Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

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Concepts, Prototypes, Person. Does cognitive science solve cultural problems or does it merely dissolve their specificity? Sara Dellantonio, University of Trento, Italy and Luigi Pastore, University of Bari, Italy In Alvin Goldman’s opinion cognitive researches on concepts may help to find a universal foundation for moral concepts. This paper deals with some problems of this thesis, discussing Goldman’s position according to which prototype theories show that the instance ‘foetus’ is included in the concept ‘person’. Firstly, the paper discusses why prototype theories do not supply any necessary criterion for determining the inclusion of ‘foetus’ in ‘person’ and why, on the contrary, there are reasons for hypothesizing that they support the opposite conclusion. Secondly, it shows that the classical theory, which has been abandoned by the cognitive research, still keep a central role into moral theories. Finally, it investigates the contribution of cognitive research to ethics. 1. Introduction In his Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science Alvin Goldman proposes an ambitious program: to show how the foundation for many philosophical problems lie in the cognitive research. One of the most interesting aspects of this program concerns ethics and the attempt to construct a moral view on the basis of the cognitive theory of concepts, since this theory gives the possibility to examine “the cognitive materials deployed by moral judges or evaluators in thinking about moral matters” (Goldman 1993, 125) and is therefore able to explain how we represent the concepts that constitute our moral theories. Goldman’s aim is to analyse moral concepts through the cognitive theory of concepts in order to get rid of their ‘cultural superstructure’ and to reduce them to their fundamental dimension: i.e. to the universal informational content and principles of formation that the mind uses to develop all concepts including the moral ones. What this fundamental dimension could supply, is an a-priori, nonhistorical, non-social foundation for the moral thought which could be used as criterion to settle the difficulties arising from the plurality of moral theories developed in different philosophical traditions, cultures or historical periods. The example that Goldman discusses more exhaustively and that we examine in this paper is that of ‘person’: “How does concept representation bear on moral philosophy? It turns out that in many areas of moral philosophy there is much controversy over whether a certain item is an instance of a certain concept. For example, on the issue of abortion it is controversial whether a foetus is an instance of a person […].” (Goldman 1993, 128) According to Goldman, the cognitive theory helps to understand how (on which basis and in which way) the mind produces judgments of conceptual inclusion (i.e. categorical judgments) and comes to subsume a certain instance (like ‘foetus’) into a certain concept (‘person’). Goldman’s considerations aren’t limited to a general level, but he outlines a theory of the concept of ‘person’. He states that the cognitive research shows the failure of the classical theory of concepts, according to which concepts are rigorous definitions, and the necessity to explain concepts through a prototype theory. The classical theory particularly maintains that “concepts encode necessary and sufficient conditions for their own application” (Margolis, Laurence 2000, 9) which allow to decide univocally whether a certain instance does or does not belong to a concept. ‘Bachelor’ is characterized for instance by the conditions male, adult and not married: these conditions decide that ‘bachelors’ are all and only them, who are male, adults and not married. Unlike this model prototype theories propose a more flexible conception of concepts that aims to explain two aspects of concepts 1 : I. the phenomenon of typicality, according to which certain instances are better examples of a concept than others (going back to the bachelor example – a forty-year-old man is a better example of adult than an eighteen-year-old one) and II. the fact that categorical judgments are often uncertain and subjectively variable (leaving aside the jurisprudence, are we able to say for sure whether a sixteen-year-old person is an adult?). Since from a cognitive point of view prototype theories are considered more plausible than the classical ones, Goldman proposes to give up classical definitions of moral concepts in favour of an approach based on prototype theories. “Often people try to settle this issue by trying to find necessary and sufficient conditions for being a person. This search presupposes, however, that such a definition is in principle forthcoming, that we (tacitly) represent the concept of a person in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. It may be, however, that our representation of this concept […] has a prototype structure. This may support a conclusion that the foetus is an instance of person but a highly atypical instance. No such conclusion could directly settle the abortion controversy, of course, but it could significantly affect our theoretical reflections on the issue.” (Goldman 1993, 128- 9) The paper aims to show: 1. why prototype theories do not supply any necessary cognitive criterion to determine that ‘foetus’ is an instance of ‘person’ and why, on the contrary, there are reasons for hypothesizing that they support the opposite conclusion; 2. why the classical theory still keep a central role into moral theories; and 3. which is the contribution that the cognitive research can make to ethics. 2. A prototypical ‘person’? Prototype theories differ from the classical ones insofar as they give a different explanation of the way in that individuals produce categorical judgments. According to prototype theories concepts I. may be better exemplified by specific, particularly typical instances and II. have 1 Prototype theories (plural) or prototype view is preferable to prototype theory (singular), since there are many models based on prototype slightly different from each other. About prototype theories vs. classical ones see e.g. Murphy 2004, ch.2. 73
structures that tend to shade off in their periphery, producing uncertain judgments in case of non-typical instances. Leaving aside the differences among the various prototype theories, they start in general from the idea that categorical judgments are based on sufficient, but not on necessary conditions. Since they refuse necessary conditions, it is impossible for such theories to decide a priori on which and on how many properties an instance must have in order to belong to a certain concept. According to the prototype view concepts encode a statistical analysis of the features that their instances tend to have. This means that the conditions of a certain concept can be weighted differently, depending on their typicality, this is on how frequently the properties corresponding with these conditions occur in the instances of the concept. (See Margolis, Laurence 2000, 27) Let us consider the example of ‘bird’ in relation to the conditions to fly and to speak: neither fly nor speak are necessary conditions of ‘bird’, since there are birds that do not fly (like penguins) and birds that do not speak (almost all, apart from parrots and few more). Nevertheless, differently from ‘to speak’ – which is a property of very few species of births – ‘to fly’ is an extremely frequent and therefore extremely typical property of births that has a remarkably superior weight for the categorial judgment of ‘bird’. What the prototype theories say, in short, is that categorical judgments are based on conditions which vary depending on the considered instances, and that the number of the sufficient conditions for producing the judgment depends on the degree of typicality of the properties found in the instance to be judged. The peculiarity of prototype theories in comparison to the classical model is exactly that they give up a view according to which concepts produce a rigorous structuring of the ‘cognitive material’, deciding univocally which instances do or do not belong to them. Because these theories refuse necessary conditions, they are weaker than the classical model, in the sense that they can determine for sure the result of a categorical judgment only with respect to the typical cases of a concept. Metaphorically, the image of concepts that emerge from prototype theories do not describe well-defined elements, juxtaposed with each other, but a spectrum of colours that shades off into each other and that are object of certain judgments (surely red, orange or yellow etc.) only in some precise places of the spectrum. Exactly because of this constitutive inaccuracy of prototype theories it is extremely counter-productive to appeal to them to settle subtle disputes about the inclusion of an instance in a concept. Therefore, if we consider Goldman’s problem to determine whether ‘foetus’ is an instance of ‘person’ using the prototype theory, we cannot consider the concept of ‘person’ in isolation, but we have to take into account a continuous conceptual spectrum that goes from ‘cell’ (or ‘agglomerate of cells’) to ‘person’. The prototype view does not allow to determine that ‘foetus’ is doubtlessly an atypical example of ‘person’, instead of an atypical example of ‘cells’. Exactly because of the difficulties caused by this categorial judgment, the conceptual apparatus of our languages and in particular of the medical languages has created (by virtue of a cultural option) intermediate classes as ‘foetus’ and ‘embryo’ that distinguish themselves progressively both from ‘person’ and from ‘cells’. If we want to indeed hazard an hypothesis about the ‘cognitive materials’ that constitute the concept of ‘person’ 74 Concepts, Prototypes, Person. Does cognitive … - Sara Dellantonio / Luigi Pastore in the spirit of the prototype theories as an approach to the conceptual constitution centred on the processing of empirical information, perceptively accessible to subjects, this concept should be plausibly explained on the basis of some empirical characteristics that correspond to the typical aspect of humans (legs, arms, head etc.) together with some ‘mental’ characteristics, (that e.g. allow to distinguish a person from a dummy) and that are experienced through the observation of the interactions and reactions uniquely peculiar to humans. If we accept the plausibility of this hypothesis, then we should conclude that foetus isn’t necessarily part of the concept of person because it misses the features that characterize the cognitive materials used for constituting the concept of ‘person’ like the physical form and the possibility to mentally react and interact. From this point of view, a categorical judgment according to which ‘foetus’ is an instance of person can only depend on the beliefs that subjects learn socially and that – through learning – become part of the cognitive materials of concepts. However, the distinction implicit to the previous reflections between a conceptual core, developed through the processing of perceptive information alone, and a cultural superstructure that grows around this core, imply that – differently from what Goldman states – there isn’t anything ‘natural’ (alias universal or fundamental with respect to ethics) in the categorical judgment according to which ‘foetus’ is an instance of ‘person’. 3. Moral theories and the normativeness of definitions As a cognitive theory about the way in which humans represent tacitly the concepts, the classical approach results inadequate. For this reason Goldman suggests abandoning the search of necessary and sufficient conditions for the definition of morally relevant concepts as ‘person’ and to embrace a prototype approach. But, is it really possible to give up the classical approach to moral concepts? First of all it has to be considered that the moral theory has an extremely relevant application in everyday life, that is constituted (primarily 2 ) by the various legal measures of different communities. On ground of its function, law cannot be based on a weak moral theory that isn’t able to determine for sure the results of categorical judgments. A codification of the moral in the law requires to supply the conceptual apparatus of the moral with conditions that allow in every case to discriminate whether an instance does or does not belong to a concept. Going back to the example of foetus/person: while it makes sense to explain the individual uncertainty in the categorical judgment regarding ‘foetus’ using a weak theory like the prototype one, every legislative (social) codification of the concept ‘person’ requires a rigorous definition of ‘person’, equipped with necessary and sufficient conditions for deciding in any case whether something is a person (and has the rights of a person), regardless of individual uncertainties. Indeed, on ground of the necessity of rigorous definitions, moral concepts are often specified in such detail that they may sometimes appear arbitrary: think e.g. at the calculation of the intervening days after fertilization as element for determining the difference between ‘embryo’ and ‘foetus’. 2 Actually, a moral general reflection on this aspect should also include other forms of civic regulations like the ones established by the religions.
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Kulturen: Konflikt-Analyse-Dialog C
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Cultures: Conflict-Analysis-Dialogu
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Inhalt / Contents Inhalt / Contents
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Inhalt / Contents Zar'a-Jacob und W
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Inhalt / Contents A Complicated For
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12 Egoism, Coexistence, and the Pos
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A Naturalistic Method for Therapy n
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«views from nowhere»“ (Geertz 2
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Our thesis is that the dichotomy be
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Der Vorrang der Logik vor der Metap
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3. Potentials and limitations of de
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Es gibt keinen Dissens, es gibt nur
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128 Es gibt keinen Dissens, es gibt
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akademischem Charakter, natürlich
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132 Wittgenstein's Paperwork. An Ex
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Substance and Attribute in the Cont
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136 Substance and Attribute in the
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understands the patient's worldview
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Reflections on Ethics and Cultural
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cultures, unless they fail to heed
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identisch ist. Charakteristischerwe
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Nachdenken über Gewissheit - Zur A
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152 Nachdenken über Gewissheit - Z
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154 Zar'a-Jacob und Walda-Heiwat ü
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Wittgenstein on consciousness in
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158 Wittgenstein on consciousness i
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Normalität vs. Naturalität Das er
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Did you do something wrong if you c
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References 164 Did you do something
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zustandekommt. Der Pyrrhoneer ist g
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Wittgenstein’s “notorious parag
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Instead, Gödel always gives a redu
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our view, this plurality of remarks
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Designation and Ontological Commitm
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176 Designation and Ontological Com
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For one thing, those who appeal to
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On the Impossibility of Solitary Pe
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For instance, it takes creative mor
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184 Wittgensteins Philosophieren f
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Derivativeness, production and reac
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4. Conclusion To conclude, Anscombe
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Our concept of non-compositionality
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„Patamou“ oder „El poder de l
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Literatur Breinbauer, Ines Maria 19
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Persons can also have beliefs about
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Wittgenstein, Cavell, and the Fall
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culture in which laws of the intell
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elated in a world-picture. This I d
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Reservations to Human Rights Treati
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legal jargon calls its “objective
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Worin besteht nun dieser Zusammenha
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Do We Really Need Relativism About
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MacFarlane’s and Kölbel’s view
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It follows from this approach that
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Die Relativität von Gewißheiten K
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egierig aufgegriffen werden, insbes
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220 Natural Language and its Speake
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Der Beitrag einer „Logik der Phil
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230 Der Beitrag einer „Logik der
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einer ausgesprochen lockeren Sprach
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Wittgenstein, Waismann and Non-Eucl
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importance, since it appears no les
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238 Cultural Alterity and Unilatera
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Die Opazität der Oberfläche: Witt
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unserer Sprachspiele durch unsere R
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244 A Perspective of Dialogical Eng
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Double Meant is not Double Good: A
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The Analytic Theory of the A Priori
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not white, so the fact that “snow
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252 Experience and social norms in
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Can there be such thing as a “hop
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feeling that was both thought or fe
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258 Regaining the Sense of the Trac
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Brandom on Holism, Communication, a
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interpersonal communication is real
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264 Action and Morality: A Reflecti
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Peter Singer’s Utilitarianism ver
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References 268 Peter Singer’s Uti
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Wittgenstein affirms that what ‘g
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Spiel der Sprache und Sprachspiel -
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274 Spiel der Sprache und Sprachspi
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276 ‘The riddle does not exist’
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Zur dringend notwendigen Revision d
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280 Zur dringend notwendigen Revisi
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282 • dass einem die Ressourcen z
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Deuten - Missverstehen - ‚Blasphe
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286 Deuten - Missverstehen - ‚Bla
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If we can learn a social practice,
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Keine Anschauungsgrade besitzt hing
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Life’s Infinite Variations: Wittg
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another culture is also the sign of
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296 Against cultural identity: a fa
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Kann eine Person als Urheber ihrer
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300 Kann eine Person als Urheber ih
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Substanz, Kausalität und Freiheit
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Im abschließenden Teil des Vortrag
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verstehen). D.h.: das Verstehen ein
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Towards an Intercultural Phenomenol
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310 Towards an Intercultural Phenom
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feel envy towards his brother witho
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idges chronological distances; for
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Sprache im interkulturellen Dialog
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Abweichung in seinem Sprachgebrauch
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kind of mythology (cf. Wittgenstein
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Social Criticism through Internal a
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Interkulturelle Philosophie in Russ
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326 Interkulturelle Philosophie in
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Wissenschaft begnügen und daher nu
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Das, was er in seinem Brief an Herm
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Essence/Attribute in Islamic Philos
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Konvergenzen in grundlegenden Prinz
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individuellen Freiheit (Stelzer 200
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experience gives an epistemological
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The Fraissè Theorem and Goodman’
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3.5) i) Sentences satisfied by elem
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Outline of Arguments against Natura
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346 Outline of Arguments against Na
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Reason, red in tooth and claw: natu
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Importantly, where Pascal saw in hu
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352 The Significance of Intercultur
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354 Wittgenstein, the artistic way
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A Neo-pragmatist Approach to Interc
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358 A Neo-pragmatist Approach to In
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360 A Neo-pragmatist Approach to In
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Aber der Löwe spricht eben nicht!
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364 Aber der Löwe spricht eben nic
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366 From Anti-Metaphysics to Non-Py
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Respective Justice through Thick an
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Normativity and Novelty Tine Wilde,
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References Baz, Avnar: 2000, ‘Wha
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374 Towards an Intercultural Phenom
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Das Problem des metaphysischen Subj
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378 Das Problem des metaphysischen
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380 Das Problem des metaphysischen
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Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

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