Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMEHOC (Enriched Minimal Expressivism and Higher-Order Concepts)

Teaser

The problem being addressed is the role of higher order concepts play in the general system of our conceptual network. It is approached from an externalist perspective within the philosophy of language, and can be reworded as the inquiry about the significance of concepts that...

Summary

The problem being addressed is the role of higher order concepts play in the general system of our conceptual network. It is approached from an externalist perspective within the philosophy of language, and can be reworded as the inquiry about the significance of concepts that do not apply to objects or sets of objects in the world. Theses concepts are “higher-order” because they apply to other concepts and conceptual complexes. Examples of higher order concept in the sense relevant for EMEHOC are: truth, logical constants, quantifiers, epistemic modals, and evaluative concepts. Negation and conditionals are the paradigm of logical constants; quantifiers are any expression of quantity (“all”, “none”, “most”, “at least four”, “an infinite number”); the standard epistemic modals are “know” and “believe”; standard evaluative concepts are “good”, “bad”, “correct”, “wrong” and the like. What all these concepts have in common from the point of view of their significance is that they do not represent aspects of the observable reality around. By contrast, concepts such as triangular, tall, solid, material, jump, eat, or fight allegedly describe features of the outer world. The standard representationalist view on meaning has it easier to explain the meaning of these concepts and the role they play in our conceptual life than to explain the role of concepts such as believe or wrong, which are EMEHOC’s concern.

According to EMEHOC, the significance of concepts is their contribution to the propositions which are the contents of assertive speech acts. Addressing the complex issue of the significance on higher order concepts requires to invade the terrain of some of the most recalcitrant semantic and metaphysic problems philosophers have had to deal with. EMEHOC amounts in practice to a paradigm shifting that, if successful, will expose the weaknesses of the representationalist approached and show the way out from some of its most intractatble difficulties.

Why is this important for society? EMEHOC purports an analysis of the way in which higher order concepts work. Concepts such as democracy, equality, justice, welfare, discrimination, and others of this kind are perfect candidates for the expressivist treatment in the sense intended in the project. The role of theses concepts is seen in their contribution to the discourse, and this contribution is individuated by its consequences, theoretical and practical. Higher order concepts do not describe. On the contrary, they are normative concepts in a deep sense, used to evaluate as much as to promote particular courses of action. The realist, descriptivist view on values has shown its shortcomings and an alternative way of dealing with the concepts that determine and constitute our rational lives and complex and dynamic societies should be explored in order to be in a better position to understand the kind of animals that we are and the kind of society that lies ahead. The analysis of higher order concepts defended in EMEHOC is an invaluable tool for difficult and deeply ideological debates about individual and social rights and the limits of democracy.

Work performed

EMEHOC has developed a provisional classification of non-descriptivist theories of meaning attending to their scope. the significance of epistemic and deontic concept, and on normative concepts in general, procedural meaning and linguistic approaches to non-conceptual meaning are a too weak tool for the complexities of the analysis of normativity. The shortcomings of the linguistic approach are its internalist character and its atomistic method. Normative concepts can only be understood from an externalist perspective that takes into account the third person viewpoint, and looking at the picture globally, i.e. looking at what agents do with words.

What is required now is a complete separation between (i) the meaning of terms, and (ii) the individuation of propositional contents. The import of sophisticated concepts, and the ones EMEHOC deals with are highly sophisticated, can only be identified opening up the scope and considering the whole speech act in which a complete sentence performs its work.

Among the consequences for epistemic concepts, it stands that Gettier cases, intended to reject the internalist justification, affect the semantic layer. The Gettier diagnosis about the subject epistemic vulnerability expands to the semantic case, in the sense that the subject cannot discriminate between the conditions for claiming knowledge and claiming belief.

The consequences of an externalist and inferentialist approach to the significance of deontic concepts involve that the divides between descriptive vs. normative contents, and factual vs. non-factual contents fade out. We still can talk of normative, descriptive, factual and non-factual uses, and in this sense the settled insights that support the distinctions are accommodated within the picture that comes up from Enriched Minimal Expressivism.

Final results

EMEHOC has reviewed the current non-descriptivist proposals about higher-order concepts, evaluated their shortcomings, and offered a general account on the lines of semantic inferentialism, but goes beyond it. The more consequential effects of EMEHOC are (i) the blurring of the standard distinction between theoretical and practical consequences in inferentialism, and (ii) the questioning of the classical divide between descriptive and normative meaning.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_J_Frapolli/info.