The book's discussion is divided into two parts. Chapters 1-5 trace the unnoticed yet occasionally harmful role that uncritical thinking about ‘concepts’ plays within our practical life, whether in guiding scientific progress or simply in the management of our everyday affairs. The motivations central to classical conceptual traditionalists (such as Bertrand Russell) and neo-pragmatic holists (such as W. V. Quine) are sympathetically presented, but it is nonetheless argued that some middle route between these philosophical centres needs to be found. The purpose of the survey of the initial cha ... More

The book's discussion is divided into two parts. Chapters 1-5 trace the unnoticed yet occasionally harmful role that uncritical thinking about ‘concepts’ plays within our practical life, whether in guiding scientific progress or simply in the management of our everyday affairs. The motivations central to classical conceptual traditionalists (such as Bertrand Russell) and neo-pragmatic holists (such as W. V. Quine) are sympathetically presented, but it is nonetheless argued that some middle route between these philosophical centres needs to be found. The purpose of the survey of the initial chapters is to indicate the benchmarks that an improved conception of concept should accommodate. In Chapters 6 and 7, a simple non-classical pattern (called a ‘facade') is formulated, which allows a descriptive practice to encode useful physical information in unexpected ways. The pattern’s utilities are defended through a series of important scientific exemplars and shown to be silently incorporated within various forms of everyday usage as well. Many of the standard philosophical puzzles canvassed earlier in the book are shown to have arisen when a ‘facade’ (or allied descriptive structure) has become mistaken for a simpler form of linguistic arrangement. Awareness of these potential ‘semantic mimicries’ provides a guide to the moderated approach to conceptual evaluation that the book eventually defends. Its concluding chapters map out the allied caution with respect to ‘rigor’ and ‘rule following’ that also needs to be observed, lest a descriptive useful language be prevented from assuming its optimal contours. Because the book is rather long, the preface indicates several abbreviated courses of reading that may help a reader find the material of greatest personal salience.