CEFISES Seminar: Pilar Terrés Villalonga, « Concept possession for inconsistent concepts »

Series: OLOFOS

Speaker: Pilar Terrés Villalonga (Universitat de València)

Title: « Concept possession for inconsistent concepts »

Abstract

Inconsistent concepts, understood, following Scharp, Eklund and Liggins, as concepts whose constitutive principles entail something that is not the case, pose a challenge to theories about concept possession. Paradigmatic examples include Prior’s connective TONK, but scientific notions and slur terms have been included under the category. After examining the common features of these sort of infelicitous concepts, I suggest a contextualist account which makes their legitimacy relative to a context of use. This view offers a natural solution to a problem that inconsistent concepts pose to theories about concept possession: the intuitive view that to possess a concept is to believe or endorse its constitutive principles commits competent speakers to endorse their false consequences. After exploring the different solutions to the puzzle in the literature, I suggest a refinement of a conditionalized approach to concept constitution (following Boghossian (2003)), which goes in line with the defended contextualist view.