The point is to see through the words, to get a better grasp of the similarities and differences that it is possible to pick out. And these are important in the context of other questions which we cannot answer without such preliminary analysis. Ordinary language is a record of connections and distinctions that men with predominantly practical purposes have found it important to make. It is therefore a valuable guide, but it should never be treated as a repository of unquestionable wisdom. Ordinary usage, for instance, reveals in the case of ‘punishment’ a connection that practically minded people insist on between the committing of an offence against rules and the infliction of something unpleasant on the offender. In so far, therefore, as we talk about ‘punishment’ we acquiesce in this demand that ordinary language reflects.
Conceptual analysis helps us to pin-point more precisely what is implicit in our moral consciousness. But it also enables us to stand back a bit and reflect on the status of the demand to which the word bears witness. It frees us to ask a fundamental question in ethics, which is that of whether this demand is justified. In our view there is little point in doing conceptual analysis unless some further philosophical issue is thereby made more manageable. The first thing to say, therefore, about the point of doing conceptual analysis is that it is a necessary preliminary to answering some other philosophical questions.
We cannot tackle the question in ethics of whether there are any good reasons for punishing people until we are clear what we mean by ‘punishment’. Questions of analysis in other words are often linked with questions of justification. Socrates raised questions about the meaning of ‘justice’ because he was also interested in the reasons that there might be for living a just life. But there are also other more all-pervasive conceptual questions with which the analysis of a particular concept is often linked.
These are usually called metaphysical questions, those that deal with categories of thinking which structure a conceptual scheme. We employ for instance, concepts such as ‘thing-hood’, ‘causality’ and ‘time’ to make the world intelligible. In metaphysics the status of such categoreal concepts is examined. Could we, for instance, dispense with the concept of ‘consciousness’ in making human behaviour intelligible? These are general questions about the justification of our conceptual schemes. The linkage of conceptual analysis with these other types of philosophical question explains the fact that philosophers do not indulge in an undiscriminating analysis of any old concepts. They do not attempt the analysis of concepts such as ‘clock’ and ‘cabbage’ unless there are further issues with which the analysis is connected. Questions, for instance, might be raised about clocks if some philosophical issue about the status of temporal distinctions was at stake.
There is much about vegetables in Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion because his interest in justification, in this case in the theological argument from design, led him to examine the different types of order in the world. Why should not its order, he asked, be more like that of a vegetable than that of a house? Similarly Aristotle raised questions about the nature of vegetables because he was interested in the general nature of living things and in the role of ‘purpose’ as a categoreal concept. But without an interest in such further questions what is the point of doing conceptual analysis? It is difficult to understand, too, how all interest in any such further philosophical questions could itself be self-contained. It is difficult to conceive, for instance, how a person could be interested in philosophical questions such as ‘How do we know that we ought to punish people?’ unless he is also interested in the moral question of whether or not we ought to punish people. Philosophers often devote themselves to analysing the concepts of the particular sciences and to enquiring into the epistemological status of the methods of enquiry employed. They ask questions, for instance, about the concept of ‘the unconscious’ and about the validity of psycho-analytic methods in testing hypotheses. But it is often difficult to separate an interest in such general philosophical questions about the status of consciousness from more particular questions about the validity of psycho-analytic theory.
Philosophy, as has been explained, is concerned with second-order questions about science, morality, religion and other such human activities. But the point of asking such questions is usually provided by concrete worries at the first-order level. Lavoisier, for instance, was led to make important discoveries in chemistry through an interest in its conceptual scheme. His interests were in part philosophical even though he was professionally a scientist. But he could not have asked such questions in such a precise form without a passionate interest in and detailed knowledge of the phenomena which chemists were trying to explain.
Thus, though a philosopher could be worried about the concept of ‘the unconscious’ because, like Ryle, he is concerned only with some metaphysical thesis about the status of the mental, he could also be worried by it as a psychologist concerned with giving a theoretical explanation of concrete phenomena. A philosophical psychologist would probably be afflicted by both sorts of worry! A philosopher might be worried, similarly, about ‘the state’ because he had a general interest of a metaphysical sort in ‘the general will’; or he might be worried about it because, like Locke or Burke, he had a practical interest in rights and representation. But in all such cases the concern about concepts has point because of some further concern. To do conceptual analysis, unless something depends on getting clearer about the structure underlying how we speak, may be a fascinating pastime, but it is not philosophy. Once it is appreciated that conceptual analysis must have some point, it can also be appreciated that the inability to emerge with a neat set of logically necessary conditions for the use of a word like ‘knowledge’ or ‘education’ is not necessarily the hall-mark of failure.
For, in the process of trying to make explicit the principles which underlie our use of words, we should have become clearer both about how things are and about the sorts of decisions that have to be faced in dealing with them. We are in a better position to look through the words at the problems of explanation, justification or practical action that occasion such a reflective interest. To revert to the example from which we started: that of ‘punishment’. An analysis of this concept reveals the connection demanded by men that pain should be inflicted, usually by those in authority, on offenders. This makes explicit much that is of ethical significance. There is first of all a problem about the infliction of pain; for this is usually regarded as something that is prima facie undesirable. How is this to be justified? Supposing it can be, on the grounds that it will deter others from committing similar offences and produce less unhappiness in the long run than not inflicting it. Why then should it be inflicted on the offenders? For the concept of ‘punishment’ seems to require this as well. Surely because of some in-built notion of justice that requires discrimination against people only on relevant grounds. But how can justice be justified, in general and in this particular application of the principle?
Surely too, the operation of punishment as a deterrent presupposes a very important assumption about human beings, namely that they are responsible for their actions in the sense that they can be deterred by a consideration of foreseen consequences. And is this assumption justified? Is it not an assumption of great moral significance, because of its connection with our notion of man as a chooser? What would happen to our social life if we gave it up? Then there is the connection between ‘punishment’ and ‘authority’; for we can only distinguish punishment from some cases of revenge because those who inflict the pain, like fathers and teachers, are authorized to do this. But what is meant by ‘authority’? And call this type of institution be justified? What is the role of authority in social life? If pursued in this way the analysis of the concept of ‘punishment’ does at least two very important jobs.
Firstly, it enables us to see more clearly how a concept is connected not only with other concepts but also with a form of social life that rests on a network of interlocking assumptions – e.g. about human responsibility, rights connected with authority, and the role of pain in our lives. We thus begin to get a better understanding of the type of social life to which we seem to be committed if we admit the necessity of punishment. Secondly, however, by laying bare the structure of this concept we also show the extent to which it rests on certain moral assumptions which can be challenged. To discuss their status would take us far into moral philosophy. Now to what extent would our inability to produce a set of logically necessary conditions for the use of the word ‘punishment’ be detrimental to these further purposes that lie behind conceptual analysis? Suppose, for instance, we can produce cases of the use of the word ‘punishment’ where guilt has not been established – as in the case of the schoolmaster who keeps all the class in.
Suppose people talk of a boxer receiving ‘punishment’ when there is neither guilt nor anyone in authority who administers the pain. Surely by reflecting on such cases our understanding of our social life is increased as well as our sensitivity to the complexity of moral issues. We come to distinguish what are often called central cases of the application of ‘punishment’ from more peripheral ones. The central cases are those in which all the conditions are present which enable us to distinguish ‘punishment’ from other allied notions such as ‘revenge’, ‘spite’ and ‘coercion’. The existence of such cases explains how ‘punishment’ performs a distinctive function in the language which reflects our social life, how people come to acquire the concept, and how people come to use derivative expressions such as boxers taking a lot of punishment.
By determining which cases are central we come to learn a lot more, not just about words, but about the structure of our social life and the assumptions which underlie it. If, for instance, we challenge the moral assumptions which underlie punishment we will be led to see what else we may be challenging as well. It is only if we think that there must be some essence in the nature of things or institutions, which our concepts reflect, that we will be dismayed if we fail to produce a hard and fast set of logically necessary conditions for all uses of a word. If we do not hold such a crude view of the relationship between words and things we will not measure the success of conceptual analysis by the extent to which we can produce definitions. Rather we will measure it by the extent to which our understanding is thereby increased about how things are in the world and of the possible stances that we can adopt towards our predicament in it.
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