Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

There aren't any "empirical concepts" as traditionally conceived by
philosophers and psychologists of the last century.  These concepts were
traditionally thought to be indicated just by exhibiting a word: "the
concept dog" or "our concept of a university." They were thought to be or
correspond to structures within the mind common to all persons who
understood such a word. A concept was the sort of thing that you could
grasp and I could grasp too -- the very same concept.  I will argue that
there are no such things -- that no similarities whatever can be taken
for granted between two person's ideas corresponding to the same
empirical term. Words for empirical properties and kinds refer directly,
without mediation, to real entities in the world -- to properties, to
real kinds  -- as in the case of individuals.  To make this case I will
have to talk first about the structure of the world, and of the language
that makes reference to it.  Then I must explain what is in the mind
instead of a concept when someone understands an empirical term.  Third,
I must explain how the minds of different individual language users are
able to grasp a common world through the medium of language.