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The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods pp 51–76Cite as

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The Failure of Analysis and the Nature of Concepts

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Abstract

Over the last century, many well-qualified philosophers spent many years attempting to analyze philosophically interesting concepts, such as KNOWLEDGE, FREE WILL, and CAUSATION. Yet no one succeeded in producing a single correct analysis. What went wrong? I ascribe the aspirations of conceptual analysis to a Lockean theory of concepts that ought to be rejected. I propose an alternative picture of concepts and properties that explains both (i) why linguistic intuitions about cases dominate the evaluation of conceptual analyses; and (ii) why most concepts are unanalyzable.

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Authors
  1. Michael Huemer
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, UK

    Chris Daly

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© 2015 Michael Huemer

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Huemer, M. (2015). The Failure of Analysis and the Nature of Concepts. In: Daly, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137344557_3

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