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in this. We can, often enough, control for the effects of our presence on the scene in much the same ways that we control for the effects of other possibly confounding variables. To be sure, here as elsewhere, the design of well-confirmed theories is hard work and often expensive. And the only recompense is likely to be the cool pleasure of seeing things objectively; seeing them as they are when you re not looking. Objectivity is an educated taste, much like Cubism. Maybe it s worth what it costs and maybe it s not. It s entirely your choice, of course. Far be it from me to twist your arm. So much, then, for how we got from the Garden to the laboratory. It is, as I say, quite a familiar story. Short Summary You aren t actually required to believe any of what s in this chapter or the last; I have mostly just been exploring the geography that reveals itself if conceptual atomism is taken seriously. Still, I do think our cognitive science is in crisis, and that we re long overdue to face the dilemma that confronts it. On one hand, everybody knows, deep down, that Inferential Role Semantics makes the problem of concept individuation intractable. And, on the other hand, everybody gags on Informational Atomism. (Well, practically everybody does.) And nobody seems to be able to think of any other alternatives. Probably that s because those are all the alternatives that there are. It s my view that we re eventually going to have to swallow Inform- ational Atomism whole. Accordingly, I ve been doing what I can to Chap. 7, Bibl. 11/3/97 1:08 PM Page 162 162 Innateness and Ontology, Part II sweeten the pill. It seemed to me, for a long while, that a cost of atomism would be failing to honour the distinction between theoretical concepts and the rest. For, surely, theoretical concepts are ones that you have to believe a theory in order to have? And, according to conceptual atomism, there are no concepts that you have to believe a theory in order to have. But it doesn t seem to me that way now. A theoretical concept isn t a concept that s defined by a theory; it s just a concept that is, de facto, locked to a property via a theory. Informational Atomism doesn t mind that at all, so long as you keep the de facto in mind. Likewise, it used to seem to me that atomism about concepts means that DOORKNOB is innate. But now I think that you can trade a certain amount of innateness for a certain amount of mind-dependence. Being a doorknob is just: striking our kinds of minds the way that doorknobs do. So, what you need to acquire the concept DOORKNOB from experience is just: the kind of mind that experience causes to be struck that way by doorknobs. The price of making this trade of innateness for mind-dependence is, however, a touch of Wotan s problem. It turns out that much of what we find in the world is indeed only ourselves . It turns out, in lots of cases, that we make things be of a kind by being disposed to take them to be of a kind. But not in every case; not, in particular, in the case of kinds of things that are alike in respect of the hidden sources of their causal powers, regardless of their likeness in respect of their effects on us. To describe it in terms of those sorts of similarities is to describe the world the way that God takes it to be. Doing science is how we contrive to cause ourselves to have the concepts that such descriptions are couched in. Not philosophy but science is the way to get Wotan out of his fly-bottle. That story seems to me plausibly true; and it is, as we ve seen, compatible with an informational and atomistic account of the individuation of concepts. But dear me, speaking of fly-bottles, how Wittgenstein would have loathed it; and Wagner and Virginia Woolf too, for that matter. Well, you can t please everyone; I ll bet it would have been all right with Plato. Short Conclusion: A Consolation for Philosophers That s really the end of my story; but a word about what I think of as the Luddite objection to conceptual atomism is perhaps in order. It s natural, pace Appendix 5A, to suppose that conceptual atomism means that there are no conceptual truths, hence that there are no analytic truths. And, if there are no analytic truths, I suppose that there are no such things as conceptual analyses. And it would be worrying if no Chap. 7, Bibl. 11/3/97 1:08 PM Page 163 Natural Kind Concepts 163 analyticity entailed not just no analyses but no analytic philosophy as well. Technological unemployment would then begin to threaten. But I guess I m not inclined to take that prospect very seriously; certainly I m not one of those end-of-philosophy philosophers. If, there [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |