The humanities as conceptual practices: The formation and development of high‐impact concepts in philosophy and beyond

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of the discursive dynamics of high‐impact concepts in the humanities. These are concepts whose formation and development have a lasting and wide‐ranging effect on research and our understanding of discursive reality in general. The notion of a conceptual practice, based on a normative conception of practice, is introduced, and practices are identified, on this perspective, according to the way their respective performances are held mutually accountable. This normative conception of practices is then combined with recent work from philosophy of science that characterizes concepts in terms of conceptual capacities that are productive, open‐ended, and applicable beyond the original context they were developed in. It is shown that the formation of concepts can be identified by changes in how practitioners hold exercise of their conceptual capacities accountable when producing knowledge about a phenomenon. In a manner similar to the use of operational definitions in scientific practices, such concepts can also be used to intervene in various discourses within or outside the conceptual practice. Using the formation of the concepts “mechanism” and “performative” as examples, the paper shows how high‐impact concepts reconfigure what is at issue and at stake in conceptual practices. As philosophy and other humanities disciplines are its domain of interest, it is a contribution to the methodology of the humanities.

The many theories of mind: eliminativism and pluralism in context

“…Many scientific terms with many meanings, including neologisms and technical terms, are introduced precisely because they have some ordinary meaning approximately appropriate for the relevant technical notion. It is the precise nature of the gap between ordinary and technical meanings, in addition to 7 Indeed, this open-endedness may be an inevitable feature of the nature of concepts and conceptual practices if for example, conceptual practice is normative by nature (e.g., Haueis & Slaby, 2022), and if normative evaluation is necessarily open-ended (e.g., Rouse 2007), grounded in a relationship of mutual accountability between (candidate-)performers of a practice (including those criticising a performance). 8 One reason that it is difficult to get beyond this very general level is that the phenomenon of concern is not, in my view, a linguistically-unified phenomenon (or in other words, pluralistic terms do not constitute a linguistic kind).…”

“…It may also make it hard to be sure that all relevant factors have been considered. Neither of these things, however, means that the decision would be impossible, or even necessarily difficult, in any particular case (see also Haueis & Slaby, 2022).…”

Revisión sobre humanismo médico

“…El objetivo fue capacitar a los médicos residentes para mejorar sus conocimientos en humanidades y con ello mejorar el ámbito laboral, tanto en la convivencia entre los colaboradores como en la atención de los pacientes y sus familiares. La formación se centró en seis temas a desarrollar en un plan de tres años 12 . Estas áreas incluyeron temas de reflexión y estudio, herramientas de discernimiento y directrices de acción para mejorar la atención brindada a pacientes y sus familias en una sociedad dinámica.…”