Anyway, this paper has what looks to be a critique of family
resemblance concepts (FRCs) which is later ‘turned on its head’ and used to highlight a virtue
of seeing illness as a family resemblance concept.
One confusing feature of the paper is that it uses the word ‘extension’
when discussing concepts but not generally to mean the class of things to which a concept
applies (the logical sense of the word). Instead it is more often, at least, the noun formed from the verb ‘extend’. But I wonder
whether this potential ambiguity causes Pickering himself some momentary confusion. That it means
the latter is suggested by the framework of the paper.
Extending a concept refers to
increasing the range of things which can be brought under the concept, or which
fall within a category, or to which a kind term can be applied. The increase is
from a baseline which is the agreed range of usage, reflecting what Wakefield
calls ‘‘relatively uncontroversial and widely shared judgements’’ about what
does (and does not) fall under the concept.
Two conditions are then outlined for such extending: determination and coherence.
An extension should neither go
too far beyond the baseline and include things which should not be included
within the concept; nor fail to go far enough beyond it, and exclude things
which should be included under the concept… Echoing such concerns Horwitz suggests
that to be an ‘‘adequate concept of mental illness’’ a concept must demonstrate
the capacity to ‘‘distinguish conditions that ought to be called ‘mental
illnesses’ from those that ought not’’… The criterion of valid extension
implied by Bellaimey, Horwitz, and Wakefield will be named the criterion of
determination.
[I]ntuitively, random lists of
items do not imply the existence of any covering concept. What, for example, is
the concept implied by (square root of) 9, the chair I’m sitting on, Beijing, and the Mona
Lisa? What is lacking from this set of items is any sense that they belong
together. There is a need for a criterion of coherence.
This argument for the second condition goes too quickly.
There seems no reason to preclude this arbitrary list as instancing a general concept ie having Evansian generality. Let’s call it:
Pickering’s example of random things. We can think of the list under that generality. Under counter-factual conditions, different objects might have occurred to him.
Pickering describes FRCs thus:
The family resemblance approach
can be represented schematically and abstractly... Five things (labelled here
A, B, C, D, E) are agreed to fall under a concept—they form the baseline of
agreed examples. There are also five characteristics or attributes the things
collectively have (labelled I, II, III, IV, V).7 Each of the things has four of
the characteristics, but each has a slightly different set:
A [I, II, III, IV]
B [I, II, III, V]
C [I, II, IV, V]
D [I, III, IV, V] E [II, III, IV, V]
Consistent with the main point Wittgenstein seems to be making, there is
nothing these five things all share.
Taking these to be the baseline concept, Pickering then
considers a new case:
Now, let it be asked: does a
further thing (F) which has the following characteristics, also fall under the
concept in question:
F [III, IV, V, VI]
This shares at least three characteristics with D and E. If, on these grounds,
this is allowed to be a new instance of the concept, a further characteristic
(VI) may now be considered a characteristic of things of this kind. And so the characteristics
which are associated with the concept are increased in number and range.
Before mentioning the disastrous logic of this example, let’s
continue with Pickering’s application of the schematic model to a mental
illness case.
Despite its name, the medical
status of ASPD is contested... As described here, this condition has no overlap
with the existing set of characteristics associated with the notion of
disorder, and so on a family resemblance account there is no reason to bring
this instance under the concept. However, this can change. There is reason to
think that there is a subgroup (G*) amongst those exhibiting antisocial
personality disorder who also respond to medical treatments (III), are
typically harmed (e.g. suffer a sense of social isolation) (IV) and have a
genetic predisposition (V)… If sharing three attributes or features with things
which are agreed disorders, is sufficient to make something a disorder, then G*
will be a disorder, and since the gap between F (schizophrenia) and G (anti
social personality disorder) has now been bridged, it too will be a disorder.
In the light of this, a family resemblance account of disorder does not appear
to meet either criterion for extension. The attributes don’t appear to
determine any limits to extension, since they seem to be an indeterminately
extendable list. Further, A and G are now included, yet they share no attributes,
and so it is unclear what the rationale for including both might be.
In fact, Pickering goes on to defend the FRC view of
illness. But it is worth emphasising just how radical this objection would be
if it were plausible. Pickering’s initial schematic example concerns F. But
there is no reason to assume that F is actual. We can explore conceptual
generalities through merely possible instances. So if this case extends
the concept, we can imagine a range of further extensions via a range of
further hypothetical cases. Assuming, following Pickering’s words here –
whether or not he means them himself – ‘a further characteristic (VI) may now
be considered a characteristic of things of this kind’ and then nothing seems
to be excluded from the extension (in both the logical sense and the sense of
extending) of the concept.
There is, however, an assumption built into Pickering’s
consideration of this objection in the comment ‘a further characteristic (VI)
may now be considered a characteristic of things of this kind’. Everything
depends on the ‘may’. It is that that permits the extending of the original
concept to anything we like. But it seems to be motivated by this earlier comment
when introducing F: ‘which has the following characteristics’. Pickering
assumes – on behalf of this objection which he will go on to reject but without
actually diagnosing the problem – that what is characteristic of F is
characteristic of the kind or concept, too. But that does not follow. To take
the other famous example of FRC – other than an actual family resemblance such
as the Thornton-look – a specific game might have a characteristic without it
being a characteristic of games. Golf has as a characteristic the fact that it
is played by the wealthy. That’s quite typical of golf. But it does not infect
games as such. So the putative objection depends on an implausible assumption.
Pickering himself rejects this objection saying that ‘the
argument so far considered against the family resemblance approach must be
turned on its head’. The idea seems to be that FRCs balance strict normative determinacy
with an element of flexibility. One motivation for this is to argue that even
non-FRC and essentialist accounts permit some flexibility. He says:
Even if the essentialist were
correct that there is a pattern of necessity and sufficiency in the features of
those things which are agreed to be disorders, it would be a further decision
to conform the notion of ‘disorder’ to that. This decision can’t be justified
by the pattern of likenesses itself—since it is the implications of this which
are in question; rather it must reflect a human decision or practice.
But is that right? Consider Wakefield’s claim that a
disorder is a harmful dysfunction. Suppose we accept that definition, we have
necessary and sufficient conditions for calling anything a ‘disorder’. There is
no further slack aside, say, from what word shape or sound we attach to the
concept. Things are disordered in virtue of being harmful and dysfunctional.
The conditions do not merely group conditions – extensionally, as it were – but
group them as disorders.
Of course, if we just have the extension of disorder, there
would be a further question of in virtue of what these things are conceptually
united. But Pickering has already notionally conceded more: the necessary and
sufficient conditions for being a disorder.
(I’m not sure about this, but I wonder whether Pickering’s account FRCs shares something of this picture. The putative objection to FRCs seems to start from a position outside the conceptual order, trying to infer the concept that unites a collection of otherwise unconnected instances. That is why, I hypothesise, FRCs seem so hostage to the fortune of subsuming a new instance under them. There is no sense of in virtue of what items are grouped together. (Hence in my example, being played by wealthy people might get attached, willy nilly, to ‘games’.) It is an alienated picture of our access to our own thoughts. As though we have to run a kind of Davidsonian Radical Interpretation of our own linguistic dispositions to work out the conception that gathers together the extension (in the logical sense). Again, this makes more sense if one recalls the idea that in his paper ‘extension’ generally means an extending but may also mean the logical sense of the class of things to which a concept applies. This may become clearer below.)
Anyway, Pickering’s response to the objection above runs
thus:
But these problems for the family
resemblance approach are more apparent than real. They have arisen as a result
of focusing on the role of the attributes or characteristics of things in
deciding category or kind membership. This focus on the characteristics
represents a mistaken approach to family resemblance. Characteristics in the
family resemblance approach to concepts do not have the determinative relation
to the concepts with which they are associated that they have in the
essentialist approach. Furthermore, this is a strength of the family
resemblance approach, for the kind of relationship the essentialist presupposes
between characteristics and concepts is far from self evident…
The possibility inherent in
family resemblance of continuously extending the features associated with a
concept indicates the existence of a non-determinative relationship between
those features and the concept they are associated with. It is just because networks
of resemblances exist between quite different kinds of things that the family
resemblance approach necessarily introduces a further factor. In the family
resemblance approach it becomes clear that some judgement has to be made about
whether shared attributes do or do not count towards various human patterns of
behaviour and experience being disorders…
Answering these questions provides
a basis for a boundary of the extension of the concept, and so meets the
requirement for determination. Where it is judged that resemblances of
attributes count for nothing, then the limit of intelligibility in the
application of the concept has been reached.
Here I think we have the crux. Indeed it applies to
interpretations of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule following outside FRCs too (eg Kripke,
Travis, Wright). Does Wittgenstein’s criticism of platonism, of the idea that the
conceptual order is utterly independent of us, leave room for, or indeed
require, that we make things up? The slippery notion in the passages above is
‘judgement’. If I judge that 7 is greater than 5 by an increment of 2, I judge
it but I judge it correctly. Any other judgement would be wrong. I judge in accord
with the rules of maths. But there is another sense of ‘judgement’ in which the
idea of correctness or accord with a standard goes missing and the judgement
itself sets whatever lesser sense of a standard there is. The score - on Pop
Idol, say - is created by the judgement of the judges, as it were.
Pickering wants family resemblance to have a foot in both
camps. In the passage concerning the possibility inherent in family resemblance
above, it sounds as though we get to make up the extension of the
concept (in both senses of extension) but in the next passage - which is the very
next paragraph but with a couple of sentences omitted by me - it sounds as
though we answer questions which have antecedent correct answers and so there
is genuine normative determination.
I’m not sure he can have it both ways. My suspicion is that this is where the ambiguity of the word ‘extension’ applies. Extending a concept changes the concept. Subsuming a new instance under a concept need not (pace Travis). Normative determinacy applies to the latter, only.
I wonder, too, whether this has something to do with Pickering’s idea that there are limits to the application of even FRCs. Like counting to 5 for Monty Python’s Holy Hand Grenade, some applications are ‘right out’ or, in this case, simply unintelligible. This, however, seems like a final Carrie-like grip of Platonism from beyond the grave. Conceptual normativity is explained by an appeal to what is unintelligible. But surely, the unintelligibility of the application of a concept to a range of cases flows from the concept involved? No deployment of symbols can be brutely unintelligible without reference to the rules given to the use of words and hence a concept. It cannot explain the limits of that concept. That would be Platonism.
