Concept Loss

Concepts can persist, can evolve, can change beyond recognition. But can they simply disappear? Can we lose our concepts?

The idea that it’s possible for us to lose our concepts might be backed up by reference to a concept like phlogiston. ‘Phlogiston’ was the name given to the substance hypothesized by eighteenth-century chemists as existing in all combustible bodies, and released in combustion. This theory of combustion proving to be unsustainable, there was then no use for the term ‘phlogiston’ – other than in such sentences as ‘There is no such thing as phlogiston’.

But doesn’t that last sentence show that the concept did not disappear? We surely couldn’t frame the sentence at all if the concept (as expressed by the word) had disappeared. To this we might respond by pointing out that the role intended for the word ‘phlogiston’ is one which it now does not and cannot fulfil, and that insofar as a word is (meant to be) a tool, any meaning it might possess – any concept it might express – would have to be its role, or function. The counter-response is that the word never could have fulfilled any such role, given that the role related to its use in (good, adequate) explanations of phenomena of combustion; and in that case, we should seem to have to say, not so much that the concept has disappeared, as that it never got off the ground in the first place. But surely ‘phlogiston’ was not a meaningless noise?

We might try interpreting ‘phlogiston’ as ‘the substance released in combustion (etc.)’, adopting a Russellian approach to the definite description, and construing sentences about phlogiston as ‘Ramsey sentences’. If that tactic worked, the statements of the eighteenth-century chemists would come out false (not senseless), and the still-with-us concept of phlogiston would be on a par with that of a unicorn – roughly speaking. But various questions arise about the general motivation for such a manoeuvre. Shall we, for example, attempt a parallel, Ramsey-sentence-involving account of the meaning of the word ‘water’?