Ideas of Christopher Peacocke, by Theme

[British, b.1950, Formerly of New College,Oxford University, then at New York University, then University College,London.]

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2. Reason / D. Definition / 13. Against Definition
Most people can't even define a chair
     Full Idea: Ordinary speakers are notoriously unsuccessful if asked to offer an explicit definition of the concept 'chair'.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 6.1)
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception
Perceptual concepts causally influence the content of our experiences
     Full Idea: Once a thinker has acquired a perceptually individuated concept, his possession of that concept can causally influence what contents his experiences possess.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 3.3)
     A reaction: Like having 35 different words for 'snow', I suppose. I'm never convinced by such claims. Having the concepts may well influence what you look at or listen to, but I don't see the deliverances of the senses being changed by the concepts.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception
Perception has proto-propositions, between immediate experience and concepts
     Full Idea: Perceptual experience has a second layer of nonconceptual representational content, distinct from immediate 'scenarios' and from conceptual contents. These additional contents I call 'protopropositions', containing an individual and a property/relation.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 3.3)
     A reaction: When philosophers start writing this sort of thing, I want to turn to neuroscience and psychology. I suppose the philosopher's justification for this sort of speculation is epistemological, but I see no good coming of it.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / f. Higher-order thought
Consciousness of a belief isn't a belief that one has it
     Full Idea: I dispute the view that consciousness of a belief consists in some kind of belief that one has the belief.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 6.2)
     A reaction: Thus if one is trying to grasp the notion of higher-order thought, it doesn't have to be just more of same but one level up. Any sensible view of the brain would suggest that one sort of activity would lead into an entirely different sort.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 6. Judgement / a. Nature of Judgement
Concepts are distinguished by roles in judgement, and are thus tied to rationality
     Full Idea: 'Concept' is a notion tied, in the classical Fregean manner, to cognitive significance. Concepts are distinct if we can judge rationally of one, without the other. Concepts are constitutively and definitionally tied to rationality in this way.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 2.2)
     A reaction: It seems to a bit optimistic to say, more or less, that thinking is impossible if it isn't rational. Rational beings have been selected for. As Quine nicely observed, duffers at induction have all been weeded out - but they may have existed, briefly.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 1. Concepts / b. Concepts in philosophy
Philosophy should merely give necessary and sufficient conditions for concept possession
     Full Idea: Peacocke's 'Simple Account' says philosophers should determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for possessing a concept, and psychologists should explain how the human mind meets these conditions.
     From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Edouard Machery - Doing Without Concepts 2
     A reaction: One can't restrict philosophy so easily. Psychologists could do that job themselves, and dump philosophy. Philosophy is interested in the role of concepts in meaning, experience and judgement. If psychologists can contribute to philosophy, fine.
Peacocke's account of possession of a concept depends on one view of counterfactuals
     Full Idea: Peacocke's method for discovering the possession conditions of concepts is committed to a specific account of counterfactual judgements - the Simulation Model (judgements we'd make if the antecedent were actual).
     From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Edouard Machery - Doing Without Concepts 2.3.4
     A reaction: Machery concludes that the Simulation Model is incorrect. This appears to be Edgington's theory of conditionals, though Machery doesn't mention her.
Peacocke's account separates psychology from philosophy, and is very sketchy
     Full Idea: Peacocke's Simple Account fails to connect the psychology and philosophy of concepts, it subordinates psychology to specific field of philosophy, it is committed to analytic/synthetic, and (most important) its method is very sketchy.
     From: comment on Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Edouard Machery - Doing Without Concepts 2.3.5
     A reaction: Machery says Peacocke proposes a research programme, and he is not surprised that no one has every followed. Machery is a well-known champion of 'experimental philosophy', makes philosophy respond to the psychology.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / a. Origin of concepts
The concept 'red' is tied to what actually individuates red things
     Full Idea: The possession conditions for the concept 'red' of the colour red are tied to those very conditions which individuate the colour red.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Explaining the A Priori [2000], p.267), quoted by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 2.5
     A reaction: Jenkins reports that he therefore argues that we can learn something about the word 'red' from thinking about the concept 'red', which is his new theory of the a priori. I find 'possession conditions' and 'individuation' to be very woolly concepts.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / a. Concepts as representations
If concepts just are mental representations, what of concepts we may never acquire?
     Full Idea: We might say that the concept just is the mental representation, ...but there are concepts that human beings may never acquire. ...But if concepts are individuated by their possession conditions this will not be a problem.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Rationale and Maxims in Study of Concepts [2005], p.169), quoted by E Margolis/S Laurence - Concepts 1.3
     A reaction: I'm not sure that I understand the notion of a concept we (or any other creature) may never acquire. They no more seem to exist than buildings that were never even designed.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / b. Concepts as abilities
Possessing a concept is being able to make judgements which use it
     Full Idea: Possession of any concept requires the capacity to make judgements whose content contain it.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 2.1)
     A reaction: Idea 12575 suggested that concept possession was an ability just to think about the concept. Why add that one must actually be able to make a judgement? Presumably to get truth in there somewhere. I may only speculate and fantasise, rather than judge.
A concept is just what it is to possess that concept
     Full Idea: There can be no more to a concept than is determined by a correct account of what it is to possess that concept.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 3.2)
     A reaction: He calls this the Principle of Dependence. An odd idea, if you compare 'there is no more to a book than its possession conditions'. If the principle is right, I struggle with the proposal that a philosopher might demonstrate such a principle.
Employing a concept isn't decided by introspection, but by making judgements using it
     Full Idea: On the account I have been developing, what makes it the case that someone is employing one concept rather than another is not constituted by his impression of whether he is, but by complex facts about explanations of his judgements.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 7.2)
     A reaction: I presume this brings truth into the picture, and hence establishes a link between the concept and the external world, rather than merely with other concepts. There seems to be a shadowy behaviourism lurking in the background.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 3. Ontology of Concepts / c. Fregean concepts
A sense is individuated by the conditions for reference
     Full Idea: My basic Fregean idea is that a sense is individuated by the fundamental condition for something to be its reference.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], Intro)
     A reaction: For something to actually be its reference (as opposed to imagined reference), truth must be involved. This needs the post-1891 Frege view of such things, and not just the view of concepts as functions which he started with.
Fregean concepts have their essence fixed by reference-conditions
     Full Idea: The Fregean view is that the essence of a concept is given by the fundamental condition for something to be its reference.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 2.1)
     A reaction: Peacocke is a supporter of the Fregean view. How does this work for concepts of odd creatures in a fantasy novel? Or for mistaken or confused concepts? For Burge's 'arthritis in my thigh'? I don't reject the Fregean view.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / a. Conceptual structure
Concepts have distinctive reasons and norms
     Full Idea: For each concept, there will be some reasons or norms distinctive of that concept.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 2.3)
     A reaction: This is Peacocke's bold Fregean thesis (and it sounds rather Kantian to me). I dislike the word 'norms' (long story), but reasons are interesting. The trouble is the distinction between being a reason for something (its cause) and being a reason for me.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / b. Analysis of concepts
An analysis of concepts must link them to something unconceptualized
     Full Idea: At some point a good account of conceptual mastery must tie the mastery to abilities and relations that do not require conceptualization by the thinker.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992], 5.3)
     A reaction: This obviously implies a physicalist commitment. Peacocke seeks, as so many do these days in philosophy of maths, to combine this commitment with some sort of Fregean "platonism without tears" (p.101). I don't buy it.
Any explanation of a concept must involve reference and truth
     Full Idea: For some particular concept, we can argue that some of its distinctive features are adequately explained only by a possession-condition that involves reference and truth essentially.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], Intro)
     A reaction: He reached this view via the earlier assertion that it is the role in judgement which key to understanding concepts. I like any view of such things which says that truth plays a role.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / f. Theory theory of concepts
Concepts are constituted by their role in a group of propositions to which we are committed
     Full Idea: Peacocke argues that it may be a condition of possessing a certain concept that one be fundamentally committed to certain propositions which contain it. A concept is constituted by playing a specific role in the cognitive economy of its possessor.
     From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by John Greco - Justification is not Internal §9
     A reaction: Peacocke is talking about thought and propositions rather than language. Good for him. I always have problems with this sort of view: how can something play a role if it doesn't already have intrinsic properties to make the role possible?
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
A concept's reference is what makes true the beliefs of its possession conditions
     Full Idea: Peacocke has a distinctive view of reference: The reference of a concept is that which will make true the primitively compelling beliefs that provide its possession conditions.
     From: report of Christopher Peacocke (A Study of Concepts [1992]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §9
     A reaction: The first thought is that there might occasionally be more than one referent which would do the job. It seems to be a very internal view of reference, where I take reference to be much more contextual and social.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality
Encountering novel sentences shows conclusively that meaning must be compositional
     Full Idea: The phenomenon of understanding sentences one has never encountered before is decisive against theories of meaning which do not proceed compositionally.
     From: Christopher Peacocke (Truly Understood [2008], 4.3)
     A reaction: I agree entirely. It seems obvious, as soon as you begin to slowly construct a long and unusual sentence, and follow the mental processes of the listener.