On Conceptually Progressive Propositions

The following remarks were written around 2010 - early 2011, when I was training myself in Wittgenstein's later methods.

1. In some cases where we wonder at the (metaphysical, conceptual) possibility of something, imaginability, conceivability in full detail seems to be close to what is at issue - i.e., whether the thing can be 'worked out'. In other cases however, it is quite different. In other cases, the question is closer to: ought we conceive of this? (This is connected with what I want to call railed vs. unrailed sponteneous concept formation in Wittgenstein's philosophy of math, knowing how to go on vs. discovering how.)

2. An example: suppose someone says that when a cat weaves around someone's legs, they are asserting ownership of this person. (I was actually told this as a child.) We might now consider whether this is so, get puzzled, and then consider whether it is even possible for part of a normal cat's normal behaviour to turn out to amount to an assertion of ownership. Here, it is quite unnatural to think that any kind of conceivability or imaginability (however detailed) is at issue. We have seen the behaviour a hundred times. We can imagine it perfectly well. What, now, does it mean to imagine it being an assertion of ownership? (Furthermore, actually being such an assertion - by which I mean that it does not count to merely imagine that one is dealing with some extraordinary cat who can think and communicate with conventional signals, or indeed anything out of the ordinary.)

3. The assertion that the cat is asserting ownership, and countless others like it, have a special character - it is granted in advance, so to speak, that the cat is not asserting ownership by the usual criteria. Conceptually progressive propositions, but also linguistically progressive propositions. (The former are perhaps well seen as a proper subset of the latter.)

4. One feels like saying: here, a decision is needed (although this is misleading in that no conscious decision is needed, no freedom to decide either way need be felt, etc.).

5. Within such cases, one might distinguish those which as it were call for full-blown (literal?) acceptance, while others are not concerned with that, being, rather, quasi-metaphorical, quasi-analogies. But - and hopefully this is seems trite - there is no clear line between literal truth and analogy, figure, simile, metaphor. However, with the latter, one of the characteristic things is that a decision isn't really needed in the full sense. However, one may still reject or embrace ('work with') the idea, criticize it, modify it, etc.

6. (Simile as a minimal literalization of metaphor - in effect, the literal truth one gets to when one accepts a metaphor as a metaphor. Which isn't to say that all similes are such literalizations, but rather: given an acceptable metaphor, one can get a literally true simile.)

7. An interesting feature of the cat case is that, in a sense, the verification and falsification conditions are already in place. It is already clear that, if one accepts this kind of proposition at all, one will count 'the cat asserted ownership' true when the cat weaved around the person's legs, false otherwise. Obviously it will be a more subtle than that, for many reasons - vagueness about whether weaving took place, the possibility of the cat being in some pathological state which just happens to involve weaving, etc. - but still, the point remains that the working criteria are not the focus of the problem. Reflection on this leads to the comparison of the cat proposition (in its progressive use) with a proposal of the adoption of a norm of expression.

8. Whenever something like that is said (i.e. 'a norm of expression'), it looks as though something important is being skirted over too easily. This is connected with the fact that this is no merely conventional, arbitrary norm of expression. It is highly charged with significance, with meaning. Also: to say it is a norm of expression might suggest that it is not a norm of thought. That thought goes on underneath, and this norm relates to how the thought gets 'put into words'. But the cat case is obviously not like that.

9. To think of a badly treated mechanical device as suffering, feeling sympathy for it - this is a perfectly possible form of thought which, as a matter of fact, ordinary adults do not engage in. (Here my saying 'as a matter of fact' may give a wrong impression, namely that I think it would be 'just as good' to do that, or that we can't say anything against such a viewpoint, etc. But not at all. I'm not getting into that.) 

10. The cat case, and the case of the suffering vacuum cleaner, are interesting partly because they make trouble for a certain oversimplification of the working of language which is, in certain circumstances, natural for us.

11. The oversimplification is something like this: in cases where the working criteria are not an issue, but where judgement one way or the other sets a kind of precedent (for the remainder of a conversation or train of thought (internal monologue), at least), it may look like the issue is 'merely verbal', 'merely pragmatic', or something of the sort. But this is liable to be extremely misleading; it focuses on the comparison of such a case to that of, say, the adoption of a perfectly arbitrary label, to the exclusion of other comparisons. The consequences are very different here from those which follow an arbitrary labelling decision. (Associations.)

12. It is instructive to reflect that sometimes we accept provisionally a conceptual precedent for the purposes of a conversation (or even a private train of thought), but have misgivings about it. We feels, as it were, that quite possibly we can get on OK with it for now, that to start critiquing here might be impractical at this point (e.g. in an involved conversation where we will have to go to bed soon, or get off the phone or something), but that, were the stakes to be raised, so to speak, we would have to try to sort it out.

13. Consider a conversation of this sort. The limitations one characteristically feels in such discussions. (Consider especially the case where your conversation partner doesn't see any difficulty.) Thoughts have potential problems other than falsity! Truths, expressed in a certain way, can be almost false. One almost wants to talk here of a 'higher' kind of truth and falsity, of verification and falsification. (I think Hegel actually does something of this sort at the beginning of his Logic.)

14. 'They believe a machine suffers!' - this could be thought to be an inadequate, misleading statement in a similar way to 'Cantor showed that there are numbers larger than the number of natural numbers' - except in the first case, the thing is rejected as absurd, in the second case, accepted as mind-bogglingly wonderful. (There are, of course, reasons for these different treatments.) In both cases, an extended conception is being regarded from the point of view of a narrower one.

15. ((There is a false note here, interestingly. I feel like saying: no, those who believe that the machine suffers do not have an extended concept, it is we who have a restricted one. We've got more structure, so to speak. We could have a concept similar to but distinct from our concept of suffering, which we apply to machines. Thus we have a sort of distinction where they have none. Or, we could apply something like that more minimal concept across the board, and then add something for the case of "real suffering".))

16. The proposition that a machine suffers could actually be embedded, quite deeply, into a highly sophisticated conceptual framework. The point being: it is not a proposition which can only survive in very primitive or childish systems. One could talk of panprotopsychism (Chalmers), a continuum of organizational complexity, and with it a continuum of suffering. So complex human computers in disorder, on such a view, perhaps suffer about as much as an insect. How far can it be taken? To vacuum cleaners? Hot water bottles? Not the latter. (The human teleology (purpose) of the object, if such there be, would naturally not play any part in its placement on the continuum.)

17. How do we know that rocks aren't incredibly sad? If this is metaphysically impossible, how do we know that? This is another case where imagination seems quite irrelevent. There's nothing to picture except the rock - or one might imagine being sad. Both procedures are clearly idle!

18. I believe that any reason given to think that rocks aren't sad is going to be bunk. What is disturbing here is the strong inclination toward finding such reasons nonetheless. It suggests deep infelicities in our thinking.

Toward an Understanding of De Dicto Subjunctive Necessity (draft paper)

Here. UPDATE March 2013: This document has been completely superseded by An Account of Subjunctive Necessity.

UPDATE March 2014: This latter document will in turn be superseded soon by a forthcoming blog post which will fit together with other posts.

A Plea for Conceptual Schemes

Introduction 

In 1974, Donalad Davidson published a now famous paper entitled 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', in which he attacked that idea and exhorted the reader to give it up. One reason Davidson set upon this idea was his evident hunch that it lay behind the pernicious, nebulous doctrine of the relativity of truth. Another, perhaps more fundamental, reason, was his desire to see the world and our understanding of it in terms of a metaphysics of sentences and objects, without employing things like concepts and propositions.

I think the idea of a conceptual scheme a highly serviceable one, and that Davidson's attack is confused. I believe that the idea of a conceptual scheme has a good deal of unrealized potential in the philosophy of modality and many other areas. My object here is simply to vouchsafe the idea from Davidson's attack. 

 

The Problem of Comparison and Neutrality

Early in his paper, Davidson makes this remark, which goes to the essence of his attack:  

[T]here is no chance that someone can take up a vantage point for comparing conceptual schemes by temporarily shedding his own.
(Davidson 1979/1984, p. 185. Page references are to the 1984 version.)

This is true, but misleading. True, because we cannot do anything by temporarily shedding our conceptual scheme - the immediate reason being is that there is no such thing as 'temporarily shedding our conceptual schemes' in the required sense (i.e. while retaining some kind of rationality or sentience). Misleading, because it seems to carry the implication that scheme-shedding would be the way we ought to proceed with a comparison, if only this were possible.

Against this, I want to insist that the only conceivable way we could compare two conceptual schemes is from within our own. We have a conception of the world (surely!). Part of that conception is the idea that there are conceptions - of the world, in the world. We are self-conscious. We think about our thinking and that of others, and when we do this we employ our conception of our own conceptions, and our conception of others' conceptions.

Of course, if we compare our conceptual scheme with another, our ideas of these two schemes will not be on a par epistemologically. This difference cannot be factored out. However, we should try to be as objective as we can, and this means trying to improve our conception of our conceptions, and those of others, and the relations between them.

Davidson, on the other hand, apparently has some idea to the effect that, as long as we are 'stuck' in our own conceptual schemes, comparison will be impossible or at the very least greatly hampered. Indeed, some notion of being stuck seems to lie at the root of this part of the confusion.


'The Dualism of Scheme and Content'

According to Davidson

[the] dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, cannot be made intelligible and defensible. It is itself a dogma of empiricism, the third dogma. (p. 189.)

Now, I do not want to argue with the claim that no dualism between scheme and content could be made good sense of. Rather, the point is that no notion of a dualism is called for to support the idea of a conceptual scheme.

In our ordinary ideas of 'scheme and content', I should think, it is understood that the scheme itself is potentially part of the content, and parts of this potential content - such as concepts - inhere in the scheme.

Simply put: There is no dualism of scheme and content. A distinction is not a dualism.

The idea of a dualism of scheme and content is bound up with a fundamental misunderstanding of the 'content' part of that idea, arising from a certain picture we possess of the situation, and an attitude toward this picture which most of us, in certain circumstances, are strongly inclined to take. (Cf. the notion of the thing-in-itself.) While this phenomenon is of fundamental importance in parts of philosophy, I maintain that it is not an essential part of our practical understanding of the idea of a conceptual scheme. On the contrary, and as the existence of Davidson's paper shows, it can be an obstacle.


The Problem of 'Uninterpreted Reality'

Davidson wants us to give up 'dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science'. The great unclarity here is: what do the phrases 'uninterpreted reality' and 'something outside all schemes and science' mean in this context?

As suggested in the previous section, the 'content' or 'world' term of the conceptual representation relation need not be thought of as some amorphous fundament, some uninterpreted thing-in-itself. We live in the world - in reality - and we interpret it. Reality, since we are real and interpret it, just is interpreted; there is no reality which, as a whole, is completely uninterpreted.

What about parts of reality? The particular objects, events and processes which intelligent beings talk and think about are parts of interpreted reality - parts of reality which get interpreted. Thus my desk is part of interpreted reality, as are Denmark, Donald Davidson, Beethoven's Ninth, Saturn and many other things besides.

It is quite commonly believed, in our culture, that other parts of reality are uninterpreted; if some small pebble somewhere has never been apprehended or encountered in any way by an intelligence, then this individual is, in some sense, part of uninterpreted reality. Quite obviously, this is not the sort of thing Davidson means by 'uninterpreted reality'.

We might instead take the phrase 'uninterpreted reality' to mean 'reality considered separately from any interpretational or conceptual apparatus'. Then surely this can include chairs, tables, and the rest of it. ('Considered separately from interpretational or conceptual apparatus' obviously doesn't mean 'considered without recourse to any interpretational or conceptual apparatus'.) So this doesn't seem to be what Davidson means, either.

Regarding the phrase 'something outside all schemes and science': isn't the desk I am working at now outside all schemes and science? Surely my desk is not inside a conceptual scheme, or inside science (whatever that means).
 

The following passage from Rorty, who enthusiastically embraced Davidson's critique of the idea of conceptual schemes, gives us more to work with:

The notion of 'the world' as used in a phrase like 'different conceptual schemes carve up the world differently' must be the notion of something completely unspecified and unspecifiable - the thing in itself, in fact. A soon as we start thinking of 'the world' as atoms and the void, or sense data and awareness of them, or 'stimuli' of a certain sort brought to bear upon organs of a certain sort, we have changed the name of the game. For we are now well within some particular theory about how the world is.

(Rorty 1982, p. 14.)

I deny the first assertion. The notion works like this: we use our conceptual schemes and understand there to be chairs, tables, numbers, quarks, experiences, concepts and schemes thereof. Then we form an idea of different schemes carving up the world differently. Here, our idea of the world is still our idea of the world, i.e. an idea of something which contains chairs, tables, numbers, quarks, experiences, concepts and schemes (among who knows what else).

In a strange way, Davidson and Rorty seem to make the very mistake they appear to be warning against. In saying queer things about 'uninterpreted reality', they try to identify a thing we can't say anything about. Or: they try to give the content of a notion they want to criticize, but in so doing they only embroil themselves in the confusion which bothers them. It is this confusion, I believe, which leads Davidson and Rorty to loudly and violently reject the idea of a conceptual scheme. They reached for the saw; I suggest we consider a scalpel.

Tristan Haze

References

Davidson, D. 1974. 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 47, pp. 5-20.

The above reprinted 1984 in Donald Davidson (ed.), Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rorty, R. 1982. 'The World Well Lost', Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Wild Thoughts on Modality, Propositions and Concepts

Here. (Readers who like Sprachlogik for its clear-headedness are duly warned that this title is no joke.)

Sketch of a Way of Thinking about Modality - Part 1

[This is old and my thinking on the subject has changed quite a bit (for the better I'm pretty sure). It may be of historical interest, or interesting if you're interested in how my ideas have developed. See my more recent 'Necessity as an Attribute of Propositions' - 22/10/15]

[UPDATE: This sketch, except for parts of part 2, will soon be made mostly redundant by a paper I am working on. I expect to make a draft of this paper available in early November. A link will appear here. - TH 13/10/2011]

[UPDATE 2: The paper mentioned above is here.]

[UPDATE 3, March 2013: What appears below has been left so far behind that I'm almost embarrassed about it. For my latest on these topics, see An Account of Subjunctive Necessity.]

This is the first installment of a two-part series of posts where I aim to sketch some ideas about modality which will feature in a book I am working on, Necessity and Conceptual Systems. The material is still very much under development, and I apologize for the obscurities which the reader will inevitably find in it. Comments and criticisms are very welcome.

In this first part, I will introduce the approach, and indicate how it handles the necessary a posteriori, using 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' as a case-study. In part 2 I will discuss the notion of de re modality, of essence, and natural-kind examples such as 'Water is H20', as well as some more general issues which arise on my approach (especially to do with epistemic modality and ascriptions of intentional content).

In the Golden Age of analytic philosophy, necessarily true propositions were widely taken to be those which are satisfied by (or 'come out true' on) all configurations of some conceptual or linguistic system. Possibility was understood in terms of satisfaction by at least one configuration. Our conceptual system, our means of understanding the world, is here thought of as something like a model, or a machine, which has moving parts, and which can be put into various positions or configurations. Each configuration can be thought of as corresponding to, or satisfying, or even being, a set of propositions. (I have taken many liberties in the formulation of this description.)

Conceptual or linguistic systems of the kind in question were thought to be describable with "semantical rules" for a language, and necessary propositions were thus commonly taken to be a priori and true "in virtue of the meaning" of the terms involved (cf. Carnap's Meaning and Necessity, Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic). This yields a notion of necessity reminiscent of the notion of truth-functional tautologousness. (Earlier, in the Tractatus - which was a major inspiration to both Ayer and Carnap - this relationship is much closer than mere reminiscence.)

This sort of view was attacked by Quine in at least two ways (cf. his 'Truth by Convention', 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism'). Quine's undifferentiated picture of language had a sobering or worrying effect, but it did not stop people carrying on with some version of the view in question. This is connected with the fact that it amounted to a kind of quietism or abstinence with respect to the relevant sorts of notions (semantic, modal), rather than a sustained attempt to attain positive insight about them.

The really decisive blow to the Golden Age view of modality came from Kripke. His fundamental contribution was to persuasively argue that the a priori does not coincide with the (metaphysically) necessary, and relatedly, that epistemic modality ("what could be the case") is to be distinguished from metaphysical modality ("what could have been the case" in a certain unrestricted sense). This contribution was closely bound up with Kripke's ideas concerning naming and reference, more on which in a moment. The recognition of the necessary a posteriori in particular, and the associated idea that conceivability doesn't entail possibility, has led to a reaction against views of modality of the Golden Age sort.

(About 'metaphysical modality': one sometimes hears it said of a philosopher that they countenance metaphysical modality, as though this indicates that the person holds some sort of doctrine, which may be quite esoteric. But 'metaphysical modality' is just a label for me - synonymous with 'subjunctive modality' - for a notion "detected" in the logic of language. That said, someone who felt this notion was, e.g., a trivial artifact of the way we happen to talk, rather than a deep artifact of the way we think, would probably not want to use this label.)

My approach to modality retains the view that necessity - metaphysical necessity - can be fruitfully understood in terms of invariance through all configurations of a conceptual system. But it also takes Kripke's separation of the a priori and the metaphysically necessary fully to heart. This latter point is one respect in which my approach differs from that of the two-dimensional semanticists. Another key contrast is that the possible worlds framework is not fundamental to my view.

Broadly speaking, I handle the necessary a posteriori by doing two things. Firstly, I work with a much more fine-grained notion of 'conceptual system' than did the logical empiricists. (The sense of 'fine-grained' here should become clearer in a moment.) Secondly, I embrace a certain kind of semantic externalism - roughly, the view that sense doesn't determine reference (other ways to put this which for me are roughly equivalent: intension doesn't determine extension, concept doesn't determine object).

I will illustrate how this works with respect to a classic example of the necessary a posteriori: 'Hesperus is Phosphorus'.¹

I follow Kripke in holding that proper names do not have reference-determining senses (which hangs together with semantic externalism via Putnam's idea of Twin Earth), and also that proper names do not have a semantics which can be given in the form of general conceptual content such as definite descriptions, or clusters thereof (irrespective of whether this content can be said to determine reference).

I do not, however, accept the (to my mind very strange and confused) idea that proper names are 'mere tags' (Ruth Barcan Marcus's phrase), that all there is to the meaning of a name is its referent, etc. This idea is sometimes associated with Mill's claim that names have no 'connotation', only 'denotation', and also with the phrase 'direct reference'.²

We have individual concepts - concepts of individuals, of particular objects - and we often associate these with proper names. This sheds light on Kripke's rigid designation thesis (the thesis that a referring proper name designates the same object in all possible worlds at which that object exists). If names are associated with individual concepts - concepts of particular objects - then it is immediate that they will designate the same object in all possible worlds where that object exists; designating another object is out of the question, since we are holding fixed the associated individual concept. We may thus distinguish rigid designators such as ordinary proper names, which designate rigidly because they are directly associated with individual concepts, from other rigid designators such as definite descriptions in mathematics.

Once we recognize individual concepts in this way, we can say that when someone accepts that Hesperus is Phosphorus (having previously taken them to be distinct), there is a change in their conceptual system - in the relevant fine-grained sense. Of course, in a more coarse-grained (and more ordinary) sense, we can say that they have before and after the same conceptual system. The fine-grained change consists in the unification of two individual concepts. The original concepts, we might say, are not blended irrevocably but remain as aspect-concepts united under a common master. From now on, it should be kept in mind that conceptual systems will usually be individuated here in this fine-grained sense.

In the former conceptual system (call this 'the Babylonian system'), where the Hesperus-concept is separated from the Phosphorus-concept, the distinctness of Hesperus and Phosphorus is invariant through all configurations of the system; if one positively believes that Hesperus and Phosphorus are distinct, one will say that, although it might conceivably turn out that Hesperus is Phosphorus after all, given that it isn't, Hesperus could not have been Phosphorus. (And one will of course be wrong.) In the latter conceptual system (call this 'our system'), where the Hesperus- and Phosphorus-concepts are unified, the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus is invariant through all configurations of the system; when one knows that Hesperus is Phosphorus, one will say that, although it might conceivably turn out that Hesperus is distinct from Phosphorus after all, given that it isn't, Hesperus could not have been other than Phosphorus.

Now, with our fine-grained understanding of conceptual systems in place, I maintain that we can still say that all (metaphysically) necessarily true propositions are satisfied by all configurations of their host conceptual systems. We can even say that a truth is metaphysically necessary iff it is satisfied by all configurations of its host system. We just can't say that all propositions which are satisfied by all configuration of their host systems are necessary truths. So far, then, we can say what distinguishes necessary from contingent truths, but we can't say what distinguishes necessary truths from other proposition which are satisfied by all configurations of their host systems - we might call these 'false propositions of necessary character'. What can we say that will do this?

I think we can say something like: a proposition P is necessarily true iff it is satisfied by all configurations of its host system and the concepts involved in P are jointly adequate to their objects with respect to P.

First I want to say that I am not concerned to provide a reductive analysis of modal concepts. Relatedly, I am happy for the relevant modal notions and my ternary relation of 'adequacy' to be explanatory of each other; I do not suppose it is a one-way street, where my notion does all the explaining, nor do I take my notion to be more "fundamental" in any metaphysical sense. I am interested in showing (and making) connections.

I will make a start at explicating the above proposal by indicating how it applies to the 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' case. In the Babylonian system, the Hesperus-concept and the Phosphorus-concept are not unified (are taken to represent distinct objects), but they both have the same object, the same extension, and so together (jointly) they are inadequate to their objects with respect to 'Hesperus is not Phosphorus'. So their proposition 'Hesperus is not Phosphorus' fulfills the first condition given above, before the 'and' - it is satisfied by all configurations of their system - but it does not fulfill the second. Our Hesperus- and Phosphorus-concepts, which also have the same extension, are in contrast united, as aspect-concepts, under a common master concept (the concept of Venus). Hence they are adequate to their objects - or object - with respect to our proposition 'Hesperus is Phosphorus'.

Why do I not simply say that a proposition is necessarily true iff it is satisfied by all configurations of its host system and its concepts are jointly adequate to their objects? Why do I add 'with respect to that proposition'? I will explain this with an example. Assume for the sake of argument that Hesperus (Venus) is necessarily not intelligent - i.e. that Hesperus could not have been intelligent. Now, suppose someone believes that Hesperus is intelligent, and necessarily so - loosely speaking, that it is part of their concept of Hesperus that it is intelligent. In that case, their concept of Hesperus would not be adequate to its object with respect to 'Hesperus is intelligent'. But they may know, for all that, that Hesperus is Phosphorus, and so their concepts of Hesperus and Phosphorus might be jointly adequate to their object with respect to 'Hesperus is Phosphorus'.

Conversely, someone may know that Hesperus is necessarily not intelligent, while mistakenly believing that Hesperus is not Phosphorus, thus having an adequate conceptual situation with respect to propositions about the intelligence of Hesperus, but not with respect to propositions about the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus.

Speaking broadly, necessity is, on this understanding, not simply a matter of a proposition having a certain status in a conceptual system. It is, as well as that, a matter of the system being adequate to its objects with respect to that proposition. The adequacy of some set of concepts to their objects obviously depends on the identity (and nature) of those objects - and this is not in general determined by the system. (This is how semantic externalism fits in.) Hence you cannot, in general, tell simply by looking at a proposition in a system whether or not it is necessarily true - there are a posteriori necessities.


The compatibility of externalism with rigid designation
(Postscript added 14 August, 2011.)

It may look as though there is a tension between my externalist claim that the extension of an individual concept is not in general determined by the concept itself, and the claim that names rigidly designate: if names are tied to individual concepts, and individual concepts do not in general determine their extension, it looks like a given individual concept can have different extensions in different environments. This is so (at least, when we individuate concepts internally) but there is no real tension here: the rigidity applies to names in use - names tied to token individual concepts embedded in an environment. Individual concepts are not like general concepts: the whole point of them is to apply to one particular object. And so the contrast between names and definite descriptions remains: when we consider counterfactual scenarios and hold the meaning of our terms fixed, our names which are tied to individual concepts always refer to 'the same object'.

This is all perfectly compatible with the fact that the same concept, in a different environment, might be connected up to a different object. The extension of our individual concepts may in some cases even change over time: if an object we know is replaced with a substitute, and we don't notice, after a while it will become true to say that our individual concept has changed its extension. But we don't let the extension change "across possible worlds" when representing counterfactual scenarios using a particular individual concept in a particular environment.

Part 2.

Individual concepts are under-discussed in contemporary philosophy. For further online reading on what they can do, see:

- My post at Philosophy, et cetera, 'An advertisement for individual concepts'

- A recent article by linguist Barbara Abbott, 'Support for Individual Concepts'.

- John McCarthy's article, 'First Order Theories of Individual Concepts and Propositions'. (Warning: arguably contains some use-mention confusion.)

Interestingly, neither of these authors are (primarily) philosophers.

1 I pass over one well-known issue here, to do with the fact that Hesperus/Phosphorus might not have existed. There is a discussion of this on Greg Frost-Arnold's blog. If one is really worried about this, consider instead the example 'If Hesperus exists, then Hesperus is Phosphorus'.

2 It should be noted, however, that Mill's claim is appropriate if 'connotation' is interpreted to mean 'reference-determining sense' or 'general conceptual content', and likewise that the phrase 'direct reference' is appropriate if 'direct' is interpreted to mean 'not via general conceptual content' or 'not via reference-determining sense'.