Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism

This chapter focuses on a recent revival of conceptual analysis, the philosophical method of discovering necessary and a priori contents by describing conceptual relations. According to some philosophers, contents such as 'Red is a color' are true in virtue of the deep structure of our cognitive system, and assuming that this structure is innate, they are true independently of experience, i.e., they are a priori. I defend an alternative position, according to which relations among concepts, whether innate or acquired, mirror the relations among the real-world properties they refer to, and our conceptual structure is continuously tested and compared with the characteristics of our environment. In such a view, if a description of our conceptual equipment generates true content, those are a posteriori ones.

This chapter focuses on a recent revival of conceptual analysis, and the philosophical method of discovering necessary and a priori contents by describing conceptual relations. According to some philosophers, contents such as "Red is a color" are true by virtue of the deep structure of our cognitive system, and assuming that this structure is innate, such contents are true independently of experience. The chapter shows that the agenda of the inward approach contains at least two points. First, more empirical evidence needs to be found for the hypothesis of hard-wired conceptual rules, which would supplement the transcendental arguments given so far. Second, a supporter of the inward approach appears to be forced to choose between two alternative strategies. The first is to admit that conceptual relations are merely the rules of a system of representation; the second is to strive for a new version of the Transparency Thesis. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd.