Conceptual Analysis – Lesson 5

Table of Contents

• The structure of conceptual analysis: external and internal context
• Taxonomy and characteristics as the engine of classification
• Essential and accidental features in defining concepts
• Kripke, “baptism,” and conventionalism versus examining reality
• Real disputes about concepts: “Who is a Jew” and morality
• The concept as having characteristics, not as a collection of characteristics: an analogy to objects
• Leibniz, the identity of indiscernibles, and matter and form
• An example from physics: bosons and the identity of properties
• Borges and Tlön: the absurdity of a world without objects
• Ideas, democracy before its realization, and essentialism
• Putnam, changing definitions, and the development of concepts
• Summary: conceptual analysis as intellectual observation

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the structure of conceptual analysis by placing a concept in an external context and internally mapping its components, while building a taxonomy of genera and species based on characteristics. It argues that a concept is not identical to the collection of its characteristics, but that there is an “idea” or essence that precedes the list of characteristics; therefore it is possible to have real arguments about concepts and to change their definitions over time without replacing the concept itself. It criticizes Saul Kripke for a conventionalist view of concept formation through social “baptism,” and defends an essentialist-Platonic position according to which concepts are grasped through intellectual contemplation rather than arbitrary decision. It strengthens the claim through examples from Aristotle, debates over a “democratic state” and “who is a Jew,” an analogy to objects such as a table, a critique of Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, an example from physics involving bosons, and a story by Borges that illustrates the absurdity of a world in which there are only clusters of properties without objects.

The Structure of Conceptual Analysis: External and Internal Context

Conceptual analysis is built by placing the concept within a context of related, opposing, and parallel concepts at the same level, and by subordinating it to a higher genus that includes them. The move continues by going “into the guts” of the concept in order to break it down into components and distinguish between different species under it, such as distinguishing between a presidential system, a parliamentary system, and a mixed monarchy-system within the genus “democratic state.” The analysis is described as a map or tree of genera and species in which the relations between concepts are determined by what lies next to them, above them, and below them, and also by what is included within the concept itself.

Taxonomy and Characteristics as the Engine of Classification

Taxonomy is defined as classification into genera and species, where “species” is a relative notion that counts as a species in relation to the genus above it and as a genus in relation to the subspecies below it. The classification rests on characteristics: parallel concepts at the same level share some of the characteristics but differ in others, while species under the same genus share the characteristics of the genus and add unique characteristics that distinguish them from one another. The example of a “democratic state” is described as a collection of characteristics such as civil rights, free elections, alternating government, and separation of powers, and the placing of countries such as the United States, France, Britain, Israel, Holland, and Denmark on branches of the tree is done according to the fit between the country’s characteristics and the characteristics of the genus and species.

Essential and Accidental Features in Defining Concepts

The text distinguishes between essential characteristics and accidental characteristics, and between unique and non-unique characteristics, and argues that even after listing characteristics there is still a hierarchy among them. In an Aristotelian context, the definition of a human being as a “speaking animal” is presented through genus and species, and is described as preferable to alternative definitions such as “walks on two legs,” because walking on two legs does not necessarily uniquely identify a human being and is not perceived as an essential condition for belonging to the concept “human being.” Examples such as being one meter eighty tall or the number of fingers emphasize that characteristics can be very common without being considered essential, and the question of essentiality is not solved simply by the possibility of attaching a name to any collection of properties.

Kripke, “Baptism,” and Conventionalism Versus Examining Reality

Saul Kripke is described as claiming that concepts are created through social “baptism,” in which a group gathers a set of characteristics, attaches a term to it, and thereby produces a new concept, and the text rejects this as a conventionalist view according to which concepts are the product of agreement. The text argues that underlying the world of concepts there is a reality or an idea, and that a concept is first grasped through intellectual contemplation and only afterward are its characteristics formulated. It explains that arguments about whether a certain state is democratic—for example, around the appointment of judges by politicians—show that the characteristics themselves are subject to dispute and therefore cannot be the foundation that constitutes the concept, as Kripke presents it.

Real Disputes About Concepts: “Who Is a Jew” and Morality

The text presents the debate over “who is a Jew” as an example showing that the sides perceive the argument as a real one and not as mere linguistic confusion, alongside the halakhic / of Jewish law definition of a Jew as someone born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted according to Jewish law, as opposed to attempts to propose other cultural definitions. It argues that according to Kripke there is no real dispute here, but rather the use of the same word for two different concepts, and therefore the matter could be solved by replacing terms; but in practice people do not behave that way because they see themselves as arguing about the same concept. It presents another example, a debate about “morality,” to show that the conventionalist approach empties the argument of content and turns it into a matter of dictionary synchronization alone.

The Concept as Having Characteristics, Not as a Collection of Characteristics: An Analogy to Objects

The text argues that a concept is not “the collection of its characteristics” but something that has characteristics, just as an object like a table is not identical to a list of properties such as material, color, and number of legs, but is the object to which those properties are attributed. It connects this to the claim that the distinction between essential and accidental requires contemplation of the essence of the table and not reliance on the arbitrary decision of whoever “coined” the term. It emphasizes that agreement can come after contemplation and serve as a stamp of approval for what was recognized, but it is not the reason the thing is what it is—similar to the claim that “we agree because it is white,” not “it is white because we agree.”

Leibniz, the Identity of Indiscernibles, and Matter and Form

The text brings Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, according to which two objects with the same set of properties are in fact the same object, and presents his proof by contradiction through the claim that A has the property “not being B” and B has the property “not being A.” It rejects this and argues that the mistake lies in the assumption that the object is nothing but the collection of its properties, whereas in fact the object is the bearer of the properties and contains “something more” beyond them—what Aristotle described as matter and form. It explains that the distinction “A is not B” is not a property but speech about the object itself, and therefore it does not disprove the possibility of two different objects with identical properties.

An Example from Physics: Bosons and the Identity of Properties

The text brings up bosons and the Bose-Einstein effect as an example showing that in twentieth-century physics there are particles that are completely identical in all their properties and are still counted as many. It uses this to reinforce the claim that one need not identify an object with its set of properties, and that the inability of two objects to be in the same place is a physical problem and not a logical one, and in some cases there is no obstacle even to that state of affairs.

Borges and Tlön: The Absurdity of a World Without Objects

The text presents Borges’s story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” from Fictions, in Bronowski’s translation, in order to illustrate an idealist world in which there are no nouns, only verbs or clusters of adjectives, so that “the moon rose above the river” is phrased without objects, only as a description of actions and phenomena. It emphasizes that in the other hemisphere “moon” is described as a cluster of adjectives such as “airy bright over the dark-round” or “orange sky-hung,” and that there “ideal objects” are created out of combinations of properties such as “the hue of the newborn day and a bird’s cry in the distance.” The example is meant to show that if a concept is nothing but a collection of characteristics, then there is no limit to creating arbitrary concepts out of any combination of properties.

Ideas, Democracy Before Its Realization, and Essentialism

The text argues that concepts such as “democracy” preceded their realization in historical states, and therefore are not built from observing existing objects but from the discovery of an idea. It explains that the connection among the characteristics of democracy creates a meaningful unity that is unlike accidental combinations of properties, and that this is why it makes sense to attach a word to it. It presents a Platonic position according to which ideas have existed “since the creation of the world” even if they were not realized, and the people who “hit upon” the idea of democracy discovered an idea that had not previously been discerned.

Putnam, Changing Definitions, and the Development of Concepts

The text attributes to Hilary Putnam the position that one cannot change the definition of a concept, because changing the definition means moving to a different concept. It presents the similarity between this position and Kripke’s conventionalist picture, and sets against them an essentialist position according to which a concept has an essence, and therefore one can argue about its definition, make mistakes or be more precise, and even change definitions over time without replacing the concept itself. It compares this to a person who grows and remains the same person despite changes in his properties, and argues that concepts exist and develop in reality, so there is truth and resolution in arguments about concepts and not just linguistic conventions.

Summary: Conceptual Analysis as Intellectual Observation

The text concludes that conceptual analysis is observation “with the eyes of the intellect” of the world of ideas, similar to sensory observation of objects in the physical world. It connects this to the working tools of taxonomic mapping and the clarification of characteristics, but places the characteristics as the result of grasping the concept rather than as what constitutes it. It ends with an invitation for questions and closes with the blessings “Good night,” “Have a peaceful Sabbath,” and “More power to you.”

Okay, so up to this point we’ve actually seen a few examples of conceptual analysis, where the goal was—and I’ve repeated this several times already—the goal was to try to show why it’s important to do conceptual analysis, and what conceptual analysis actually is. So in the end, at the end of the previous session, I tried to describe—I don’t think really to define, but to describe—how conceptual analysis is supposed to be structured. When I deal with a certain concept, then when I analyze it I basically have to place it in context, which means to examine it from the outside, and then to dig into it from within. And that really means dividing it into different components. And if I speak in Aristotelian language, then what I’m really supposed to do—let’s say I have some concept, I don’t know, a democratic state, okay? Then I need to do, first of all, put it in context. Meaning: what concepts are adjacent to it, or opposed to it, on the level of democracy? So I say there is also a monarchy, there is, I don’t know, a fascist state, there are all kinds of other models of states that are not democracy. That means I’ve located democracy opposite other concepts on the same plane. Now I ask myself: this collection of concepts is really species within some higher genus. What is that higher genus? A system of government, probably, or something like that, right? That’s really the heading under which all these forms, all these models, are gathered. So that’s just understanding the context. I placed the concept of a democratic state under a heading and contrasted it with other concepts—different ones, opposite ones, adjacent ones. Of course there are different kinds of relations between concepts that are on the same level. Now I continue and move downward—that was putting it in context from the outside, and now I go inward, into the guts of a democratic state, and I ask myself: what does the concept “democratic state” include? Because when I want to distinguish it from the concept, say, of a monarchy, then I have to identify its characteristics as against the characteristics of a monarchy, and see which characteristics are essential, which are accidental—that I’ll still talk about today—and that’s how, in the end, I actually do the conceptual analysis. So I look from the outside, I look from the inside, when what’s always involved is really a distinction between genera and species. I’m basically making some kind of map of genera, where each genus is divided into species, and I try to see what the environment of the concept I’m dealing with is. And of course the environment is the environment around it, but also the environment within it. If it itself is divided—for example there are all the kinds of democratic states. There are states whose regime is presidential, democratic-presidential, say like in the United States, or France I think. So that’s one type. There is a regime combined with monarchy, like in Britain, a certain kind of monarchy. There are regimes like in Israel, which are parliamentary regimes, okay? So these are different kinds of democratic regimes. So what I just did was actually go into the concept of a democratic state and distinguish between different species within this genus called a democratic state. So after I put the concept of a democratic state into a context, under a heading and next to concepts that are on the same level, I now go into it and ask myself who are the concepts subordinate to it, those under it. And then I say: there are many kinds of democratic regimes, so these are really different species within this genus. And then I examine what characterizes this species and what distinguishes it from the other species that belongs to the same genus. Meaning, you see that basically what we’re doing here is a kind of taxonomy. Taxonomy is classification. Classification in the sense of species, yes—you’re basically building some kind of map. We only have concepts for two levels, genera and species. But it’s obvious that the concepts of genus and species are relative concepts. Meaning, a species counts as a species relative to the genus above it, but it counts as a genus relative to the species under it. Species are subgroups of a genus. Okay. Now every such classification is really a classification into genera, and under each genus there are species. After that I go down to the species, and they themselves now count as a genus. But how do I actually perform this taxonomy? Taxonomy is the classification done, for example, in plants or animals into families, subfamilies, and different kinds. That’s why the concept of taxonomy is usually borrowed from there, from zoology and botany, the classification of natural genera and species. But it’s also true of concepts, and of genera and species of non-natural things. For example, the concept of a democratic state is not a natural concept; it’s a concept human beings created, not a concept that exists in the world. Okay, so the claim is that you can do taxonomy also in the world of artificial concepts, the world of concepts that we created, discovered, conceptualized. We’ll still talk later a bit about what exactly we do to these concepts. But what lies behind this taxonomy, this classification, is really an attempt to distinguish what the components are that define the concept. Right? Through the characteristics of the concept—because understand, for example, let’s say a concept has five characteristics. Okay, so now the concepts parallel to it are also supposed to have, let’s say, five characteristics, but not all of them are identical to the five characteristics of this concept. Right? Those are the parallel kinds on the same level. Okay, and what are the species beneath it? The species beneath it all have the five characteristics of the genus, but each of them has another characteristic or characteristics that already differ between them. For example, let’s say a democratic regime has the characteristics of civil rights, free elections, change of government, separation of powers, things like that. Okay, those are the characteristics of this genus called a democratic state. In a monarchy, for example, some of these characteristics won’t be there, right? For example, the government doesn’t change—the king is fixed. Maybe there are civil rights, maybe there aren’t; it depends on whether the king grants civil rights. So not all the characteristics are absent, but not all the characteristics are present in the parallel genera. Now when I go into the concept of a democratic state and I move into presidential regime versus parliamentary regime, then here all five characteristics are supposed to be present, because both fall under the genus “democratic state.” But a presidential regime has one more characteristic, and that characteristic doesn’t exist in a parliamentary regime, which has another characteristic that doesn’t exist in a presidential regime. Meaning that a presidential regime and a parliamentary regime, which are species under the genus “democratic state,” simply have six characteristics rather than five. They have all five characteristics of the genus, plus one more characteristic that characterizes each species—or one characteristic or several characteristics, yes, it doesn’t have to be just one—that distinguish between the species. But what they share is that they all belong to the same genus, because the characteristics of the genus are present in all of them. Okay, so in order to do this taxonomy, I can point to states like the United States, France, Britain, Israel, Holland, Denmark, whatever you want. These are states, and I can place them on my taxonomic tree—what genus and species each such state belongs to. But how do I do that? To do that I need to understand what characteristics each state has, and what characteristics every genus and species on the map has. Once there is correspondence, then I say: Denmark belongs to this species under this genus. Okay, because I see that Denmark’s characteristics fit this branch on the taxonomic tree. Okay, therefore what really stands behind this classification is characteristics. The characteristics—I say there is a presidential regime, a parliamentary regime, and both are under a democratic state. Next to it there is monarchy, next to it there is a fascist state, and each of those is also divided into kinds, and so on. It’s a whole map. But all these things are names. Every such name has characteristics, and in that sense I distinguish between the names because they differ in characteristics. The characteristics are not on the map—you have to understand that. The characteristics lie behind the map. Really, inside every block on the map you need to write what the relevant characteristics are, the ones that describe the states that belong to that genus. Or the characteristics that belong to an animal that belongs to that species and genus, or whatever topic we’re dealing with. So that means that in order to do such a taxonomy, or conceptual analysis like I did before, I actually need to understand what the characteristics of the concepts are. What is a democratic state, what characterizes it? So I say: separation of powers, civil rights, elections, and so on, the right to vote, the right to be elected, and all these things. Okay, that is what defines a democratic state. It won’t appear on the map. On the map will appear “democratic state,” and under it “parliamentary regime,” “presidential regime,” some semi-monarchical thing if you want, Britain, all kinds of things like that. Okay? Those are names, but every such name is really a concept. This map describes concepts. Every such concept has characteristics that define it. And through the characteristics I can see who is identical to whom, who is under whom, who is next to whom, who contains whom. The relations between the different concepts are determined by their characteristics. Therefore the core of conceptual analysis is really distinguishing what the characteristics of each concept are. That’s a very important point. Essentially, when we do conceptual analysis, we arrange the concepts on some kind of map. But that arrangement isn’t done by divine inspiration; it isn’t done just like that. It is done because we distinguish what the characteristics of each concept are. So I say: if a democratic state has five characteristics, then I understand—that’s the box called “democratic state,” and inside it I write five characteristics. Next to it there is the box “fascist state,” with five other characteristics, or at least some of them different. Monarchical regime—again, five different characteristics. Under that there are two or three blocks: parliamentary regime, presidential regime, semi-monarchical, and inside each of them there will now be six or more characteristics, which again are not identical. The five that belong to the genus are the same characteristics, and additional different characteristics are added that distinguish each of the species. So the characteristics are what is written inside the block. The heading of the block is the concept. Parliamentary regime is a concept. Democratic regime is a concept. A parliamentary regime is included in a democratic regime; it is one type of democratic regime. Okay? Therefore the relations between the concepts, which are expressed through this taxonomic map, this sort of tree, a taxonomic tree, really reflect characteristics. The characteristics that make up the concept. Therefore a concept is really a collection of characteristics. That’s the concept. The word “concept,” yes, that expression, is simply a collection of characteristics. That’s what is called a concept. Only here we give them a name, like “democratic state.” Okay? But really that name is the name for a certain collection of characteristics that we group together in order to produce a concept. Now here I want us to notice an important point. Up to now I’ve described the relation between a concept and the collection of its characteristics. That really is the essence of conceptual analysis: to analyze the collection of characteristics and locate the concepts on the tree, each one according to its characteristics, on my map, the general map. That really is conceptual analysis. Now I want to ask whether every collection of characteristics can be a concept. Seemingly yes—what is it? It’s our decision. Meaning, if we decide on, I don’t know, a democratic regime located on a seashore, okay, and a democratic regime not located on a seashore, then we’ll produce a new concept, maritime democracy and continental democracy. It sounds at first glance—why is that interesting? Why should I connect the question of whether you’re located on the seashore or not to the system of government? Why connect it with concepts related to a system of government? I could equally ask: why not? What’s the problem? Any collection of characteristics I can define under some heading, under some name, and that will be a concept. Therefore, on the principled level, there’s no obstacle to doing that. On the other hand, when we talk about concepts, we’re used to speaking of characteristics that are essential and characteristics that are accidental. For example, when I want to define the concept “human being,” I said that Aristotle required a definition to contain the genus and the species. Meaning, a human being is a speaking animal. Animal is the more general genus, of which the human being is only one species. There are birds, there are human beings, there are quadrupeds, fish, whatever, all sorts of things like that. Okay, so the human being is one of the species within the genus of animals. To define the human being I need to say what his genus is—that is, animal, living creature—and define what distinguishes his species from the other species on the same level. A speaking animal. Because the other species that are animals do not speak. Okay, so here I found a characteristic unique to the human species. So I say what his general genus is and distinguish him from the other species by the fact that he speaks. I could also have said that he walks on two legs. Right? In principle that too is a correct definition of a human being. But it’s not a good definition. Why not? First of all because there are other animals that walk on two legs. Right? There are birds that walk on two legs, I don’t know, a kangaroo walks on two legs, there are all sorts of additional animals that walk on two legs. So that doesn’t distinguish the human species. More than that, there can be human beings—let’s say there’s a human being who always walks on all fours. That’s how he walks, on his hands and feet. So is he not defined as a human being? Everything is fine, he functions perfectly normally, only he walks on all fours. Okay. I don’t think anyone would therefore stop defining him as human. What does that mean? That among the characteristics of a concept we need to distinguish between different kinds of characteristics. It has characteristics that are unique to it, and characteristics that are not unique to it. If they’re not unique to it, by the way, that means that above it there is a genus to which those characteristics belong, and the human being is one of the species in that genus. For example, two-legged creatures. You could have created a different taxonomy. You could have created a taxonomy with two-legged creatures, four-legged creatures, and one-legged creatures. I don’t know, a stork, yes, or fish that don’t walk at all. Fine—make a taxonomy according to the number of legs. Fine? Now among the two-legged creatures there are several species: human beings, I don’t know, ducks that also walk on two legs, and certain apes that walk on two legs, or all kinds of things like that. Okay, so we have different species under the genus of two-legged creatures. So in principle I could also have made such a taxonomy. Somehow it seems to us less relevant. Why? Why is it less relevant than the Aristotelian definition, a speaking animal? I would say: a speaking two-legged creature. Because being two-legged doesn’t seem to be an important characteristic of a human being. Though in the evolutionary sense it’s a very important characteristic. Because once human beings became upright, with all our back pain, it’s because we turned from four-legged creatures into two-legged creatures, and our backs aren’t built for that, or weren’t built for that. But on the other hand it frees up our two hands. And our great advantage over all the other animals is that we have two free hands. For walking we only need two out of our four limbs. And therefore it’s an enormous advantage in the evolutionary sense. And it’s worth the price of the back pain and the apparent mismatch of the spine. In any case, for our purposes, it’s clear that in defining a human being, if I asked an ordinary person, not an evolutionary researcher—if I asked an ordinary person—he wouldn’t say that having two legs is an essential trait of yours. If you don’t have two legs or if you walk on all fours, fine, you’re still human if you think and want and love and feel and choose and all sorts of things like that. So I don’t care that you walk on all fours—you’re still human. Okay. So that means we distinguish between essential properties and accidental properties. More than that, really the properties—I don’t know if it’s more than that, it’s another aspect of the same thing—accidental properties are properties that sometimes someone who falls under this concept won’t have. For example, the property of being one meter eighty tall. There are human beings of that height, but that’s not an essential property of the human species. There are human beings who are not one meter eighty. Okay, so therefore you can treat a height of one meter eighty as a property that some human beings have—you have before you a human being who is one meter eighty, and he has the property of being one meter eighty. Right. But that’s not an interesting property. Meaning it is not an important or relevant property for defining him, for knowing who he really is. Meaning we have some kind of feeling that among the characteristics we are supposed to build some sort of hierarchy. Even after I’ve already listed all the characteristics of the concept, there is still a hierarchy among them. There are unique characteristics, non-unique characteristics, accidental characteristics, essential characteristics. Meaning there are four—how many—kinds of characteristics on several levels. A human being has five fingers on the hand and five toes on the foot. That distinguishes almost every human being, unless someone has a defect or something, but in principle it distinguishes almost every human being. Okay. And still it does not seem to us to be an essential definition of the human species, or an essential characteristic of the human species. An accidental characteristic—you can do without it. If you lose some of your fingers, you won’t fall out from under the heading “human being,” okay? Also in terms of the implications, the moral obligations toward you, and so on, of course. Therefore the number of fingers does not seem to us to be an essential characteristic. What determines the essentiality or non-essentiality of characteristics? After all, as I said before, I can produce any—take any collection of characteristics and gather them together, attach some word to them, and thus I’ve created a concept. Saul Kripke is an American analytic philosopher, a religious Jew; he’s considered one of the great geniuses of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. I don’t know what his situation is today, whether he’s still with us. In any case, he argued that concepts are created through baptism. As a religious Jew, that’s a bit of an interesting term for him to use—baptism in the Christian sense. You baptize a child and he becomes Christian. He claims that the social act that creates a concept is really some kind of baptism. Meaning a certain group—this could be a professional guild, researchers in physics or psychology or whatever, it could be citizens of a country, doesn’t matter—some group of people defines a concept for its own needs because it is useful to it. How does it define it? It gathers a collection of characteristics and attaches a term to them, a word. Like “democratic state,” my example from before. They take this collection of characteristics, define the concept, attach to it the name “democratic state,” and thereby baptize this collection of characteristics; they really create a new member in the world of concepts. Okay? That’s how a new concept is created, according to him—that’s baptism. Kripke’s description, to my mind—it sounds terribly trivial to me—to my mind it’s wrong. I don’t think it’s true. Because Kripke is basically assuming that concepts are something conventional. A convention means an agreement, a social convention, yes. That concepts are basically the result of agreement in a certain community of people. We agree to define a certain concept, attach a word to it, and from then on we have a concept we can use, like “democratic state.” Meaning he claims that the foundation of the world of concepts is conventionalist—based on agreement. Okay? By contrast, I think that at the foundation of our world of concepts sits a reality, not an agreement. Meaning the definition of a concept is the result of observation, not the result of an arbitrary decision or an agreement among people. In a certain sense we observe reality, and we discern this idea called a democratic state, or a human being, or a chicken, whatever it may be. And that’s how a concept is created. And afterward we try to understand what the characteristics of this concept we have discerned are. To my mind, the characteristics come after the baptism of the concept, not before. Kripke says: we gather a collection of characteristics, baptize them, attach a name to them, and thus a concept is created. I argue the opposite. I argue that we look at the concepts and understand that there is such a concept called a democratic state even before we understand what its characteristics are. And now we ask ourselves: okay, what are the characteristics? And then we try to write some list of characteristics that distinguishes this concept. And if you look, for example, at an argument between people over whether a certain state is democratic or not—yes, for example the State of Israel, there are already all kinds of people beginning to argue: has it ceased to be a democratic state or not? It sounds absurd to me, but there are people who make arguments of that sort. Why? Because when you move to the list of characteristics, disagreements can arise. Someone thinks, I don’t know, that a state where politicians choose the judges is not a democratic state because there is no separation of powers. Americans think differently. There politicians choose the judges. Here, at least among most of the people who express themselves, it seems obvious that it’s the end of democracy if politicians choose the judges. So that’s a disagreement over the question of what a democratic state is. But here a very hard question arises. What do you mean, a disagreement over what a democratic state is? After all, according to Kripke there’s no room for such a disagreement, because take this collection of characteristics, attach a word to it—that’s the concept. Now let’s check: when they created the concept “democratic state,” which characteristics did they mean? That’s an empirical question. Then we can see whether the United States is a democratic state or not, despite the fact that politicians choose the judges there. In this context, by the way, those who say that here it would be the end of democracy would agree that the United States is a democratic state. Here it’s a more complicated business—or at least some of them would. But I’m only presenting the issues to illustrate; I’m not really entering the question itself. What does this actually mean? It means—think for a moment about a dispute, a dispute over a concept. We argue, for example, over the concept “who is a Jew.” We have a dispute: who is a Jew? So there’s a halakhic definition that says that someone born to a Jewish mother, or who converted according to a conversion procedure defined in Jewish law, and the Jewishness attached to him from there—that is the starting condition; you have to have a starting point, otherwise the concept “born to a Jewish mother” isn’t defined. That’s the halakhic definition. Other people have other definitions of what a Jew is—I don’t know, someone who speaks Hebrew, serves in the army, and reads Amos Oz. Actually I don’t know any other definition, but there are people who claim they have another definition, so they propose another definition. Now how does such a dispute arise, and how do you decide it? Understand that according to Kripke this dispute is basically just a meaningless exchange of words. All in all, I use the term “Jew” with one collection of characteristics under it, while you use the term “Jew” with another collection of characteristics under it. So all in all we use the same word but talk about a different concept. So the way to decide such a dispute is simply to decide who will use this word, and to invent another word for the second concept. I’ll call my concept “Jew,” you’ll call your concept “Israeli,” and we’ll part as friends. We don’t really have a dispute. After all, there is simply a certain collection of characteristics that I call “Jew,” and you’re talking about another collection of characteristics. You’re not talking about “Jew”; you’re talking about “Israeli.” You insist on the right to use the word “Jew”? Fine, you take the word “Jew” and I’ll take the word “Israeli.” It’s just an argument over a word; it isn’t interesting. This dispute is not a real dispute. Basically, in the picture Kripke presents—in the conventionalist picture I spoke about before, where concepts are the result of agreement—you understand that there is no room at all to argue over the definition of a concept. If you define the concept differently, that simply means you are dealing with a different concept. That’s all; I have no dispute with you. Just so we can talk, let’s define your concept by one word and my concept by another word, otherwise we’ll just confuse one another. But it’s not a dispute. We just need to synchronize the dictionary, to use a dictionary understood by both sides. That’s all. There’s no room for a dispute over concepts. But our eyes plainly see that disputes over concepts are going on all the time. For example, “who is a Jew,” which I mentioned earlier. For example, what is conversion? For example, what is morality? Is morality taking the elderly out into the snow so they freeze there in the cold, as the Eskimos claim, or is morality taking the elderly and caring for them, putting them in a nursing home or at home, it doesn’t matter, but caring for them to the bitter—or less bitter—end? So now, if I grasp the concept of morality in a conventionalist way, then there’s no dispute here at all. You’re talking about morality and I’m talking about some other thing. That’s all. Why should we both call different concepts by the same word? Using the same word just confuses things; it’s inefficient discourse. Okay? Call it morality, I’ll call it something else, and each of us will use his own language. We have no dispute; it’s just a definition. Okay? So basically the claim is that if people really do argue over concepts, that means that probably concepts are not just convention. Not just agreement. Right? Or they’re confused. But if it’s not just confusion, and people are really arguing—and that’s at least the impression I get—I get the impression that these are real disputes. And notice, both sides agree—in the dispute over who is a Jew, say—both sides agree that there is a real dispute here. Even the one who says “you don’t have a monopoly over…” and all those silly nonsense claims, in the end agrees that there is some kind of dispute here. He only claims there can be several answers. Instead of that, why assume there are several answers to the concept “Jew”? Call your concept David, and I’ll call my concept Jew, or vice versa, and everything is fine. We’ll part as friends. What is the argument about? We use—speak about different concepts, so let’s attach different terms to them, yes, different words, and that’s all. Why do we need to argue? But we don’t do that. Why don’t we do that? We don’t do that because both of us understand, he and I alike, that we have a real dispute. Now I ask: how can it be a real dispute if in the end a concept is simply a code name for a collection of characteristics? So how is there a dispute here? It’s really true: ostensibly we’re simply talking about different concepts. Not a dispute over the meaning of a concept, but simply discussion of two different concepts—why use the same word? The only way to understand these disputes without attributing them to mere confusion—and I don’t think it’s mere confusion, and I think most of the world doesn’t think it’s mere confusion—is to say that the world of concepts is not created in a conventionalist way. A concept is not just the result of agreement, of convention. There is such a thing as a concept, an idea, yes, in Platonic terms. There is such an idea, and it exists. And I look at it and understand: this is the idea of a democratic state. And now I try to define what I see, and I produce a collection of characteristics. Someone else looks at that same idea and understands: this is a democratic state, but he sees different characteristics there. Yes? Whether judges can be appointed by politicians or cannot be appointed by politicians. He claims that this is what fits the idea, and I claim that that is what fits the idea. That is our dispute, because we are talking about the same idea. And that means that the collection of characteristics comes after the baptism of the concept, not before it. We do not take a collection of characteristics, put them in one package, put a heading on them, a word, and thus baptize the concept, create the concept—it works the other way around. We… How does that work in the case of “Jew”? One second, one second. We understand that there is a concept, by some kind of observation, and after we understand that concept we try to define what its characteristics are. Okay? Those definitions come after I grasp the concept, not before. Yes, you wanted to comment, Shlomo? I wanted to ask how this is expressed in the concept “Jew.” After all, Jew is not something where we saw something and said, oh, there it is, let’s characterize it. How did we not see it? Of course we saw it—why do you say we didn’t see it? You don’t see it with your eyes. Concepts are not observed with the eyes. You observe them with the mind’s eye, yes, with your intuition. The way one observes ideas. You observe this through a thought process, not with your eyes. You don’t see the concept “democratic state.” Of course, I didn’t mean seeing with the eyes literally. I mean, for example, the concept “Jew” comes from some kind of rules gathered over time, doesn’t it? Okay, but they are the result of observation. You have the concept Jew, you try to define what in your eyes a Jew is, what its essential characteristics are, what its accidental characteristics are, and that’s how you produce the concept—or define the concept. Not produce it. Like “democratic state”; there’s no principled difference. I’m not saying all concepts are like that. There may be concepts that are the result of agreement. But I do think many concepts are like that, as against Kripke, who argues that there are no such concepts. Okay? And if we say that “Jew” is a concept determined by Jewish law, then is there someone who determined the rules of what a Jew looks like? No, even regarding Jew you need to look at it more broadly. Right now you’re looking at the question of how you produce a Jew, and I’m asking the question what a Jew is. That’s not the same thing. For example, Jew in the cultural sense. What is a Jew in the cultural sense? Some will say, I don’t know, someone who speaks Hebrew, reads Hebrew literature, I don’t know, lives in Israel. And I say no—someone loyal to Jewish law. That is the cultural definition of a Jew. There is no other definition, in my opinion. Got it, thank you. But that is the result of observation of what Judaism is, what the concept Jew is. It is a kind of observation—not with the eyes, but intellectual observation. Okay? Good. The claim, really, is the following claim: a concept is not the collection of its characteristics. Not just the collection of its characteristics. The collection of characteristics are characteristics of the concept. The concept is the bearer of the characteristics. It is that of which the characteristics are characteristics. That is the concept. I’ll perhaps give you an example in the context of objects. I talked about concepts; that’s abstract. Let’s talk about objects. Okay? I want to understand what a table is. Okay? Not the concept of table—the object table. What is a table? So it has all kinds of properties, right? The table here is made of wood, it has four legs, it’s white. It has all kinds of properties. There are properties essential to the table, there are properties accidental to the table, because color is not essential, but the fact that it has a flat surface and can be used for eating, writing, I don’t know what kinds of uses—that is essential. So I know there are essential characteristics and accidental characteristics, and that’s how I understand the concept “table.” How do I know which characteristics are essential and which accidental? After all, if in the end this is a matter of agreed definition, then any collection of characteristics can be a concept. The moment I say there are essential characteristics and accidental characteristics, that means there is something truly table-like and something not critical—meaning it can be a characteristic of tables but it also might not be. So how do I determine that? How do I know what is essential and what is accidental? By observing the idea of the table. Kripke won’t be able to explain that. Kripke will say: we need to ask those who coined the concept what they meant. What is the essential characteristic and what is the accidental characteristic—that is simply an arbitrary decision. Just ask them. Let them leave it in writing if they’ve died, because otherwise it’ll be impossible to decide. But I claim this is the result of observation. It is not a question of what the group that agreed to use this concept, that coined it, decided. I claim there is some kind of observation here that yields a collection of characteristics. Then that means—sorry—couldn’t one say that they determined it through observation, and then it was set and that’s it? Fine, but then it’s the result of observation, not the result of agreement. I don’t care that there was also agreement. The agreement arose out of observation. If the agreement arose out of observation, that’s observation and not agreement. There is no agreement out of observation; there is observation in which everyone sees the same thing. Agreement means that we make an agreement. It’s something arbitrary. Conventionalism means that it’s the result of— That’s the second stage, you have to get there in the end—the agreement arises out of observation, thought, and so on. We have a historical argument: you claim factually that this is how concepts were created—what are we arguing about? I’m telling you that Kripke does not understand it this way. You’re arguing about the meaning of the concept “agreement.” Agreement in the sense of a contract, or in the sense that we understand the same thing. I simply think agreement is the second stage—that once there is agreement, that’s it, no one can take ownership of the concept anymore, because it’s… Why? What I’m saying is: if you say it’s the result of agreement, then you’re talking about convention. Then there is no observation—that’s how Kripke understood it. If you’re talking according to what I see, then I say it’s the result of observation. I don’t care that afterward there was also agreement, that’s not interesting, but originally it didn’t come from—it doesn’t begin with agreement. It begins—it’s like saying that this table is white because we all agree. We all agree, but it isn’t white because we agree. We agree because it is white. Now Kripke claims it is white because we agree. Okay, he’s not talking about a table, he’s talking about concepts; I’m only bringing the example. Okay? So that’s something else. I’m not claiming there wasn’t an agreement along the way so a dictionary could be written, but it didn’t begin in agreement. Agreement is not the baptism of the concept. Agreement is only giving certification to what we recognized. Okay? So what this really means is that just as, say, if I ask what a table is, then you say: a table is being an object made of wood, with a flat surface and four legs, intended for such-and-such use. That is the collection of characteristics of the table. But that is not the table. Those are the properties of the table. What is the table? The table is the object of which these are the properties. It is not the collection of properties. The object is not the collection of properties. The table is this object, of which these properties are properties. Yes, the example I bring for this is Leibniz’s claim. I discuss these things, by the way, in the book Two Carts, in the second section. The example I bring in this context is Leibniz’s claim about the identity of indiscernibles. Meaning, he wanted to argue that if there are two objects that have exactly the same set of properties, then it is the same object. Not that one is identical to the other, but that there is only one object here, not two. I’m not talking about two objects that are identical twins. They’re not twins; there is only one child here. Meaning, if the collection of characteristics of object A and the collection of characteristics of object B are exactly identical, then there are not two objects A and B; there is only one object. That’s his claim. He even has a proof for this matter. What is the proof? Let’s assume it’s not true. A proof by contradiction. Suppose it’s not true. Suppose that object A and object B have the same set of characteristics and yet they are still two objects. Two different objects—I mean not different in their properties, but separate; they are two and not one. Okay? They are separate, sorry, not that they are not identical. They are identical in their properties but they are separate because they are two. Okay? Then Leibniz says: if that were possible, then object A has the property that it is not B, and B has the property that it is not A. That means B has some property that A does not have. But that contradicts the assumption that their sets of properties are identical. Characteristics, properties—it’s the same thing, yes? And therefore by contradiction it cannot be. So clearly it is the same object. Not two identical objects—there’s no such thing, Leibniz says, as two identical objects. There’s no such thing. One of the characteristics must always differ; otherwise it is the very same object. Now, clearly that’s not true. Clearly that’s not true. It’s complete nonsense. I don’t remember who said the famous line that there are absurdities so great that only an intellectual could say them. Meaning only academics, yes, depending on the context. This thing is simply not true. It’s obvious that there can be two different objects with exactly the same set of properties. Where is the dispute? The dispute is over the question: Leibniz apparently assumes that the object is simply the collection of its properties. There is nothing there except the collection of properties. Then he says: if there are two objects with the same collection of properties, then it is the same object itself. What is there in the object besides the collection of properties? So if these are two identical collections of properties, then it’s the same object. And I claim what I claimed before: no. The object is not the collection of properties. The object is that object of which these are the properties. An object is an object, not a collection of properties. A collection of properties is not an object. A collection of properties characterizes the object; they are properties of an object. The object is the bearer of the properties. And now, if that’s so, then Leibniz’s argument immediately collapses on its own. Because I’m basically saying there are two objects, objects that just happen to have exactly the same set of properties, but they are two different objects—not different in their properties, but distinct from one another. Meaning, the difference between Leibniz’s view and the view I’m presenting here lies in the question whether you accept that there is something in the object beyond the collection of its properties: the object itself, the bearer of the properties. What Aristotle called the matter and the form of the thing. The matter of the thing is the thing itself, and the form is the collection of its properties—not necessarily geometric form, but the characteristics, the collection of its characteristics. Once you understand that objects have matter and not only form, then there is no obstacle at all to there being two different objects with the same set of properties. What is wrong with the proof? After all, Leibniz brought a proof—a proof by contradiction, in his view. He said: if they are two different objects, then A has the property that it is not B, and B does not have that property, so that means their sets of properties are not identical. Where is his mistake? The mistake is that when you say A is not B, that is not a property. That is speaking about the object, not about its properties. You’re saying that A is distinct from B, not that it is different from B. It is distinct from B in the sense that it is another object, not an object with different properties. Therefore this has nothing to do with the properties at all. So to say that A is not B is not a property. Why did Leibniz assume it was a property? Because from Leibniz’s perspective there is really nothing except the set of properties. The object is nothing but the collection of its properties. So he smuggles the conclusion into his proof. By the way, twentieth-century physics even provides examples. There are particles in physics called bosons, after Bose, an Indian physicist, that are completely identical in all their properties. And still we count how many particles there are. And they are distinct from one another. There can be a cluster—a condensation. There is a well-known Bose-Einstein effect, a joint phenomenon of Bose and Einstein together, where they discovered that these bosons, at sufficiently low temperatures, all enter the same state and all receive exactly the same set of properties. All the particles. It could be a hundred particles, a thousand particles, or a hundred million particles. All with exactly the same properties. So in what sense are there a hundred particles here? According to Leibniz there aren’t a hundred; it’s one particle. But no, there are a hundred. So where did he fall? What? Where did Leibniz go wrong? Where? Only in the definition? Only in the definition? In thinking that there is nothing in the object except the set of properties. So he defined differently from what the Rabbi defined. He didn’t define; he claimed there is nothing else beyond that. That’s a claim about reality. But you see that in reality there are two objects identical in their properties, yet they are two. What—to say that this is one? You won’t see that in reality. If you see it in reality you’ll see them in different places. Place is also a property. And I claim they can also be in the same place. The fact that two objects cannot be in the same place is a physical problem, not a logical problem. On the physical level—on the logical level they can also be in the same place. And indeed with bosons, for example, there is no obstacle to their being in the same place. This is a consequence of the rigidity of the object; there is no logical problem in two different objects being in the same place. In any case, what I basically want to sharpen through this is that, with objects, this is simple. With objects it is not right to identify the object with the collection of its characteristics. The object is the thing that bears the characteristics, of which those characteristics are its characteristics. And I say all this in order to make the same claim about concepts. I want to claim that even with concepts it is not right to identify the concept with the collection of its characteristics. That is already a bit less intuitive. Because seemingly that is exactly my dispute with Kripke. What does Kripke say? The concept is nothing but the collection of characteristics you chose. And I say no. There is some idea in the world of ideas, and that is what is called a democratic state. I look at that idea and try to conceptualize it, to define it through—what?—a collection of characteristics. But the collection of characteristics does not constitute the idea. On the contrary, I first understand what the idea is, and then define for myself what its collection of characteristics is, not the other way around. I’ll bring you a very interesting example from an Argentinian writer named Borges. Borges was an Argentinian writer who for some reason didn’t win the Nobel Prize—shame on the Nobel committee. The man was an extraordinary genius. I think that if there is one writer about whom one can say clearly that he is simply a total genius, it is Borges. So he has a book of short stories—in Hebrew translation by Bronowski—it’s called Fictions, and there the first or second story, I don’t remember, one of the first stories, is called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” Tlön is the name of—of course it’s all crazy fantasy; he wrote fantasy stories. Tlön is the name of a planet populated by idealist philosophers under the leadership of Bishop Berkeley, who was an idealist, a Scottish philosopher, maybe British of some sort, I think Scottish, who was an idealist. What does idealist mean, or if you want solipsist? It’s basically a philosopher who doesn’t believe in the existence of an external world or of objects; everything exists in my consciousness, and there is no indication that there is really something outside. Again, there are absurdities only philosophers can say. In any case, that is idealism. Now they lived on that planet, Tlön, and the whole story revolves around that planet—as if they find all sorts of documents and encyclopedias describing what happens on that planet. So he says as follows: “One day it was decided once and for all that Berkeley’s arguments leave no room for any reply and are not persuasive in the least.” I’m reading here from the book, simply from the book itself, from my own notes where I brought passages from his book. “As applied to the Earth, this statement is completely true. In Tlön, it is completely false. The nations of this planet are by nature idealist. Their language in all its forms, their religion, literature, and metaphysics, are founded on idealism. For them the world is not a combination of objects in space but a heterogeneous series of independent acts, successive and temporal, not spatial. There are no nouns in Ursprache”—whatever, that’s the supposed original language of Tlön from which the present languages and dialects derive. “There are verbs, impersonal, qualified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes with adverbial force.” In a moment you’ll understand. For example, “there is no word corresponding to the word moon.” Why not? Because in their world there is no moon—moon is an object. They do not believe in the existence of an external world, only in what I perceive within myself. In other words, they do not believe in the existence of objects, only in collections of properties that exist in my thought or consciousness. So look how they describe the moon. “There is no word corresponding to moon, because there are no nouns in their language, because there are no objects. So how do they speak? There is, however, a verb which in Spanish”—the story was written in Spanish—“would mean to moon or to moonate.” You can moonate, but there is no moon, because to moonate is a phenomenon existing in my consciousness. I see that something is mooning, but there isn’t really a moon. Therefore we are idealists. Now look. For example, “the moon rose above the river.” Someone who wants to say this sentence in our language: “the moon rose above the river.” The concept moon is illegal in the language of Tlön, and the concept river is illegal, because these are nouns. So how do they say it? “Hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö,” whatever all his nonsense is—it’s obviously all invented—“which means, in order: up behind the onstreaming it mooned.” You see? That’s a sentence without nouns. There are no nouns. “The onstreaming” is really the river. So yes, the onstreaming is really a phenomenon. Because the river as an object doesn’t exist. And moon also doesn’t exist, only “it mooned.” There was a mooning phenomenon above the ongoing streaming phenomenon. That means the moon rose above the river. Okay? So that is really just a clarification of the absurdity of the view. Of course he’s mocking the idealists, yes? He is basically saying: in your language there can’t be nouns. You are supposed to speak in terminology made entirely of verbs or adverbs. Okay? You cannot speak with nouns. Now look at what a brilliant passage comes next. How does he continue now? “What has been said applies to the languages of the Southern Hemisphere. In the languages of the Northern Hemisphere of the Ursprache”—there’s little data, yes, of course it’s all his nonsense—“the basic unit is not the verb but the monosyllabic adjective.” Okay? They basically have one syllable that is an adjective. “The noun is formed by an accumulation of adjectives. One does not say moon.” They don’t say moon there in the Southern Hemisphere, but they also don’t say “it mooned” like in the Northern Hemisphere, where it’s an adverbial sort of thing. Rather, what do they say there? Instead of moon they say “aerial-bright on dark-round,” basically describing its properties, right? The modes in which we perceive it. “Or orange-faint-of-sky,” or some other combination. Now that’s in the Southern Hemisphere. Now look at the next passage—it’s brilliant. Just brilliant. It’s a brilliant philosophical idea. He says: “In the example I have chosen”—look at the next sentence—“in the example I have chosen, the accumulation of adjectives corresponds to a real object: the moon.” We know it’s a real object. The idealists, of course, think there are no objects, so they describe it through adjectives, or through a cluster of adjectives. “This fact is entirely accidental.” It just happens that this term in their language—their “it mooned” or their “aerial-bright on dark-round”—we know how to translate into our language as “moon.” Because in our language there are objects. “In the literature of this hemisphere, as in the subsistent world of Meinong, ideal objects abound, summoned and dissolved in an instant according to poetic needs. They are determined by simultaneity alone. There are objects composed of two terms, one visual and one auditory: the color of the rising sun and the cry of a bird.” That’s an object. In the world of Tlön, that’s an object. Why? Because the color of the rising sun is a property of something, right? A visual property. And the cry of a bird in the distance is an audio property, right? A sound property. Okay? He connects two properties, or two characteristics, and defines them as a concept or an object. Because from the perspective of that planet even the moon doesn’t really exist, so why can’t you connect “aerial-bright on dark-round” or “orange-faint-of-sky,” and why can’t you connect “the color of the rising sun” and “the cry of a bird in the distance”? What’s the problem? In other words, if we return to our examples from earlier in this lesson, any collection of properties—you define it under some concept, and there you have a concept. There is no reason for these properties to have any connection. For example, when we speak of a table, we are used to the fact that now let’s return, leave aside Borges’s nonsense, okay? Let’s return to our world. In our world, we know there are tables. So naturally we define the concept “table” according to the object table. And we say: what characterizes the objects called tables is what is called the concept table. Right? But the concept “democratic state,” for example, is not built that way. Before there were democratic states, the idea of democracy was born. The idea of democracy existed before there were democratic states. On the contrary, democratic states were established in order to realize the idea of democracy. Now I ask: at the stage when there still are no democratic states, what is the concept democracy? It’s a collection of characteristics. Why did you collect דווקא this collection of characteristics and not the color of the rising sun and the cry of a bird in the distance? That too is a collection of characteristics; you can connect them and make a concept out of them. What’s the problem? It doesn’t have to correspond to an object that exists in the world. At that stage a democratic state also did not correspond to any object that existed in the world. So why not connect those too? Now this is, in my view, a brilliant illustration of the problem in conventionalism. Because what he is basically claiming—now I translate from literature into philosophy—what he is basically claiming is that someone who thinks—and now I leave objects and move to concepts—someone who thinks there is no concept itself, no object of the concept, no matter of the concept, but only a collection of characteristics, so that concepts have only form and no matter, then in principle there is no limitation on producing as many concepts as you want. Any collection of characteristics—attach a word to it, or a syllable, or whatever, and you have created a concept. Why produce specifically the collection of characteristics “free elections, human rights, and separation of powers”? Why not “separation of powers, located on a seashore, and green in color”? That too is a concept. Let’s call that concept greenocracy. I don’t know—call it whatever you want. What’s the problem? According to Kripke, any collection of characteristics can be connected together, attach a word to it, and you’ve created a concept. Why is it obvious to all of us that this isn’t right? Why not every collection of characteristics? Some will tell you: because there are no objects that instantiate that concept—in our world there are no such objects. First of all, not true. There can be green states located on a seashore with separation of powers. In principle that can exist. It would just seem to us unhelpful, irrelevant, uninteresting—but it can exist. Second, before there were any democratic states at all, people still invented or established the concept of democracy. There too there were no objects fitting that concept. So there wasn’t such an object then? There was. So why did they decide on that particular object? Because they understood—and that’s my answer—because Kripke is wrong. Because what is involved here is not collecting characteristics and attaching a word to a given collection of characteristics. Rather, this concept exists in the world of ideas. I observe the concept “democratic state,” which has existed since the creation of the world. It wasn’t instantiated. There was no such state until the seventeenth or eighteenth century, when the first democracies were founded, okay? But it wasn’t instantiated; as an idea it existed. And the people who created or conceptualized this concept observed the idea. They suddenly understood that they were grasping some concept in which there is a connection between its characteristics. Its characteristics combine and create some cluster that has meaning. It’s not just some collection of characteristics like the color of the rising sun and the cry of a bird in the distance—they do not connect in any way. But the concepts we talk about are concepts in which there is some connection between their characteristics. When you gather all the characteristics, some whole emerges here to which it makes sense to attach a word. There is a concept here. And notice: I’m talking even before there are objects in the world that instantiate this concept, because I already see it in the world of ideas. The people who came up with the idea of democracy did not arrive at it by observing states—there were no such states yet. They arrived at it because they suddenly discerned the existence of an idea that before their time no one had discerned. That is a discovery. It’s a discovery like discovering lands, only in the world of ideas and not in our physical world. That is my claim. And my claim is that the world of concepts resembles the world of objects. In the world of concepts too, as in the world of objects, the concepts exist. They exist in some sense—this is of course a Platonic view—they exist in the world of ideas. The ideas exist, we observe the ideas and try to conceptualize what we see—see not with the eyes, of course, but with the mind’s eye. And from that conceptualization comes the definition of the concept. That is how concepts are created. That’s really the claim. And when I argue over the question of who is a Jew, for example, we have a real dispute. We are looking at the same concept, and we ask ourselves what definition really captures it. What really correctly describes that same idea we are both observing. And therefore we have a dispute. I say one thing and he says another. And it won’t help for me to say to him, you call your concept “Israeli” and I’ll call my concept “Jew.” We are talking about the same concept. But we have different characteristics, a different set of characteristics, because after all we have a disagreement. Right? We have a disagreement over how to conceptualize the same idea that we are both observing. The same thing raises another question here—Hilary Putnam was also a philosopher, also Jewish by the way, who drew closer to Judaism toward the end of his life, one of the great figures in analytic philosophy. I myself still met him at Ben-Gurion University in his last years. He used to come to Israel at least once a year and give seminars at Ben-Gurion. He was a hard-core analytic philosopher, tough. And he argued that basically you cannot change the definition of a concept. Why? Because the moment you change the definition, you’re simply no longer talking about the same concept. Let’s say the concept “Jew” is someone born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted according to Jewish law. Now someone comes and says no—it’s someone who lives in Israel, speaks Hebrew, pays taxes, and reads Hebrew literature or consumes Hebrew culture. Okay? So he proposes a change in the definition of the concept “Jew.” Kripke would tell him: you cannot change the definition of a concept, because the definition is the concept. If you propose another definition, then you’re simply talking about a different concept, that’s all. A different concept. It’s not a dispute, and it’s not that the concept has changed. You’re simply not talking about that concept; you’re talking about another concept. You see the parallel. The question whether the definition of a concept can change, or whether a dispute over a concept is possible, is the same question. Because basically the conventionalists, who claim that the concept is nothing but the collection of its characteristics, will say that there cannot be a dispute over a concept, and there cannot be a change in the definition of the concept. Because the moment the definition is different, you are simply speaking about a different concept. By contrast, what I’m proposing—I call it essentialism—is that there is the essence of the concept, the idea. Then there can be a dispute between two people or two groups who are arguing about the very same concept and propose different definitions. More than that, it may be that the definition of the concept changes over time. Because its appearance in our world is different from its appearance in the world one hundred, two hundred, or a thousand years ago. And therefore I claim that the definition of the concept has changed, but it is the same concept. Think of a person who grows up. I say it’s the same person, even though now he is one meter eighty and before he was one meter twenty. It’s the same person; he just grew. I claim that concepts not only exist, they also develop. This development is something that happens in the world. It’s not only an intellectual matter. On the intellectual plane we grasp it. But it is something that happens. Therefore it may be that a concept will receive different, changing definitions. And it may be that there will be a dispute over the definition of a concept while we are speaking about the same concept. And when I say there will be a dispute, I am not claiming both sides are right. One is right and the other is wrong. But they are speaking about the same concept. You cannot part in such a dispute by my giving you one word and taking another word for myself, and then part as friends. That can only work according to Kripke. But according to my view it cannot. Because we are speaking about the same concept, and we need to decide who is right. There is a right and a wrong here. This is not a conventional question, a matter of agreement. There is truth here. In a certain sense it is an empirical question. Empirical, of course, not for the senses but for the mind’s eye. But it is the result of observation, and we need to decide who is right. And I’ll just conclude at this stage in order to connect this to everything we said before. What I basically want to argue is that conceptual analysis is done by observing the idea of the concept. I’ll return to the things we did and also illustrate this through further examples, but that is really my claim. That is the meaning of conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis is nothing but a kind of observation—observation with the mind’s eye upon the world of concepts, the world of ideas. Not sensory observation. If sensory observation is done on objects, observation with the mind’s eye is done on ideas. Okay, that is basically my claim, and I made an analogy between ideas and concepts. Okay, I’ll stop here. Does anyone want to comment or ask something? Thank you very much. More power to you. You’re welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay then, goodbye. Good night. Have a peaceful Sabbath. Peaceful Sabbath.