Analyzing Concepts and Allocating Referents

The analysis of concepts is an important part of the philosophical exercise but has to be complemented by the allocation of a referent to any world-tracking concept: this will give an account of what constitutes the phenomenon tracked. But analysis generally leaves room for negotiation about the referent to be allocated, for two reasons. First, because it may underdetermine the specification of conditions that anything must satisfy if it is to count as a referent. And, second, because the specification chosen may itself underdetermine the property that constitutes the referent. The license that philosophy consequently enjoys has to be exercised on the basis of analytically independent criteria linked with the theory within which any realistic concept has to take its place. The lesson is illustrated schematically, it comments on concepts like those of causation, freewill, and value and in a case study of the concept of freedom. It connects with the line argued by a range of recent, more revisionary approaches to philosophy.