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This review was interesting, but I haven't yet laid hands on a copy of the book. What do those who've read the book think? Is it more convincing in defense of traditional conceptual analysis than the review suggests? Signed comments preferred.
When I first read this post, I assumed the link was to Steve Leeds review of McGinn's Basic Structures of Reality, a review that I just finished reading. Does not the possibility of this sort of confusion indicate something about McGinn's work?
The book is certainly a lot more interesting than the rather uncharitable review on NDPR suggests – at least for anyone interested in conceptual analysis in particular and philosophical methodology in general. For example, it contains a very insightful discussion of Wittgenstein on family resemblance in chapter 2. McGinn approaches many of these old issues with a certain freshness that is rare in contemporary philosophical monographs – and the book is at times also a real pleasure to read. Nevertheless, the price that McGinn pays for his fresh approach is that he simply ignores large parts of the relevant literature, as the reviewer is entirely right to point out. This does not always hurt McGinn's argument, but sometimes it does in quite substantial and annoying ways. A good example is his argument from non-trivial necessary conditions to the availability of sufficient conditions in chapter 3, for he simply ignores the counterexample of "red" and "being colored". Here, the availability of a non-trivial necessary condition – being colored – is fully compatible with the unavailability of any non-trivial sufficient conditions for being red. Had McGinn only read the beginning of Williamson's "Knowledge and Its Limits"…
Ahlstrom-Vij’s review is, to be sure, thoughtful and well-taken. Nevertheless, there is, to my eye at least, an obvious tension underlying his remarks that deserves mention. I think a few telling quotations will do well to illustrate the tension that caught my attention.
“Recently, many philosophers have grown increasingly pessimistic about the epistemic merits of what is often considered the primary method of philosophical inquiry, namely, conceptual analysis.”
What is meant by “epistemic merit” here? To begin with, what does he mean by "merit"? What, moreover, does he have in mind by the "epistemic" variety? On what basis has the notion of either been adduced? Empirically? How and when? If they’ve yet to earn their “empirical” stripes, how can Ahlstrom-Vij consistently employ them without having first empirically clarified their essence, meaning, and legitimacy? If he’s entitled to employ these sorts of concepts without having first demonstrated their “empirical” stripes, doesn’t this statement indulge in the very kind of “intuitionist” thinking that McGinn attempts to defend and Ahlstrom-Vij himself supposedly wishes to cast doubt upon?
“Unfortunately, however, McGinn makes no mention of prototype theory, nor of the challenge it presents to the conceptual analyst.”
There are at least two things worth mentioning here. First, Ahlstrom-Vij simply assumes that concepts are psychological entities, but that’s an incredibly contentious issue. There is, of course, a long, venerable lineage of thinkers, including both Frege and Husserl to name just two, who deny that concepts are merely psychological entities, and who offer powerful arguments in support of the view that intentional meaning (Sinn, Bedeutung, etc.) is irreducible to the psychological episodes of thinking that underpins it. Absent the presupposition that concepts are in fact reducible or equivalent to psychological entities, Ahlstrom-Vij’s appeal to “prototype theory” is wholly beside the point. Why should philosophers concern themselves with psychological theories about the nature of concepts, if something about their nature is strictly non-psychological? In any event, what about the very notion of theory itself? Are we supposed to believe that what a theory amounts to is a question only and ultimately to be answered by empirical inquiry? If such a question is in fact an empirical matter, what research can Ahlstrom-Vij cite to justify his use of the term “theory” in the manner that he does? What sort of empirical consensus has been reached, if any, about what a theory is? If there isn’t such a consensus—as I suspect there isn’t—then how can Ahlstrom-Vij consistently appeal to empirical research in support of his view about the nature of conceptual analysis when that very notion of theory is itself something yet to be empirically legitimated? By now, I hope the point is obvious. If we take this faddish tendency to lionize “empirical” inquiry to its logical conclusion, and only admit those terms and concepts into our philosophical vocabulary that have already been vetted by “empirical” methods, it would be exceedingly difficult—if not outright impossible—to ever justifiably formulate a philosophical thesis in the first place, including the very sorts of claims that Ahlstrom-Vij wishes to marshal against McGinn.
“That might have been true if we had in mind an empirical inquiry into the external things instantiating our concepts, since such an inquiry might reveal merely contingent properties. But that is not what psychologists working on human categorization are studying; just like the conceptual analyst, they are studying our concepts, and if the No Divide Thesis holds, this is ipso facto to study the relevant essences.”
Here again the tension between the thesis Ahlstrom-Vij wishes to articulate, on the one hand, and the very means by which he argues for it, on the other hand, rears its ugly head. What does he mean by an “empirical inquiry”? Indeed, what does he even mean by a “concept”? Is either notion something he’s derived from the empirical literature, whatever that might mean, or has he merely adduced both notions from his own armchair? If the former is truly the case, where did the experimenters themselves adduce their notions of “empirical inquiry” and “concept”? Finally, what evidence—empirical or otherwise—can be marshaled in order to support his assumption that concepts are just psychological entities and thus explainable largely, if not wholly, by means of how psychologists study them? What, indeed, does he even mean by “human categorization”? Is this a concept he genuinely derived from the laboratory itself, or does the use of this term actually owe its origin to the armchair rather than the lab?
“At the end of the day, it might turn out that probing our intuitions from the armchair provides a perfectly appropriate epistemic pathway to our concepts — but that is a straightforwardly empirical hypothesis that the conceptual analyst cannot simply assume is warranted.”
Suppose we grant the claim that McGinn’s thesis is something that should be understood as an empirical hypothesis. What, then, about Ahlstrom-Vij’s own wager that McGinn's thesis is something best understood as such? On what possible basis did Ahlstom-Vij reach this conclusion? Did empirical research lead him to such a surmise? Are we to believe that he reached his own working hypothesis from somewhere besides the armchair? Indeed, where else but the armchair could he have conceivably arrived at it his own take on how we ought to construe McGinn's portrayal of conceptual analysis?
“Had McGinn engaged with this hypothesis in a systematic manner — e.g., along the lines of such defenders of the evidential value of intuitions as Joel Pust (2000), Alvin Goldman (2007), and Jennifer Nagel (forthcoming) — his book might have been a valuable contribution to current meta-philosophical debates. Instead, McGinn's oversights with respect to significant parts of the relevant philosophical and empirical literature, on this topic just like on the ones highlighted in the above, make his book unlikely to advance current discussions on the problems and prospects of conceptual analysis.”
What does Ahlstrom-Vij mean by “systematic”? Has this notion, as he employs it, been empirically vouchsafed? How in the world could this even be accomplished, assuming it has yet to be? Moreover, Ahlstrom-Vij obviously has a tacit criterion by which he’s assessing what counts as “significant” and “relevant” literature in this case. But how, we might ask, did he come by these standards of measure? In the lab? What experiment or survey did he himself conduct—or have others conducted—that would justify the claim that he actually possesses an empirically grounded set of criteria to determine what, in this context, counts for relevance and significance? Does Ahlstrom-Vij have such criteria? If he doesn’t have empirical justification for his own application of these terms, as I suspect is the case, should we simply dismiss his conclusion as mere armchair speculation? Surely that would be unduly hasty and unfair. But there’s the rub. If it would be misguided to dismiss his arguments despite the fact that he employs concepts throughout his review that have yet to be empirically clarified and distilled, isn’t this just to concede McGinn’s contention that there is, after all, an autonomous place for non-empirical conceptual analysis? Perhaps this is so obvious that it doesn’t even deserve mention, but I have to ask at this point: How could Ahlstrom-Vij even formulate, much less defend, any philosophical thesis, including the ones he proffers in his review of McGinn's book, if he didn’t avail himself repeatedly of the very manner of philosophical analysis McGinn wishes to defend?
“If we are serious about studying our concepts, should we not outsource the relevant study to psychologists working on human categorization?”
As I’ve already mentioned above, Ahlstrom, without argument, merely assumes that concepts are psychological entities. And yet, curiously, he doesn’t even seem to take the implications of his own view seriously enough. For if conceptual analysis, as McGinn understands it, is not genuinely viable, then philosophy has come to an end—at least as it’s been practiced for the greater part of the last two thousand years. Happily, however, I think such a view is much too hasty. After all, the entire motivation of the review, which I construed to be an attempt to demonstrate the significant importance and place of “empirical” inquiry for philosophical inquiry and the correlative dubiousness of the traditional “armchair” approach—is one that could never have been formulated, much less defended, without recourse to the very armchair thinking that has characterized philosophical inquiry since Socrates. If that wasn’t the thesis that Ahlstrom-Vij meant to endorse, or at least flirt with, I apologize. Maybe I misconstrued the tone and message of his review. But if this is what he meant to suggest, we should all be glad—for my own part, I am—that his review only serves to ultimately underscore the truth of the very thesis it was intended to call into question: doing philosophy from the armchair is nothing to be ashamed about. Indeed, as far as I’m concerned, philosophical thinking, including Ahlstrom-Vij's own, begins and ends in the armchair. Such a fact, it seems to me, is something that philosophers should openly acknowledge happily rather than sheepishly admit. To put it bluntly: Since when, and why, did it become all the rage to portray philosophizing as something that is, or ought to be, "empirical"?
BL COMMENT: I assume it can't be anyone's view that no one knows what any words mean unless they've first done conceptual analysis in McGinn's sense.
Surely you're right. One would also think that it couldn't be anyone's view that no one "really" knows what concepts are unless they've first done psychological inquiry into the matter, only to then repeatedly employ concepts throughout a review without having first done so. And yet, alas, this is precisely what Ahlstrom-Vij does. I was being a bit facetious at times, of course, but I did so just to draw attention to a legitimate tension in his review. Again: How else but by armchair analysis could Ahlstrom-Vij possibly have arrived at and articulated his views about McGinn's book? Why, then, write a review that means to suggest that we should be dubious about traditional philosophical analysis when the reviewer himself relied upon armchair analysis in order to argue for its supposed dubiousness? Doesn't all this just go to show that McGinn is on to something after all?
BL COMMENT: This response seems to me just to repeat the initial confusion, but I'll leave it to others to adjudicate these matters.
"Absent the presupposition that concepts are in fact reducible or equivalent to psychological entities, Ahlstrom-Vij’s appeal to 'prototype theory' is wholly beside the point." No, it's very germane. Concepts won't do us any good if they just float in Platonic space. Humans, including philosophers in or out of armchairs, must grasp concepts – and prototype theory describes the manner in which we do. If we don't wield concepts via necessary and sufficient conditions, then conceptual analysis done by humans will never bear more than an accidental relationship to any Platonic structures bearing a necessary-and-sufficient-conditions Form.
Someday (soon, I hope), claptrap like McGinn's won't even be taken seriously. There are only three ways of relating to the empirical: you can be empirically informed, empirically uninformed, or empirically misinformed. There is no fourth option.
These reactions seem to me to be too quick to devalue an alternative approach that does no harm. Psychologism has done no work in mathematics or logic, and I see no reason to ask mathmaticians to take a naturalistic stance to numbers. Of course it might be the case (or it *must be the case*) that math can be naturalized, but I don't see how that can be helpful for a mathmatician attempting to find a proof. The mathmatician must take the internal point of view and work with numbers and not with brain states.
Likewise, if a conceptual analyst does not want to map folk theories, empirical evidence of how the brain processes concepts has no significant role in his theorizing. Just like numbers, abstractions such as "rights" may simply not exist, but they may be good prescriptions. A conceptual analysts can tell us "ok this does not fit with folk theory, but you should define rights as such". It is not abundantly clear to me that this is a history of failures. Yes, these definitions don't stick, but they serve their age, for instance in political theory.
Please excuse me if my comment is misinformed. I am not a philosopher, and I have not read McGinn, but from where I stand in the social sciences (far away from psychology), I am very interested in this issue.
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