Abstract
Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the method of explication as a procedure for conceptual engineering in philosophy and in science. In the philosophical literature, there has been a lively debate about the different desiderata that a good explicatum has to satisfy. In comparison, the goal of explicating the concept of explication itself has not been central to the philosophical debate. The main aim of this work is to suggest a way of filling this gap by explicating ‘explication’ by means of conceptual spaces theory. Specifically, I show how different, strictly-conceptual readings of explication desiderata can be made precise as geometrical or topological constraints over the conceptual spaces related to the explicandum and the explicatum. Moreover, I show also how the richness of the geometrical representation of concepts in conceptual spaces theory allows us to achieve more fine-grained readings of explication desiderata, thereby overcoming some alleged limitations of explication as a procedure of conceptual engineering.
Highlights
In the last three decades, a renewal of interest in logical empiricism has led scholars to question the received view of Carnap’s philosophy (Stein 1992; Friedman 1999; Carsten and Awodey 2004; Friedman and Creath 2007)
Another, interesting, possible desideratum is due to Karl Menger, to whom Carnap (Carnap 1950, p. 7) acknowledged a certain debt in developing the idea of explication, who in discussing geometrical definitions stresses that a good explicatum “should extend the use of the word by dealing with objects not known or not dealt with in ordinary language” (Menger 1943, p. 5)
Other two limitations of explication as a general procedure for conceptual engineering are stressed, instead, by Brun, who argues that Carnapian explication is heavily limited by its focus on individual concepts and by its linear structure that seems to describe a no-turning-back triumphant engineering from the explicandum to the explicatum, hiding the complexity of the dialectics between the two parts of explication
Summary
In the last three decades, a renewal of interest in logical empiricism has led scholars to question the received view of Carnap’s philosophy (Stein 1992; Friedman 1999; Carsten and Awodey 2004; Friedman and Creath 2007). That the theory of conceptual spaces has not played a more significant role in the philosophical debate over conceptual engineering Since they have already been used to model vagueness and concept formation, conceptual spaces naturally present themselves as a useful tool for representing procedures of conceptual engineering that focus on the preservation of conceptual aspects, such as Carnapian explication. As I will stress case by case, it would be unclear at the very least how to represent in the context of conceptual spaces theory some desiderata that pose limitations on the target theory in which the explicatum is defined (such as being defined in a consistent theory, for instance) or other more pragmatical meta-theoretical virtues (such as predictive power) the scope of which is not restricted to the concepts involved in the explication This assumption is required by the very nature of conceptual spaces theory. I will draw some general conclusion about the significance of the results contained in this work for explication as a procedure of conceptual engineering and related debates in philosophy
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