Fodor on Concepts Philosophical Aspects

Fodor on Concepts: Philosophical Aspects* CHRISTOPHER PEACOCKE

Jerry Fodor’s main target in Concepts is inferential role semantics (IRS), against which he mounts a battery of arguments. There is a great deal of stimulating and valuable material in Concepts besides this attack, in particular his new discussion of acquisition and of mind-dependent concepts. Fodor, though, clearly regards the attack on IRS as the core of his book. I will be concerned here with those core philosophical arguments. It will hardly come as a surprise that I disagree with those arguments. I will, however, try to respect the advice of Fodor’s Auntie when she says ‘Nice people try to be constructive’ (p. 53).1 It is not possible to assess properly a given criticism of IRS without having a fuller description of a position which endorses IRS, and along with it some statement of the resources available to IRS as it attempts to meet the criticism. So I will try to say what can be learned, from reflecting on Fodor’s arguments, about the right and the wrong ways of formulating IRS. As the smoke clears from these arguments, we can attain a view of the philosophical options which would not have been nearly so sharply defined without Fodor’s vigorous contribution. 1. Having a Concept vs. Being a Concept: The Proper Formulation of a Thesis Early on in Concepts, Fodor considers the thesis that the philosophical explanation of having a concept is more fundamental than that of being a concept. Under such a thesis, the way to individuate a given concept—the way to say what it is to be that particular concept—is to specify what it is for a thinker to have that concept. IRS is certainly committed to some form of this thesis.

*Review of Jerry A. Fodor, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xii ⫹ 174. This discussion paper was written while I held a Leverhulme Research Professorship: I thank the Leverhulme Trust for continuing support. Address for correspondence: Magdalen College, Oxford OX1 4AU, UK. Email: christopher.peacocke얀magdalen.ox.ac.uk. 1 All page references are to Fodor’s book, unless otherwise stated. Mind & Language, Vol. 15 Nos 2 and 3 April/June 2000, pp. 327–340.  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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According to Fodor, in accepting this thesis of the priority of having a concept, current theories of concepts ‘almost without exception’ ‘reverse the classical direction of analysis’ (p. 2). On the classical direction of analysis which Fodor endorses, ‘First you say what it is for something to be the concept X—you give the concept’s “identity conditions”—and then having the concept X is just having whatever the concept X turns out to be’ (p. 2). Fodor says that the doctrine of the priority of having a concept ‘frequently manifests a preference for an ontology of mental dispositions rather than an ontology of mental particulars’ (pp. 3–4). In his second chapter, Fodor has it as his opening nonnegotiable condition on a theory of concepts that the theory hold that ‘Concepts are mental particulars; specifically, they satisfy whatever ontological conditions have to be met by things that function as mental causes and effects’ (p. 23). Those who endorse the thesis of the priority of having a concept ‘generally have some sort of Pragmatism in mind’ as the answer to the question of the nature of concept possession (p. 3); or more generally they have an agenda of the reduction of concepts and meanings to epistemic capacities (p. 4); or they mistakenly hold a theory of communication which fails to appreciate that strong but fallible evidence is all we can ever have about what someone else means by their expressions (p. 5). As against this, it seems to me consistent for a theorist to hold the doctrine of the priority of having a concept simultaneously with the thesis that concepts considered as particulars have causes and effects, and cannot be reduced to anything purely dispositional. Take, for instance, the theory of A Study of Concepts (Peacocke, 1992). That theory is based explicitly on the priority of having a concept, but it is wholly consistent with that theory to insist that a person’s having a concept is a state with causes and effects. A type/token distinction, which actually Fodor is careful to draw throughout, is crucial to characterizing the full range of possible philosophical positions here. When I said in A Study of Concepts that having a concept is philosophically prior to being a concept, that was a statement about concepts considered as what Fodor would call a type of mental representation. The priority thesis is consistent with the principle that token mental representations of that type are causally efficacious, and are of crucial import, in psychological explanation. Certainly, some theorists who believe in the priority of having a concept deny such efficacy, are pragmatists or verificationists, and have extreme views about the epistemology of communication. But none of those doctrines is required by the philosophical priority of having a concept. (Nor is any of these doctrines found in, or entailed by, the theory of A Study of Concepts. That theory is explicitly realistic, and anti-verificationist and anti-pragmatist.) If some theorists who accept the priority of having a concept have accepted these other doctrines which Fodor rightly rejects, their grounds will have to be additional. They are not inevitable concomitants of the doctrine of the priority of having a concept. Here is one formulation of a doctrine of the priority of having a concept,  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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set out in a form in which it is clearly compatible with the view of concepts as mental particulars: (H) The type of a concept, where the concept is considered as a mental particular, has a constitutive dependence upon that particular’s relations to the thinker who has the concept, to that thinker’s physical and social environment, and possibly to the thinker’s other concepts and mental states. Hence there cannot be two different particulars which are concepts of different (fully determinate) types, but which yet agree upon all of the preceding relations. In his discussion of the thesis of the priority of having a concept, Fodor writes, as part of a statement of something he says is truistic, that ‘It’s a general truth that if you know what an X is, then you also know what it is to have an X. And ditto the other way around’ (p. 2). The formulation (H), however, is far from being an instance of this general truism, precisely because of its restrictions upon the relations which determine concept-type. Concepts differ radically from other types of thing in this respect. If bananas are fruits with genetic structure B, then to be eating a banana is to be eating something with genetic structure B. It does not follow that what it is to be a banana can be elucidated in terms of what it is to eat one; whereas (H) does say, non-truistically and specifically and only about the subject matter of concepts, that relations to a thinker, and other mental states and the environment, do determine concept-type. As I said, Fodor is admirably clear about the type/token distinction for concepts. This is especially so in note 1, p. 3, in which, however, in the course of discussing these priority issues, he speaks of ‘the quite different question of how concept tokens are typed’. In effect, I am saying that the clear-headed defender of the philosophical priority of having a concept should say that this is not a quite different question. It is rather the correct locus of the thesis of the priority of having a concept. In fact, when it comes to the discussion of particular concepts and kinds of concepts, Fodor’s philosophical practice seems to me to respect the doctrine (H). His engaging discussion much later in the book of what it is to have the concept doorknob precisely addresses the question of what it is for a particular concept to be of the doorknob type. I conjecture that he would be as unhappy as I would with a theorist who says that distinctions of concept-type go beyond anything which would be determined by the relations mentioned in (H). Elsewhere in the book, when discussing other matters, Fodor formulates some advice in a general principle which I would wholly endorse: ‘it is inadvisable for a theory to recognize degrees of freedom that it is unable to interpret’ (p. 111). Precisely that methodological principle can be used against those theorists of concept-types who think that concept-types can classify concepts  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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(considered as particulars) more finely than the totality of resources mentioned in (H). 2. Fregean IRS: How, Where and Why the Substitution Test should be Applied Fodor says that modes of presentation cannot be senses. This is, he says, the moral of the Mates examples: ‘it is possible for Fred to wonder whether John understands that bachelors are unmarried men even though Fred does not wonder whether John understands that unmarried men are unmarried men’ (p. 16). The Fregean should reply that this applies the substitution test at the wrong point. There has been a growing consensus, amongst a set of writers who do not agree on much else, that the most promising treatment of propositional attitude contexts must invoke some hidden reference to notions or ways of thinking, which feature as what Mark Crimmins and John Perry (1989) call unarticulated constituents of the content of the attitude-report. This is, inessential details aside, the theory that Stephen Schiffer (1992) calls the ‘hidden indexical’ theory of attitude-reports. On this approach, (1) John believes that Peter has influenza, requires that there be some way m of thinking of Peter and some way ␾ of thinking of the property of having influenza such that: (2) John believes of Peter under m that he has the property ␭x[x has influenza] under way of thinking ␾. The ways m and ␾ are contextually determined, and will vary over utterances of a given sentence which reports an attitude. Sometimes context will require for the truth of the report only that there be some such m and ␾. This approach can cover a wide range of puzzle cases. Now if any view of this general kind is correct, the correct point of application of the substitution test is not the expressions embedded in the ‘that . . .’ clause in sentences like (1). The correct point of application is rather to the ways of thinking such as m and ␾ in (2). For senses of objects, m is distinct from m⬘ iff it is possible that there exist P, ␾, and x such that a rational thinker judges of x under m that it has P under ␾, but does not, when the question arises, judge of x under m⬘ that it has P under ␾. On this treatment, (3) John understands that bachelors are unmarried men, requires that there be some suitably contextually determined way ␤ of thinking  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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of the property B of being a bachelor, and some way ␷ of thinking of the property U of being an unmarried man, such that: (4) John understands that persons who have B, thought of under ␤, also have U, thought of under ␷. There can certainly be contexts and ways under which (4) is informative. Such contexts and ways are precisely the ones which make the Mates cases intelligible. This is true even if U and B are the same property; and even if to fully understand ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ one must be in a position to appreciate that they both pick out that single property. For the ways of thinking ␤ and ␷ need not, under the hidden-indexical theory, be the ways of thinking of those properties conventionally associated with the corresponding expressions in the language. So it is intelligible even for a highly rational Fred to wonder whether (3) holds. It is also wholly consistent with this approach that the underlying ways of thinking m, ␸, ␤, ␷ be individuated by their constitutive inferential roles. It is a correct inference from the Mates examples that the identity of modes of presentation cannot simply be read off from surface phenomena in any very straightforward way. This is an important lesson for several radically different kinds of theorist. I agree with Fodor that it is an important lesson which must be learned and acted upon by any Fregean theorist who wants to develop a substantive theory of sense and concepts, and to use that theory in the explanation of linguistic understanding. It is an important lesson also for anyone who seeks to reconstruct the notion of sense from the behaviour of expressions within belief-contexts of the surface language, whether this theorist adopts a pleonastic approach, in the sense of Schiffer (1987, p. 51), or perhaps a fictionalist approach. Under neither of these less substantial approaches will surface sentences yield anything which reconstructs the distinctions that the Fregean ought to be employing in his notion of sense. Finally, the Mates examples are equally a lesson for those theorists who think that propositional-attitude contexts make impossible a systematic theory of meaning for a natural language, if it is to be a theory which employs the notion of sense, and treats indirect discourse after the model of Frege’s own treatment. The looser approach to propositional-attitudes contexts adopted by the hidden-indexical style theories still employs the notion of sense. It is also consistent with the existence of a systematic theory of meaning for a natural language. How then should the Fregean apply the lesson to be learned from the Mates examples? His position should be that the need for modes of presentation and the fundamental explanation of their identity are matters for philosophical theory. They must be shown to earn their keep. The need for a Fregean IRS theorist to answer Fodor’s many objections to them is then all the more pressing. The Fregean IRS theorist asserts two principles:  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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(I)

(II)

We need in psychological explanation and in epistemology a notion of a way of thinking individuated by the Fregean criterion of informativeness. The notion of a way of thinking motivated by (I) is either individuated by, or at least is constrained in various constitutive ways, by its conceptual or inferential role.

Principle (I) is what makes the theory Fregean. Principle (II) is what makes it some form of IRS theory. The ways of thinking which these Principles are about are the m’s and ␸’s which feature in the hidden-indexical theory of propositional attitude constructions. Substantive IRS theories come in many varieties and subtypes. Some specify the conceptual role which individuates a concept outright, in a reductive fashion. Some specify it as the role to be expected when possession of a concept is underlain by some implicit conception. Yet others specify it highly indirectly, as the role it must have if someone possessing the given concept is to be intelligible in his thought and action. What all Fregean IRS theories, of whatever stripe, agree upon is the central place of reasons and rationality in the individuation of concepts. Reasons for making judgements are central in any Fregean theory, since the informativeness criterion appeals to what can be reasonably judged in given circumstances. The distinctive claim of the Fregean IRS theorist is then that we can give a philosophical explanation of how reasons contribute to the individuation of concepts by appealing to inferential or conceptual role. The notion of a thinker’s reasons for making a judgement plays virtually no positive part in Fodor’s account of concepts. Fodor complains of the lack of arguments for IRS: ‘If, in short, one asks to hear some serious arguments for IRS, one discovers, a bit disconcertingly, that they are very thin upon the ground’ (p. 36). Fodor may well be right about the actual state of some parts of the literature: but I think it is possible to fill the lacuna, and in a way which respects much of what is driving recent neo-Fregean literature. The serious arguments for IRS should centre on the notion of the reasons for making a judgement, and those arguments fall into two broad classes. There are arguments from specific examples, and there are arguments from more general considerations having to do with concepts and reasons. First, specific examples. Fodor is sceptical that in particular cases we can ever find specific conceptual roles which are constitutive of a concept, rather than being de facto reliably associated with it. He is sceptical not merely about whether we can draw the distinction, but about whether there is a distinction to be drawn. There are what he calls one-criterion concepts, but the same concept could have had more, or other, criteria. By contrast, it seems to me that even at a very basic level of thought, we require, and can sometimes draw, the distinction between constitutive and non-constitutive features quite sharply. Consider perceptual-demonstrative ways of thinking of objects, such as that mug, a way of thinking of the coffee mug you are perceiving which is  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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made available by your perceptual state. The following is constitutive of this perceptual-demonstrative way of thinking: that when the subject is taking perceptual experience at face value, and perceives the object, which is seen as a mug and which is presented as that mug, to be blue, then the subject is willing to judge That mug is blue. How could one abandon such a sensitivity and replace it with another and still be employing the same concept? If one had, for a time, a recognitional capacity for a particular mug, thought of as Joe, one might, while in a certain way not doubting one’s perception, not be willing to judge Joe is blue, even though the presented mug is blue, because one suspects someone had substituted a lookalike for Joe. The same applies if one is thinking of a mug as the mug I bought in Lisbon. But this all goes to show the distinctness of the perceptual-demonstrative concept both from the recognitional concept and from the descriptive concept. For the perceptual-demonstrative concept, that part of its conceptual role which links it with perceptually-based judgements is constitutive. (It is surely no accident that we employ such concepts.) If someone suggested that there is a way of thinking of a perceptually presented object which is just like the perceptual-demonstrative, except that it lacks this perceptual sensitivity, I do not know what it could be. Corresponding points to those made here about perceptual-demonstratives could equally be made about other indexical or demonstrative concepts, in particular here, now, and I. Similarly, it seems to me that we can distinguish different observational shape concepts of the same property, as in the case of the observational concept square and the observational concept regular-diamond, discussed in A Study of Concepts. It is unsurprising that different experience-types should permit the individuation of distinct concepts, given the Fregean criterion of informativeness. Conditions which rationally require the judgement That’s a square may not require the judgement That’s a regular-diamond. So, when Fodor writes that it is a ‘chief virtue of informational semantics to distinguish’ how a concept achieves semantic access from what content it has (p. 76), the Fregean must wonder whether this is not overlooking precisely some of the distinctions we need in psychological explanation and epistemology.2 Fodor remarks that he can share concepts with Helen Keller, and I agree. But we must remember that shape-concepts, for example, can be amodal. To say that a concept is constitutively individuated by certain of its relations with a particular experience-type is not to say that it is tied to a particular sensemodality—for the experience-type may be one which can be enjoyed in more than one modality. What of the more general arguments? It is a general argument in support 2

Parallel points could be made for some logical constants, as applied to their primitive rules and the role of those rules in yielding knowledge. Fodor says that the logical constants are beyond the scope of his discussion in Concepts; but the logical constants must be pertinent to the assessment of IRS.  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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of Fregean IRS accounts that they can explain facts about the rationality of making given judgements in given circumstances, and, thereby, also account for the epistemic status of those judgements. A person taking perceptual experience at face value, and seeing something as a square, will be rational in judging That’s a square. Lacking auxiliary information, he would not be rational in those same circumstances in judging That’s a regular-diamond. For just that reason, he can also in those circumstances know of the presented object that it is a square, yet not know that it is a regular-diamond. This is despite the fact that in these circumstances, a judgement That’s a regular diamond would be reliably true. On a Fregean IRS account, this distinction in rationality and also epistemic status between these two cases is explained by the fact that the subject is relying on an experience of type which is, according to a plausible IRS for the observational concept square, mentioned in a certain way in the possession condition for that concept, but is not so mentioned in the possession condition for regulardiamond. On a natural development of a Fregean IRS account, when the rationality of some particular transition turns on the identity of the particular concepts it involves, the rationality of the transition is grounded ultimately in the IRS-involving possession conditions for those particular concepts. In fundamental, constitutive cases, the rationality of the transition can be founded in constitutive features which contribute to the individuation of the concept, and are mentioned in its IRS. In derivative cases, a rational transition can be analysed into a series of subtransitions each of whose rationality can be so analysed, in cases where its rationality is not something applicable to arbitrary conceptual contents. This is actually a form of a classical rationalist principle, to the effect that all a posteriori reason-giving relations rest ultimately on a priori reason-giving relations, when that classical principle is taken in conjunction with the view that reason-giving relations distinctive of particular concepts are founded in features of their IRS-involving possession conditions. On this approach, the IRS-involving possession conditions for concepts do not, and of course could not, determine the dynamics of belief-formation in detail. Rather, they constrain the transitions which a rational thinker can make. The theory of Fregean IRS thus promotes an integration of the theory of concepts with epistemology. In a sentence with which I strongly agree, Fodor writes ‘the requirements that epistemology places upon epistemic warrant ought to be ones that the theory of content allows many of one’s beliefs actually to meet’ (p. 76). It is not at all clear to me that Fodor’s own treatment permits such integration. The sentence just quoted comes in the course of a discussion of reliability requirements for knowledge, on which Fodor’s informational account certainly does well. But not all kinds of reliability yield knowledge, as epistemologists have long known, and as the square/regular-diamond example further illustrates. It seems to me that the Fregean IRS theorist has the resources to explain satisfactorily why not all kinds of reliability yield knowledge. I doubt that Fodor’s approach does.  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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There is a also a more general question of whether Fodor’s treatment has the resources to account for and underwrite simultaneously three of the central principles which hold of concepts. (A) Concepts are public: Fodor rightly emphasizes that both he and Homer can have water-thoughts. (B) Concepts slice far finer than their referents. His use of the Mates cases, and several other passages, make clear that Fodor accepts this too. (C) We must always respect and explain how complex intentional contents are composed of their conceptual constituents. Some of the best passages in Fodor’s book make this point with great force. Yet I do not see how to elaborate a notion of concept, given the rest of Fodor’s position, which respects all of these constraints (A)–(C). What is it for two people to have the same concept of an object (or to have the same concept-type thereof if we construe concepts as mental particulars)? To insist that they employ the same expression-type in the language of thought is in conflict with the constraint (A) of publicity. It is no more plausible that a given concept must always have the same mental spelling than it is to insist that it must always have the same spelling in the public language. A theorist might in other circumstances at this point say that it is not sameness of symbol in the language of thought which matters to the identity of the concept, but rather sameness of some distinguished feature of its role. This, though, is precisely what Fodor is rejecting in his attack on IRS. To what else might Fodor appeal in explaining the identity of concepts? One position in the space of possibilities that have been explored is the ‘pleonastic’ conception of concepts, developed by Stephen Schiffer. That is an approach, however, on which it is not fundamentally explanatory to say that propositional intentional contents are composed from constituent concepts, when the latter are pleonastically construed. It is not an approach which squares with Fodor’s forcible insistence on constraint (C) of a substantial form of compositionality. I wonder whether his approach has the resources to solve this problem. 3. Concepts and Computation: The Allegation of Circularity Fodor says that ‘a computation is some kind of content-respecting causal relation among symbols’ (p. 11). This is the first step in Fodor’s argument that IRS is circular. There is certainly widespread agreement on that part of this claim which matters to Fodor’s claim of circularity in IRS. Perhaps there can be computation without symbols: it is arguable that some connectionist networks compute. Even if they do, however, that does not touch the thesis that computation cannot exist without the presence of content in the states amongst  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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which computational relations hold. That is all Fodor needs for the first step of his argument. Fodor then argues that ‘this order of explication is OK only if the notion of a symbol doesn’t itself presuppose the notion of a computation’ (p. 11; his italics). Later he writes, ‘For fear of circularity, I can’t both tell a computational story about what inference is and tell an inferential story about what content is’ (p. 13). The IRS theorist should reply (a) that the general notions of content and computation are interdependent and are to be explicated simultaneously; and the IRS theorist should also insist (b) that the statement of what individuates a given content, or a given computation, should be specific in a way which avoids an endless loop of content and computation. Fodor considers the possibility of simultaneous explication, but rejects it on the ground that this cannot be an option for a ‘naturalistic psychology’ (n. 7, p. 11). However, we are rightly comfortable with such interdependence elsewhere. To take one clear example: the general notion of a sentence cannot be explicated without using the notion of a word. In general, sentences are entities which are composed in the right kind of way by words. Equally, the general notion of a word cannot be explicated without using the notion of a sentence. A word is the kind of thing which can be a constituent of a complete sentence. An acceptable naturalism, and any other doctrine in the field, had better be compatible with this interdependence, for it exists. An analogue of (b) also holds in the case of words and sentences. The general interdependence of the notions of word and sentence exists in the presence of further constraints on something’s being a word—e.g. that it expresses a concept, or has a reference of a sort which contributes to the determination of truth conditions for sentences containing it, or meets some condition which is parasitic on the preceding two. The IRS theorist can also be specific about individuating computational roles. There is no endless loop in saying that—to use a formulation involving the language of thought—a mental symbol C means conjunction iff the device computes sCs⬘ in the appropriate box when s and s⬘ are in the belief (or supposition) box, and computes s and s⬘ in the appropriate box when sCs⬘ is in it. (This needs to be refined to include a form of the sub-personal version of the qualification ‘if the issue arises’; the transitions are also required to be fundamental, not based on any auxiliary information or principle. The refinements do not introduce an endless loop.) We can also give such formulations at the personal level, and for concepts rather than expressions in the language of thought. Such was the programme of A Study of Concepts. The reason there is no circularity in these specifications of conceptual role is that, in the basic case, it is not required that s or s⬘ already contain something which means conjunction. They can do, of course: the specification operates recursively to individuate contents containing arbitrary finite embeddings of conjunction. But the recursion has a basis on which to operate. This approach is compatible with local holisms in the individuation of some families of con Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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cepts. It also requires that at some basic level, individuation, either of particular concepts or of families thereof, must involve relations to something else besides accepted sentences or judgements made. And so it will: relations to perception and to other informational states whose content is on occasion appropriately taken at face value will play an essential role here. As long as these conceptual roles are properly linked to truth-conditions, there need not be anything verificationist or pragmatist in such an approach. 4. Compositionality and Recognitional Concepts Fodor has for many years argued that the need to explain the phenomenon of compositionality is a powerful constraint upon theories of meaning and concepts. Here he argues that the existence of recognitional concepts would be incompatible with compositionality. I quote his argument: If, in particular, nothing is constitutive of conceptual content unless it composes, then recognitional capacities can’t be constitutive of conceptual content. For someone could have the appropriate recognitional capacities with respect to FISH (he sees at a glance that trout, tuna, and the like are fish) and could have the appropriate recognitional capacities with respect to PET (he sees at a glance that poodles, Siamese kittens, and the like are pets), but be quite at a loss to identify even paradigmatic pet fish (e.g. even goldfish) as such. Because being a paradigm doesn’t compose, recognitional capacities don’t compose either. So the same argument that shows that paradigms aren’t constituents of content shows that recognitional capacities aren’t either; hence that there aren’t any recognitional concepts. Compositionality is a sharp sword which cutteth many knots. (p. 105). Later, Fodor draws some more general conclusions: ‘except for definitional instances, inferential roles themselves don’t compose’ (p. 106); ‘As things stand, there is no version of inferential role theory of conceptual content for which compositionality and psychological reality can both be claimed’ (p. 107; as in the preceding quotation, the italics are Fodor’s). It would be easy to question Fodor’s particular example. PET is in itself not a recognitional concept. Whether an animal is a person’s pet depends upon the person’s reasons for keeping it, and not on the pet’s observable properties. It is only with auxiliary information about which kinds of animals people like to keep for the relevant reasons that one can then tell by looking that something is a pet. (The London politician Ken Livingston keeps newts as pets.) But a questionable example does not prevent Fodor’s point from being raised. We can distinguish two issues: (a) If F is a recognitional concept, and so is G, must the concept is an FG also be recognitional? (b) If the answer to (a) is negative, does it follow there are no recognitional concepts?  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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Question (a) needs to be refined. We need to distinguish the case in which ‘is an FG’ is restricted to the case in which it is equivalent to ‘is an F and is a G’ from the case in which it is also understood to cover the case in which it is equivalent to ‘is F for a G’. In conformity with some of the practices found in the literature, we can call the first case predicative combination and the second attributive combination. It seems clear that F and G can be recognitional without the attributive combination is F for a G being recognitional. Tall and gorilla can be recognitional concepts without tall for a gorilla being recognitional. Whether a creature is tall for a gorilla depends upon the empirical issue of the distribution of heights amongst gorillas. (I would expect Fodor to agree, given some of his comments on prototypes.) Since attributive combination introduces additional empirical elements going beyond those in any recognitional concepts to which it is applied, it is entirely to be expected that is F for a G may not be recognitional even though F and G are. Given the particular semantic contribution made by attributive combination, compositionality itself should lead one to expect this result. What is the answer to question (a) when it is understood as restricted to predicative combination? Fodor characterizes a concept as recognitional in the intended sense ‘only if the ability to identify its instances in favourable circumstances is among its concept-constitutive possession conditions’ (p. 105). I accept this characterization. Under this characterization, it very nearly, but does not quite follow that if F is recognitional and G is recognitional, then is an FG (understood as predicative combination) is recognitional. The reason it does not quite follow is that the circumstances favourable for recognition which are mentioned in the possession condition for the concept F may not be the same as the circumstances favourable for recognition which are mentioned in the possession condition for the concept G. The concept is a glowing thing is recognitional, and the circumstances favourable for recognizing the presence of the property it picks out are the ordinary ones of ordinary perception. We can also imagine a concept reduv applicable to things which are red under ultraviolet light. The concept reduv is recognitional, but its favourable circumstances require the illuminating light to be ultraviolet. The complex concept is a reduv glowing thing is not one of which it is true that anyone who possesses it must in some favourable circumstances or other be able to recognize its instantiation. In ordinary circumstances, one can recognize something to be glowing, but needs auxiliary information as to which things are, in those ordinary circumstances, reduv. In ultraviolet light, one can recognize which things are reduv, but needs auxiliary information as to which things are, in those unordinary circumstances, ones which would glow in normal light. These special cases aside however, when for F and G the favourable circumstances are the same (and it is taken for granted by a thinker that they are so), then is an FG, in the predicative case, must be recognitional if its constituents are. For under the favourable circumstances, the thinker can recognize something to be F and can recognize it to be G, if it is both of these things, and anyone  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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who grasps predicative combination must be willing to judge in these circumstances that the presented object is FG. But that is sufficient for is FG to be recognitional, under the agreed characterization of a recognitional concept. So, in some special cases, a complex concept’s being recognitional is ensured by its atomic constituents’ being so; and in other cases not. Such variation is fully compatible with compositionality. For a complex concept to be composed in a certain way from given constituents just is for the semantic value of the concept to be determined in a given way (that is, by a specific semantic rule) from the semantic values of its atomic constituents. The variation we just noted in respect of whether recognitionality is preserved is predictable precisely on the basis of the semantic characterization of the mode of composition. If some extreme theorist insists that all concepts, even complex ones, must be recognitional, or must have prototypical structure, that theorist will (I agree with Fodor) be making a mistake. But it is a mistake not because recognitional concepts must always combine to make recognitional concepts. It is, rather, a mistake which flows from an erroneous conception of the nature of the composition of concepts. Once one has fixed a semantic rule—something at the level of reference—for a mode of combining constituent concepts, a rule which takes as input the semantic values of the constituents, nothing more is required to determine the significance of that mode of composition. There is no need to go on to associate additionally with the complex concept any recognitional capacity, or prototype-and-similarity-relation, beyond what has already been fixed by the rule at the level of semantic value and the properties of its constituents. Nor indeed is anything less than the semantic rule going to be sufficient to determine the significance of the mode of combination. So we could call this principle about what determines a mode of combination the ‘Nothing-More-and-Nothing-Less Principle’. By contrast with Fodor’s statement that inferential roles don’t compose, it seems to me that a properly constructed inferential role semantics cannot fail to respect compositionality, provided it respects the Nothing-More-andNothing-Less Principle. A properly constructed IRS should specify each of the following. (a) For each atomic concept, it should specify a possession condition. (b) For each possession condition, it should state how a semantic value, used in the theory of reference, is determined by that possession condition together with the way the world is. It is most satisfying if some uniform general principle can be stated which, for an arbitrary atomic concept, says how its semantic value is related to its possession condition (again, given the way the world is). The theory should also explain the rationality of judging in accordance with the specified possession conditions, in the light of the contribution to truth-conditions specified at the level of semantic value. (c) For each mode of combination M recognized by the IRS, it should  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000

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specify a semantic rule which gives the truth-condition (or contribution to truth-conditions) for a complex combined in mode M from the semantic values of the constituents on which M operates.3 If the IRS is constructed in this way, compositionality is fully respected. The semantic value of a complex is determined by the semantic values of its constituents (together, if need be, with the way the world is, as in the case of attributive combination). If we accept the Nothing-More-and-NothingLess Principle, a complex concept is itself determined by its conceptual constituents and their mode of combination, which in turn is given by the rule for determining its semantic value from those of its constituents. Does this still leave unexplained any important form of compositionality? Perhaps it will be objected that though this approach provides for the truthconditions of complex concepts and contents, it has left unexplained the grasp of those complex concepts and contents. But it is not left unexplained if judgement aims at truth. In giving the reference- and truth-conditions for complexes on the basis of the semantic values of their constituents, we say precisely what condition has to be fulfilled for a given complex content if a thinker’s aim of truth in her judgement of that content is to be fulfilled. The detailed role of a complex complete content in a thinker’s thought will then depend upon what, in the context of her other attitudes, will best achieve that aim so specified. The role of judgement as aiming (inter alia) at truth, and its role in turn in explaining the importance of the Nothing-More-and-Nothing-Less Principle, further illustrates the pervasive and overarching role of rationality in a theory of concepts and meaning. Subfaculty of Philosophy University of Oxford

References Crimmins, M., and Perry, J. 1989: The prince and the phone booth. Journal of Philosophy, 96, 685–711. Peacocke, C. 1992: A Study of Concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schiffer, S. 1987: Remnants of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schiffer, S. 1992: Belief ascription. Journal of Philosophy, 89, 499–521.

3

Here I prescind from issues about the difference between content-sense and ingredient sense. ‘The F’ and a Kaplan-like ‘dthat (the F)’ do differ in sense, but only when they are either ingredients of more complex sentences, or are being considered as expressing the object of attitudes or other operators. It is non-ingredient sense which is the subject matter of component (c) of a plausible IRS.

 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000