Place's article avoids dealing with an explicit analysis of mental concepts, in part because Place's goal is to demonstrate the logical possibility of the identity theory, and the logical possibility doesn't seem to depend on a particular analysis of the concepts involved. But, in order to provide a substantive identity theory, more work needs to be done: namely, and understanding of the meaning of mental concepts. In other words: Place makes a good case that "consciousness is a brain process" could be on similar footing with "lightning is electric charges." But, it seems much easier to understand the meaning of "lightning" than it is to understand the meaning of "consciousness", or any other mental concept.
I love Armstrong's honesty in admitting that he's not quite sure what's going on in conceptual analysis. This topic is bound to come up again and again during our readings. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, Armstrong does not solve the problem of conceptual analysis here. However, I want to point out two interesting things going on in his discussion of conceptual analysis:
(1) The idea of conceptual analysis as a research program (a la Lakatos) seems like a refreshing way to think about the nature of, and possible progress in, philosophical analysis. I'm pretty sure that Lakatos' approach to scientific theories has only been applied to the study of theory development/change in the natural sciences, and not to the social sciences. So it's a pretty big jump to think of conceptual analysis in philosophy along these lines. Still...
(2) Is the conceptual analysis of poison actually similar to the conceptual analysis of mental concepts? I don't know. What would a conceptual analysis of lightning look like? What does Armstrong mean when he says "it is surely not an empirical fact, to be learnt by experience, that poisons kill."
Armstrong and the Problem of the Secondary Qualities: Part of this I think has to do with qualia issues that we'll get to in future readings. His first response looks similar to Place's discussion of the phenomenological fallacy. Then he moves on to the nature of secondary qualities such as color. I'm content to leave this issue alone for the time being.
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I think Armstrong was making the comical point that we don't learn that poisons kill by testing them ourselves. At least that's how I read him. But it may be relevant that the concept POISON is ambiguous between a category of chemical substances and a category of intentional/unintentional action. The two conceptions appear to be logically independent, there are poisonous substances whether or not anything uses one to harm something else (I suggest, since we're on the subject of conceptual ties). Alos, since different substances are poisons for differnt organisms, analyzing/identifying POISON, on either reading, seems like it might be an interesting case of contingent identity; one dependent on context. What would Kripke say? I always liked that show 'Venom ER'. POISON, if we want it to constitute a category of anything, must be a superordinate category, since there are neuro-toxins, bacterial toxins, etc.
Remember the analytic-synthetic distinction. Many philosophers traditionally distinguish between analytic and synthetic statement.
Roughly, analytic statements are true or false in virtue of their meaning. Synthetic statements require information beyond their meaning to determine whether they are true or false.
If you understand the meaning of the word 'poison,' you know that poisons kill (or at least do harm). You don't need to do experiments with poisons because if you find a putative poison that does no harm, you haven't found a harmless poison but rather something that is not a poison at all! You can reach this conclusion just by learning and applying the meaning of the word 'poison'. This is presumably what Armstrong meant by his statement about poisons.
The traditional project of conceptual analysis was to discover analytic truths by analyzing the meaning of terms. Unfortunately, Quine and others raised serious doubts that there is an analytic-synthetic distction sharp enough to underwrite such a project. That's one reason many of us are skeptical of many traditional forms of "conceptual analysis". Another reason is that examples of successful and nontrivial conceptual analyses are very few.
In Lakatos's terms, it appears that conceptual analysis is a degenerating research program.
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