conceptual analysis is hopelessly subjective. I, however, embrace this (to some extent). Some suggest that the activity of thinkers working together will reach some consensus, perhaps balancing the myriad perspectives on a concept. Perhaps the process of conceptual analysis refines our intuitions about the concept in question. I am less optimistic about these lines(fearing that there’s some intellectual elitism lurking in the background). As a plausible alternative, we can still maintain that there’s value in mapping out the possible perspectives on a certain concept, even if a consensus is not possible. Some of these definitions will be more or less helpful, but conceptual analyses of the helpful concepts can go a long way to clarify what it is humans are doing, helping us to avoid mistakes and improve human communication. With this suggestion, I am revealing my pragmatist cards. But this is compatible with a mild pragmatism, and seems better than the alternatives.
Ordinary Objects
There’s much more to say about the method. For example, shouldn’t definitions also be informative? I could just provide a list of everything that is a chair and propose this as a definition, but this doesn’t appear to get what we sought out for. Furthermore, should we hold that definitions be simple or elegant? I want to move on, though, to ordinary objects and the point of this blog.
I suggested that a definition of CHAIR is perhaps impossible to come by. But if we can’t determine definitions for regular things, why should we presume that we can come up with definitions for weighty things like KNOWLEDGE? My preferred response is some concepts like CHAIR are family resemblance concepts: concepts that don’t have necessary and sufficient features, but are rather a “cluster” of interlocking similarities. We should be optimistic that we can find definitions for philosophical concepts as they aren’t messy concepts crafted by humans, but genuine things existing on their own whether or not us humans were around to discover them. Knowledge makes up the furniture of reality–chairs only make up the furniture of houses.
This is overly optimistic? Why can’t there be messiness in the world? And even if there isn’t messiness, why should we expect us humans to ever grasp it? I, at least in the philosophical profession, think that the “gold standard” ought to be pursued, if only for pragmatic benefits I mentioned earlier. But there are benefits to analyzing ordinary objects as well. In this blog, I hope to primarily focus on analyzing the messiness of ordinary objects (broadly construed), if only to aid in my actual philosophical pursuits.
Conclusion
So this should serve as an intro to the blog. All things considered, I came up with a pretty good blog title. Apologies for how rushed it reads. As I mentioned, it is Christmas (well, now the day after Christmas) and I had a bit to drink. I also wanted to knock out a post the same day I created the blog, as it felt like something I should do. I also wrote directly into the WordPress website, did not check spelling and grammar, and only did one draft. This isn’t quite stream of consciousness, but it is pretty damn close. I may return to this post later and fix it up. Nonetheless, I hope you took something away from it.