Mark Wilson

“Indeed, quite sweeping disparagements of the claims of ‘‘conceptual authority’’ have
invaded the academic humanities in recent years, to generally deleterious effect (we
shall examine a case in point in 2,v). Within this strain of self-styled post-modernist
critique, most appeals to ‘‘conceptual content’’ are dismissed as rigorist shams, representing scarcely more than polite variants upon schoolyard bullying. Run-of-the-mill
appeals to ‘‘conceptual authority’’ tacitly masquerade prejudiced predilection in the
form of falsely constructed universals which, in turn, covertly shelter the most oppressive codes of Western society. But such sweeping doubts, if rigorously implemented,
would render daily life patently unworkable, for we steer our way through the humblest
affairs by making conceptual evaluations as we go. In what alternative vocabulary, for
example, might we appraise our teenager’s failings with respect to his calculus homeworks? Forced to chose between exaggerated mistrust and blind acceptance of every
passing claim of conceptual authority (even those issuing from transparent charlatans),
we should plainly select gullibility as the wiser course, for the naïve explorer who trusts
her somewhat inadequate map generally fares better than the doubter who accepts
nothing. We will have told the story of concepts wrongly if it doesn’t turn out to be one
where our usual forms of conceptual evaluation emerge as appropriate and well
founded most of the time.
Of a milder, but allied, nature are the presumptions of the school of Thomas Kuhn,
which contends that scientists under the unavoidable spell of different paradigms often
‘‘talk past one another’’ through their failure to share common conceptual resources, in
a manner that renders scientific argumentation more a matter of brute conversion than
discourse. We shall discuss these views later as well.
Although their various generating origins can prove quite complex, most popular
academic movements that promote radical conceptual debunking of these types
draw deeply upon inadequate philosophies of ‘‘concepts and attributes.’’ Such doctrines
often sin against the cardinal rule of philosophy: first, do no harm, for such self-appointed
critics of ‘‘ideological tyranny’’ rarely prove paragons of intellectual toleration
themselves.”
― Mark Wilson, Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour