Concepts

(copyright © 2009 Jesse Butler)

In this course, like any other course in philosophy, certain assumptions must be made in
order for our study to begin. Our most fundamental assumption, that I'll try to made as
explicit as I can in these notes so that we may understand that which most fundamentally
guides our study, has to do with what the text book calls 'concepts'.

What is a concept? It's unclear that there are concepts (as certain entities which exist in
the same way physical objects exist). But what is clear, or at least what we must assume
is clear if a beginning is to be made in Introduction to Philosophy, is that talk of
“conceptual mastery” makes sense. So what is conceptual mastery? The short answer can
be given by an example:

An individual (Andy) has conceptual mastery with regard to the predicate 'is a dog' if
Andy can successfully sort individuals into dogs and non-dogs. Of course, if Andy is
conceptually competent with respect to dogs, then Andy can tell actual dogs he's
presented with from actual things he's presented with that are not dogs. But, if Andy is
conceptually competent with dogs, he can ALSO tell dogs apart from non-dogs in
"counter-factual" or merely imagined situations. That is, if we describe to Andy an
imaginary or fictional situation in enough detail, then Andy can tell if the imaginary
situation we've described includes a dog.

So to have conceptual mastery is to be disposed to have at at least some knowledge about

the world and to be able tocommunicate about imaginary situations with others who have
similar conceptual mastery. Conceptual mastery is something which guarantees that our
thoughts and words have a sort of "appropriate" or "accurate" relation to the world we
think and speak about.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Necessary Conditions

What are the conditions under which the concept of being a dog correctly applies to
something? First off, a thing must be alive or must have been alive at one time for it to be
considered a dog. Second, the thing must be a mammal.
Third, the thing must have (or have had or been disposed to have had under the right
conditions) four legs and a tail. Forth, the thing must not be disposed to perspire, but
rather it's tongue must be disposed to evaporate water on a hot day. Each of these
conditions is necessary for the concept of being a dog. In other words, if the concept
DOG applies to something, that thing must (1) be living or have died, (2) must be or have
been a mammal, (3) must have or have had four legs and a tail, etc. We might symbolize
the situation in the following way:

DOG  being alive or having died

DOG  being a mammal
DOG  having four legs + a tail

If being alive or having died is a necessary condition for the concept of DOG to apply,
then something's being a dog implies that that thing is alive or has died. The arrow ""
stands for "implies".

Sufficient Conditions

Now what is sufficient for the concept of being a dog to apply to something? In other
words, what conditions are those that, if they are satisfied by object Z, are such as to
guarantee that Z is a dog? One proposal is that each of the necessary conditions (1), (2),
(3), ... for being a dog are TOGETHER a sufficient condition. So if something (1) is alive
AND (2) it is a mammal AND (3) it has four legs and a tail AND ...

We’d write:

(1) AND (2) AND (3) AND ...  DOG

if we could fill out (1), (2) , (3), ... well enough we could get a sufficient condition for
being a dog.

A way to learn and keep clear necessary and sufficient conditions is remember the
following way of symbolizing the situation in which having the property P1 and property
P2 imply the having of property P3. (We use the shorthand "&" for "and").

P1 & P2  P3

From this we know that having both P1 and P2 is a SUFFICIENT condition for
something's having P3, and that being P3 is a NECESSARY condition on something
which has both P1 and P2.

(Things seem fairly straightforward (simple even) when we're talking about the concept
of being a dog. Things become much more interesting and difficult when we're concerned
with the concept of having a mind, the concept of having free will, the concept of being
the same person over time, the concept of the good and the concept of God.)

The Socratic Method

We're interested in determining the necessary and sufficient conditions for applications of
certain concepts. Unfortunately, things won't be as simple as there they were when we
were searching for the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the
concept DOG.

We try to discover the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of concepts
using the Socratic method. In the Socratic method, participants in a discussion engage in
a dialogue (the procedure is sometimes called a "Socratic dialogue") of a partricular sort.
First, someone poses a question such as "What is virtue?" or "What is goodness?" or
"When does an individual have a mind?" Someone else, proposes an answer, such as "A
thing has a mind when the parts of that thing are of the right sort to perform the function
that a human brain performs." The first person, says "Well, in that case, if all the starts in
the sky just happened to be arranged in such a way that the structure, structural
organization and function relative to this structural organization were exactly analogous
to the arrangement of neurons in a human brain, would this configuration of stars in the
sky have a mind as the person with the brain has a mind?" The conversational partner
then says, "Well, probably not ..." And has to think a bit more about how to narrow or
otherwise modify the claims he has made about the necessary and sufficient conditions
for a thing to have a mind.

With this sort of question and answer, the participants in a Socratic dialogue work toward
finding the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of certain concept
together. Two things are necessary for the Socratic method to succeed. First, the
participants must work together in a friendly and helpful way: they must work toward the
answer as a team in the agonistic spirit. Scorn and derision have no place in a Socratic
dialogue; harsh words only make the answer harder to find for everybody involved.
Second, each participant must struggle to see problems with any set of necessary and
sufficient conditions that are proposed for the application of a certain concept. Most
importantly, one must examine one's own proposals as critically as (perhaps even more
so) one examines others. It's only by "trying on" a set of necessary and sufficient
conditions that we can see why the proposal falls short of what we desire for it.

Conceivability and Possibility

The claim that it's possible for a concept to apply if and only if it's coherently conceivable
that the concept applies is a touchy, hotly contested philosophical position, but we must
assume it as our starting point. We'll say that something is logically possible (it's
existence leads to no contradiction) if and only if it is coherently imaginable (that is, if
and only if, it is imaginable by someone who has conceptual mastery of all the relevant
concepts involved in the imagining of this thing).

The important thing to notice now is that the set of logically possible things is much
greater than the set of physically possible things. For example, it's logically possible that
the speed of light was faster than it actually is. We can see this because we can coherently
imagine a universe in which light travels twice as fast as it actually does. It's physically
impossible for light to travel any faster than it actually does. The actual laws of nature
constrain the speed of light.

In Socratic dialogues, we're concerned with the notion of logical possibility (given by
coherent conceivability) rather than any narrower sort of possibility (such as physical or
biological possibility) because we wish to find the necessary and sufficient conditions for
the application of concepts. These conditions will span the entire realm of logical
possibility because our tools for investigating the necessary and sufficient conditions for
application of concepts are those of coherent conceivability and argument (which
depends, most generally upon the broad notion).