Dorit's Issue Regarding Fodor's Argument
Here's how things stood before the break on
Wednesday.
1. We distinguished concepts themselves'
being compositional (which no one seriously contests) from their possession
conditions' being compositional. Fodor, of course, claims both.
2. There seem to be counterexamples
to the latter: Possession conditions that take the form of stereotypes;
those that are recognitional, if Jerry is right; those that are informational
in Jerry's sense, if Horwich is right.
3. That suggested to Dorit that possession
conditions are never compositional. So she tentatively concluded
that Fodor's article is misleading, in that it isn't really about recognitional
concepts in particular. If she's right, it's worse than that:
Not just that Fodor has proved (if anything) something more general than
he meant to, but that he's proved something that he himself begins by denying.
For he insists that possession conditions are compositional, and
for any alleged type of possession condition that does not compose, there
is no concept that has that possession condition. Thus, if possession
conditions never compose, there are no concepts at all!
4. But Dorit did not give an argument
for the thesis that possession conditions are never compositional, i.e.,
a general argument rather than just a few examples of noncompositional
types of possession condition.
Now, here's a counter-argument, for
the claim that all possession conditions are compositional. Its main
premise (MP) is the Schiffer-Horwich-Grandy-(?)Horgan thesis that we possess
complex concepts simply by knowing how to compose them. (That is,
we possess each of the atomic component concepts, and we know the distinctive
way(s) to stick them together.)
OK, suppose I possess each of C1,
C2 and C3; I satisfy each of their own respective
possession conditions. And suppose I do know the way to stick them
together to get C1+2+3. Then by MP, I automatically possess
C1+2+3. "C1"-"C3" were arbitrarily
selected concepts, so this shows that all possession conditions compose,
QED.
That argument doesn't show that compositionality
for possession conditions is (anything like) analytic, because MP
is a substantive thesis. But if MP is a fairly basic fact about us,
then it's fair to conclude that possession conditions are compositional,
in that if I possess a complex concept's atomic components and know the
way to stick them together, I automatically possess that concept.
Now, I think a weaker version of Dorit's contrary
thesis is correct: Possession conditions of a distinctive kind K
(stereotypical, recognitional, informational,...) will not normally compose
into a complex possession condition of kind K. (Some still
will: The possession conditions of truth-functional connectives probably
compose.)
Is there anything wrong with the Schiffer-Horwich-Grandy-(?)Horgan
thesis? Not that I can see, but I invite further discussion.