A Socratic essentialist defense of non‐verbal definitional disputes

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that, in order to account for the apparently substantive nature of definitional disputes, a commitment to what we call ‘Socratic essentialism’ is needed. We defend Socratic essentialism against a prominent neo‐Carnapian challenge according to which apparently substantive definitional disputes always in some way trace back to disagreements over how expressions belonging to a particular language or concepts belonging to a certain conceptual scheme are properly used. Socratic essentialism, we argue, is not threatened by the possibility that some apparently substantive definitional disputes may turn out to be verbal or conceptual, since this pluralist strategy, in our view, requires a commitment to more, rather than fewer, essences. What is more, a deflationary, metaphysically ‘light‐weight’ construal of the essence‐ascriptions in question leads to a peculiar conception of the pursuit of metaphysicians as behaving like deceptive (or self‐deceived) grammarians pretending to be scientists. Moreover, this deflationary attitude, we argue, spreads beyond metaphysics and philosophy more broadly to apparently substantive definitional disputes in the sciences as well as other in other disciplines, such as art criticism.

A plea for descriptive social ontology

“…On this proposal, the descriptive claim, "Teams appear to have members", is a statement that belongs to descriptive social ontology only if it is construed, for instance, as making a claim about one of the formal notions just mentioned, as in, for example, "It appears to be part of the essence of teams to have members". Although we suspect that most, if not all, the claims cited in (1-21) are tacitly essentialist descriptive claims, we will not defend this commitment in the present context (though see Koslicki and Massin, 2023, for a more thorough discussion of how a descriptive philosophical inquiry should be understood as targeting essences). Note that, insofar as essences figure within the scope of the appearance operator, such claims do not commit us to the reality of essences, only to what we might call "phenomenal essentialism", the view that social entities appear to have essential and accidental properties.…”

“…Just as an appeal to such formal concepts is needed to arrive at a proper description of how, for example, color, extension, location and objecthood are related to one another in visual experience, so we believe that the social world as it appears to us is similarly imbued with a rich array of connections and distinctions whose proper description will require an elaborate descriptive social ontology. A proper defense of this commitment to a rich conception of the contents of social appearances, however, will have to await a separate treatment in its own right (see Koslicki and Massin, 2023).…”

“…Identity-theories, functionalism, dualism, Russellian monism, to mention but a few, are foundationalist theories. Eliminativism about mental states (Churchland, 1981 ), illusionism about consciousness (Dennett, 1991 ; Frankish, 2016 ; Kammerer, 2021 ), or eliminativism about pain (Hardcastle, 2001 ) are revisionary theories either of the mind in its entirety or of some part or aspect of it. Both foundationalist and revisionary approaches are in the business of saving the appearances captured by descriptive metaphysics.…”