[Hacker] claims that to explicate our concepts, we must look at word usage, since concepts, he holds, are abstractions from the uses of words. He is at pains to emphasise, however, that this interest in words and concepts is no less an interest in the natures of things. Philosophical investigation ‘elucidates a given concept by describing the use of the word that expresses that concept’. Moreover, ‘The nature of something consists in those features without which it would not be the thing it is, and without which it would not fall under the concept that it does. Hence, to clarify a concept is to clarify the nature of what falls under it’. Hacker explains (as Carnap did, though awkwardly) that philosophical discussion can be carried out in different modes, though we often flit between them: the linguistic, conceptual, or the material/necessitarian mode.
To illustrate with a simple example, we may ask ‘What does “bachelor” mean?’, ‘What’s the concept of a bachelor?’, or ‘What’s a bachelor?’ But despite appearances, these questions are not about different things as such (word, concept, and thing respectively), since the answer to one gives the answer to the others. For if ‘bachelor’ means ‘unmarried man’, then the concept of a bachelor is the concept of an unmarried man, and furthermore, a bachelor is an unmarried man. And why should we privilege one mode over the others? The Linguistic Turn did not herald a change in subject-matter for philosophy, but only a clearer recognition that answering traditional philosophical questions articulated in the material mode requires paying attention to language.
Kevin Lynch, Review of The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature by P.M.S. Hacker
