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Single Idea 16524
[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
]
Full Idea
What Conceptualism entails is that, although horses and stars are not inventions or artefacts, in order to single out these things we must deploy a conceptual scheme which has been formed in such a way as to make singling them out possible.
Gist of Idea
Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality
Source
David Wiggins (Sameness and Substance [1980], 5.5)
Book Ref
Wiggins,David: 'Sameness and Substance' [Blackwell 1980], p.139
A Reaction
I don't quite see why the 'singling out' role of the concepts is the only one that generates them, or makes them fit for purpose. In general, of course, our conceptual scheme is necessarily a response to our experience of the world.
The
29 ideas
from 'Sameness and Substance'
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16492
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Individuation needs accounts of identity, of change, and of singling out
[Wiggins]
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16493
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Individuation can only be understood by the relation between things and thinkers
[Wiggins]
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16496
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Singling out extends back and forward in time
[Wiggins]
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16495
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The only singling out is singling out 'as' something
[Wiggins]
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16494
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We want to explain sameness as coincidence of substance, not as anything qualitative
[Wiggins]
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17529
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Maybe the concept needed under which things coincide must also yield a principle of counting
[Wiggins]
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16497
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Leibniz's Law (not transitivity, symmetry, reflexivity) marks what is peculiar to identity
[Wiggins]
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16498
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Identity cannot be defined, because definitions are identities
[Wiggins]
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16499
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A restored church is the same 'church', but not the same 'building' or 'brickwork'
[Wiggins]
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16502
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Identity is primitive
[Wiggins]
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16503
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'What is it?' gives the kind, nature, persistence conditions and identity over time of a thing
[Wiggins]
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16501
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In Aristotle's sense, saying x falls under f is to say what x is
[Wiggins]
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16505
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By the principle of Indiscernibility, a symmetrical object could only be half of itself!
[Wiggins]
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16506
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Every determinate thing falls under a sortal, which fixes its persistence
[Wiggins]
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17530
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The sortal needed for identities may not always be sufficient to support counting
[Wiggins]
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16510
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Nominal essences don't fix membership, ignore evolution, and aren't contextual
[Wiggins]
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16509
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Natural kinds are well suited to be the sortals which fix substances
[Wiggins]
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16511
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A 'conception' of a horse is a full theory of what it is (and not just the 'concept')
[Wiggins]
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16512
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Semantic facts are preferable to transcendental philosophical fiction
[Wiggins]
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16515
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A thing begins only once; for a clock, it is when its making is first completed
[Wiggins]
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16514
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Artefacts are individuated by some matter having a certain function
[Wiggins]
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16517
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Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction
[Wiggins]
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16518
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We conceptualise objects, but they impinge on us
[Wiggins]
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16521
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A is necessarily A, so if B is A, then B is also necessarily A
[Wiggins]
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16522
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It is hard or impossible to think of Caesar as not human
[Wiggins]
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16523
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Realist Conceptualists accept that our interests affect our concepts
[Wiggins]
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16524
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Conceptualism says we must use our individuating concepts to grasp reality
[Wiggins]
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16525
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Our sortal concepts fix what we find in experience
[Wiggins]
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16526
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Animal classifications: the Emperor's, fabulous, innumerable, like flies, stray dogs, embalmed….
[Wiggins]
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