Header image: Erste Promotion einer Frau (Elsa Neumann, 1872–1902) an der Universität Berlin 1899. Engraving of drawing by Ewald Thiel.

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Talk

What is a concept?

Date
17:00
Location
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Room 265
Organizer
Max Planck Research Group “The Construction of Norms in 17th- to 19th-Century Europe and the United States”
Lecturing Person
Jocelyn Benoist, Professor of Philosophy at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

In his book ‘Concepts. Introduction à l’analyse’ (Ed. du Cerf, 2010, rep. Flammarion, 2013), Jocelyn Benoist has put forward a theory of concepts drawing on the resources of the contemporary philosophy of language and mind. He treats concepts as normative structures defining the multifarious ways of our commitments to reality. He emphasizes their flexibility, their boundedness, and their historicity. Thus, he wants to lay the foundation for what he calls a contextualist philosophy of mind.

In his talk he will summarize the essential results of the book. He will particularly focus on the problem of the ‘generality’ of concepts. He will debunk some usual misinterpretations of that essential property, and show how, if correctly interpreted, it squares with contextuality.

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