[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

nothing around that wears a red spot except conspecific rivals.
end p.158
This is nomologically necessary (anyhow, it's counterfactual supporting) in the
stickleback's ecology, and nomological necessity is transitive. So sticklebacks end up
locked to conspecific rivalhood via one of its reliable appearances.
To repeat: informational semantics suggests that, so far as the requisite innate endowment
is concerned, if the world co-operates you can get concepts of natural kinds very cheap.
That's what the sticklebacks do; it's what Homer did; it's what children do; it's what all of
us grown-ups do too, most of the time. By contrast, for you to have a natural kinds
concept as such is for your link to the essence of the kind not to depend on its inessential
properties. This is a late and sophisticated achievement, historically, ontogenetically, and
phylogenetically, and there is no reason to take it as a paradigm for concept possession at
large. I suppose you start to get natural kind concepts in this strong sense only when it
occurs to you that, if generality and explanatory power are to be achieved, similarity and
difference in respect of how things affect minds like ours has sometimes got to be
ignored in deciding what kinds of things they are; perhaps, de facto, this happens only in
the context of the scientific enterprise.
Well, what about the  technical concept WATER? Does that have to be innate if it's
primitive?
Of course not. For one thing, on the present view, there really is no  technical concept
water ; there's just, as it were, the technical way of having the concept WATER. Once
you've got a concept that's locked to water via its (locally reliable) phenomenological
properties, you can, if you wish, make a project of getting locked to water in a way that
doesn't depend on its superficial signs. The easy way to do this is to get some expert to
teach you a theory that expresses the essence of the kind. To be sure, however, that will
only work if the natural kind concept that you're wanting to acquire is one which
somebody else has acquired already. Things get a deal more difficult if you're starting ab
initio; i.e. without any concepts which express natural kinds as such. It's time for me to
tell my story about how concepts of natural kinds might  emerge in a mind that is
antecedently well stocked with concepts of other kinds. Actually, it's a perfectly familiar
story and not at all surprising.
 Emerging
Suppose you have lots of concepts of mind-dependent properties, and lots of logico-
mathematical concepts, and lots of concepts of natural kinds
end p.159
which, however, aren't concepts of natural kinds as such.6 Then what you need to do to
acquire a natural kind concept as a natural kind concept ab initio is: (i) construct a true
theory of the hidden essence of the kind; and (ii) convince yourself of the truth of the
theory. If the theory is true, then it will say of a thing that it is such-and-such when and
only when the thing is such-and-such; and if you are convinced of the truth of the theory,
then you will make it a policy to consider that a thing is such-and-such when and only
when the theory says that it is. So your believing the theory locks you to such-and-suches
via a property that they have in every metaphysically possibly world; namely, the
property of being such-and-suches; the property that makes the theory true. The upshot is
that, if the moon is blue, and everything goes as planned, you will end up with a full-
blown natural kind concept; the concept of such-and-suches as such.
Aha, but how do you go about constructing a true theory of the essence of such-and-
suches and convincing yourself that it is true? How do you do it in, say, the case of being
water?
Oh, well, you know: you have to think up a theory of what water is that both explains
why the superficial signs of being water are reliable and has the usual theoretical virtues:
generality, systematicity, coherence with your other theories, and so forth. You undertake
to revise the theory when what it says about water isn't independently plausible (e.g.
independently plausible in light of experimental outcomes); and you undertake to revise
your estimates of what's independently plausible (e.g. your estimates of the construct
validity of your experimental paradigms) when they conflict with what the theory says
about water. And so on, round and round the Duhemian circle.
In short, you do the science. I suppose the Duhemian process of scientific theory
construction is possible only for a kind of creature that antecedently has a lot of concepts
of properties that are mind-dependent, and a lot of natural kind concepts that aren't
concepts of natural kinds as such. And it's also only possible for a kind of creature that is
able to pursue policies with respect to the properties that it locks its concepts to.
Probably, we're the only kind of creature there is that meets these conditions. Which
explains, I suppose, why we're so lonely.
A natural kind enters into lots of nomic connections to things other than our minds. We
can validate a theory of the kind with respect to those connections because the theory is
required to predict and explain them. You can't follow this Duhemian path in the case of
DOORKNOB, of course, because there is nothing to validate a theory of doorknobs
against except how things strike us. In effect, what strikes us as independently plausibly a
doorknob is a doorknob; the mind-dependence of doorknobhood is tantamount to that.
The more we learn about what water is, the more we learn about the world; the more we
learn about what doorknobs are, the more we learn about ourselves. The present
treatment implies this and, I think, intuition agrees with it. At least, Realist intuition does.
We do science when we want to lock our concepts to properties that aren't constituted by
similarities in how things strike us. We do science when we want to reveal the ways that
things would be similar even if we weren't there. Idealists to the contrary not
withstanding, there's no paradox 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • szkla.opx.pl

    •