This ability to relate words to each other would also go along with the ability to recognize cases to which the word applied. This looks a much more promising approach to making explicit what it is to have a concept. But it will not quite do for two reasons. In the first place we often make distinctions between things or group things together but have not got a word for marking the difference or similarity. Are we then to say that in such cases we have no concept?
This would mean denying that animals, which make quite complicated discriminations, have any concepts. It would mean that children, who behave differentially towards their mother very early in their lives, have no concept of their mother until they can use the word ‘mother’. And what is the point of being so restrictive? Would it not be better to say that our possession of a concept is our ability to make discriminations, and to classify things together if they are similar? To be able to use a word appropriately is a sophisticated and very convenient way of doing this. Indeed it could be regarded as a sufficient condition for the possession of a concept though not a necessary one.
In other words, we would probably be prepared to say that a person had a concept of ‘punishment’ if he could relate the word ‘punishment’ correctly to other words such as ‘pain’ and ‘guilt’ and apply it correctly to cases of punishment. But the absence of this ability to use the word would not straightaway lead us to say that he had not the concept. He might, for instance, get upset when he saw cases of wanton cruelty but not get upset when he saw cases of punishment; but for some reason or another, he might not have been introduced to the words which have been developed for marking these distinctions.
The second reason why it is not altogether satisfactory to equate having a concept with the possession of an ability, whether it be the specific ability to use words appropriately, or the more general one to classify and make discriminations, is that both types of ability seem to presuppose something more fundamental, namely the grasp of a principle which enables us to do these things. Locke said that an idea is ‘the object of the understanding when a man thinks’ and this is probably as near as we can get to saying what a concept is. But it is singularly unilluminating.
As, however, our understanding of what it is to have a concept covers both the experience of grasping a principle and the ability to discriminate and use words correctly, which is observable in the case of others as well as ourselves, there is, amongst philosophers generally, a tendency to rely on this publicly observable criterion of having a concept. For it is possible to say more about it than it is about the subjective side. This public criterion is necessary to identify having a concept, but having a concept is not identical with it. So much, then, for the object of our scrutiny in this branch of philosophical activity. But what do we do in philosophy when we analyse a concept?
As the concept in question is usually one the possession of which goes with the ability to use words appropriately, what we do is to examine the use of words in order to see what principle or principles govern their use. If we can make these explicit we have uncovered the concept. Historically, philosophers such as Socrates attempted to do this by trying out definitions. Now there is a strong and a weak sense of ‘definiiton’ in such cases.
The weak sense is when another word can be found which picks out a characteristic which is a logically necessary condition for the applicability of the original word. Thus, to revert to our case of ‘punishment’, a logically necessary condition for the use of this word is that something unpleasant should be done to someone. If it were not, if for instance someone who committed a crime were sent on a pleasure cruise, we would refuse to apply the word ‘punishment’. Part of our concept of ‘punishment’, therefore, is that something unpleasant is inflicted. The strong case of definition is when conditions can be produced which are logically both necessary and sufficient. In other words if one can say ‘if and only if characteristics x, y, z are present, then a person is being punished’, we would have a really strong sort of definition. In actual practice, we only have such definitions in artificially constructed symbolic systems, such as geometry, where we lay down tight conditions for the use of words such as ‘triangle’.
With words that are employed in a much looser way in ordinary language, such as ‘courage’ and ‘justice’, we would be hard put to it ever to find such a tight set of defining characteristics. In conceptual analysis we usually settle for making explicit defining characteristics in the weak sense. In attempting to make explicit the rules behind our usage of words, and thus get clearer about our concepts, it is important to distinguish logically necessary conditions from other sorts of conditions that may be present. To understand this difference is, in fact, to understand the difference between doing philosophy and doing science. It is probably the case, for instance, that acts of punishment are performed only by people with central nervous systems. But we would not have to know about that in order to understand what is meant by ‘punishment’.
Indeed countless people understand perfectly well what is meant by ‘punishment’ who have never heard of a central nervous system. The possession of a central nervous system is, therefore, only a general empirical condition of punishment rather than part of our understanding of ‘punishment’. The connection, therefore, between ‘punishment’ and the possession of a nervous system is quite different from the relationship between, say, our understanding of ‘hearing’ and the possession of ears.
For the possession of this particular part of the body is inseparable from our understanding of what it is to hear something. We could not conceivably hear without ears of some sort. Similarly, it is only an empirical fact that most learning is brought about by some form of teaching. But ‘teaching’ could not be conceived of without some reference to learning. ‘Learning’ therefore, enters into the analysis of ‘teaching’, for this connexion is not purely de facto. Now though much of what has been called conceptual analysis seems to consist in looking for logically necessary conditions for the use of a word, and hence to be concerned with ‘definition’ in a loose sense, it has become fashionable in recent times to deny that it is ever possible to produce such definitions.
Ordinary language is not static; it is a form of life. If we think that we have got a concept pinned down, we are apt to come across a case where we would naturally use the word but where the condition which we have made explicit is not established. We might think, for instance, that a necessary condition of using the word ‘punishment’ is that something unpleasant should be inflicted on the guilty. Yet we do talk of boxers taking a lot of punishment. And of what are they guilty? Wittgenstein made this general point by taking the example of ‘games’. He claimed that there is no one characteristic in terms of which roulette, golf, patience, etc., are all called ‘games’. Rather they form a ‘family’ united ‘by a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing; sometimes overall similarities, sometimes of detail’ – rather like the similarities between faces of people belonging to the same family.
There is, he argued, no one characteristic or group of characteristics that all games possess in order to be called ‘games’. This, at least, should warn us that we may not always be successful even in our search for logically necessary conditions for the use of a word. But sometimes we may be. Is there, for instance, a use of ‘punishment’ in which there is no suggestion of something unpleasant being inflicted on someone? Actually it can be doubted whether Wittgenstein was even right about this particular concept. For how would we know which samples to lay out in order to look for the similarities?
Why did not Wittgenstein take gardening or getting married as examples of games? Does not this show that there is some more general principle which underlies calling things ‘games’ which he might have overlooked? It might be argued that gardening or getting married might be ranked by someone as games. But this brings out that whether something is a game or not does not depend on any simple observable property of the sort that makes a thing a triangle. Rather it depends on how a human being conceives an activity. A necessary condition of calling something a game is, surely, that it must be an activity which is indulged in non-seriously. Now ‘nonseriously’ does not mean that the player lacks involvement in it or that he does not give his attention to it. Rather, it means that he can conceive it as not being part of the ‘business of living’. He does not do it out of duty or prudence or for any other reason of that sort.
This example brings out two points which Wittgenstein himself made. The first is that we must not look for defining characteristics in any simple, stereotyped way, with the paradigm of just one type of word before us. The second is that concepts can only be understood in relation to other concepts. ‘Non-serious’ has to be understood in relation to a whole family of concepts included under ‘serious’. Thus if we are attempting an analysis of concepts by examining the meaning of words, we usually proceed by taking cases within their denotation and trying out suggestions about defining characteristics.
This is how Socrates, for instance, proceeded in the early part of The Republic in order to get clearer about ‘justice’. He took different cases and tried out suggestions such as ‘justice consists in giving every man his due’, ‘justice is the interest of the stronger’ and so on. In this way we gradually make explicit the links between words which reflect our conceptual structure. But we must also pay attention to what we mean by using a word in the sense of the job that we conceive of the word as doing in the context in which we employ it. For words are not just noises or marks on paper; they are more like tools.
They do specific jobs in social life. We could, for instance, only understand what ‘non-serious’ means when applied to games if we have an understanding of the form of life which renders some things ‘serious’. Obviously one of the main jobs that words do is to convey information, to describe things and situations. But this is only one of their jobs. Sometimes we use words to warn people. At other times we use words to suggest courses of action to people. At other times we use words to express what we wish. And so on. The use of words, in other words, is a form of purposeful behaviour, but it has to be understood in terms of the other non-linguistic purposes that people have in their social life.
Commands, for instance, such as ‘Halt’ have to be understood as having a specific sort of function in social situations where some are in authority over others and where they are expected to direct the behaviour of their subordinates by using words in a certain tone of voice. Usually the way in which words are put together in what are called ‘sentences’ gives a very good clue to the job that they do. Sentences can be used to make statements (or assert propositions).
When they do this they are usually couched in what grammarians call the indicative form. If we say, for instance, that the motorist was punished for exceeding the speed limit we are stating a proposition that can be either true or false. The job done by the words in this case is, therefore, to describe or indicate a state of affairs that is assumed to have occurred. The point of such an utterance, in other words, is to convey information. But when the headmaster uses the sentence ‘Punish the boy’ his words, which are now arranged in the imperative form, do not state anything that is true or false.
They have a different function, that of getting someone to do something. The grammatical form of a sentence can be, however, rather deceptive. When, for instance, it is asserted that a child needs love, it looks as if the sentence is simply stating a fact, or conveying information. But it could be argued that what the sentence is really doing is to lay down standards about how a child should be treated, that it has, in other words, a guiding function. ‘Need’ in this context, is performing a normative role.
And there are some words such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ which almost always have this general function of laying down standards of conduct. If, therefore, we are trying to analyse a concept it is important to realize that this cannot be done adequately by just examining the use of words in any self-contained way. We have to study carefully their relation to other words and their use in different types of sentences. An understanding of their use in sentences does not come just by the study of grammar; it is also necessary to understand the different sorts of purposes that lie behind the use of sentences. And this requires reflection on the different purposes, both linguistic and non-linguistic, that human beings share in their social life.
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