Some (Rough) Notes on Conceptual Analysis
Stephen D’Arcy (sdarcy@uwo.ca)
Dept. of Philosophy, Huron University College

	These rough notes are designed simply to introduce you to what may be an unfamiliar activity: conceptual analysis.  They are not to be taken too seriously.  They do prescribe a method that must be followed, or anything like that.  They simply provide a sketch of one of the elements that make up the activity of philosophy.

I. What is Philosophy?
	Philosophy is the elucidation and critical evaluation of the tacit presuppositions of our thought, speech and action.  Its special task is to draw attention to – in the words of one well-known philosopher – the questionable character of everything ‘obvious.’  Take, for example, our concept of time.  We routinely deploy this concept unthinkingly.  We ask, ‘What time is it?’; we insist, ‘I need more time!’; we worry, ‘How will I ever find the time to do all of this?’; and so on.  But when we shift our standpoint, from one in which we take ‘time’ for granted, to one in which we explore questions like, ‘What is time, exactly?,’ or ‘How should I think about time?,’ then we have begun to practice philosophy.
	In philosophy, we elucidate and critically evaluate (1) our concepts, and (2) the supposed rational basis for what we think and do.  When we want to elucidate and critically evaluate the second of these – the reasoning upon which our thought, speech and action rest – philosophy offers the tools of logic.  Logic is a set of techniques for evaluating arguments (reasoning in support of conclusions).  The first chapter of Reason at Work summarizes many of the most basic elements of logic.  But when philosophers want to study concepts rather than arguments, they rely on a different set of techniques.  These techniques are known, collectively, as conceptual analysis.   The following notes deal with these “techniques” (by which I mean approaches to the problem of how to elucidate our concepts).

II. What is Conceptual Analysis?
	It is common to compare conceptual analysis to producing a map of an area that one knows well, albeit only in the practical sense that one knows quite well how to move around and get where one wants to go in that area.  In such a case, one might at first be quite unable to translate one'’ tacit know-how into explicit geographical knowledge of the sort that maps provide.  The same holds for concepts.  We do not first have to practice philosophy, asking questions like, ‘What is time?,’ and only then begin to feel confident in our use of the concept of time.  Rather, we already know how to use the concept, but we still don’t know how to state explicitly the rules for using it.  Compare this to tying your shoelaces.  You know how to do it, but try explaining it to someone verbally (e.g., over the phone).  You would have to stop and think, and you might find it rather difficult to explain.  In the same way, there are really two ways of understanding a concept: first, there is pre-philosophical conceptual know-how, which involves knowing how to use a concept in the appropriate way; and second, there is the philosophically explicit kind of understanding, which ideally involves being able to state clearly and completely the rules for how to use the concept.  In this way, one tries to “map out” the “conceptual geography” of a concept.  By pursuing this inquiry – by engaging in conceptual analysis – we can begin to get clear about what exactly we mean by ‘justice,’ ‘truth,’ ‘science,’ ‘duty,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘free will,’ and so on.
	The same point can be made in terms of a different metaphor: philosophy as the study of conceptual grammar.  Anyone who speaks a language fluently is able to conform ot the grammatical rules of that language, and indeed to do so quite effortlessly.  But what happens if someone asks such a person, ‘What are the rules you followed in uttering those sentences?’  Again, it would be quite difficult to answer that question, and few of us could do it without at the very least stopping to think for a while.  Here, too, we already understand the grammatical rules in one sense: we know how to use them.  But we don’t have the sort of understanding that we would need in order to state explicitly those rules.  Identifying and stating grammatical rules is the task of the grammarian.  When we ask similar questions about our concepts – what rules govern our use of a concept?; where do we draw the line between a person and a non-person, for example? – then we are performing a similar task, but for concepts rather than grammatical rules: we are stating explicitly, and becoming self-conscious for the first time about a set of rules that we had already grasped in a practical sense.  
	That’s the basic idea of conceptual analysis.  It will become more clear as we go thorough several examples of it during this course.  Now I want to say a few words about some of the central techniques of conceptual analysis: practical methods for helping us to elucidate and critically evaluate the concepts that we ordinarily take for granted.

III. Some “Techniques” of Conceptual Analysis
	The techniques of conceptual analysis may be divided into two kinds: first, the examination of illuminating cases (examples); second, the exploration of contextual considerations.  (The following is based loosely on material in the book, Thinking with Concepts, by John Wilson.)

(A)	Illuminating Cases
1.	Clear-cut cases.  If I want to know what our pre-philosophical (tacitly presupposed) understanding of democracy is, I might try to find a clear-cut example – something that anyone would agree is democratic.  For instance, a clear case of democracy might be a club that made all important decisions by majority vote, following a thorough debate in which all members were encouraged to participate as equals.  What does this case tell us about our concept of democracy?  What is it about this case that makes it such a clear instance of democracy?  Would it be any less a clear-cut case of democracy if there were no requirement to debate the issue before voting?  What if participation in debate were allowed but not specifically encouraged?  Would that make it less clear-cut, or not?  Exploring these questions helps us clarify what we mean by democracy.

2.	Borderline Cases.  We can also shed light (clarify, elucidate) our understanding of a concept (e.g., democracy) by considering borderline cases.  For instance, we can consider a club that does not allow members to vote individually, but gives voting power instead to people chosen by the club’s President to represent different demographic groups, such as a women’s representative, a men’s representative, a youth representative, and so on.  Decisions are still made by majority-voting, but only the selected representatives can vote.  Would we still be willing to call that democratic?  Why or why not?  What aspects of this case encourage us to think it is democratic and what aspects cause us to doubt it?

3.	Contrary Cases.  In this kind of case, one considers ana example of something that is clearly not an instance of the concept in question.  For example, a club in which decision-making power rests entirely in the hands of the oldest member would have no claim to being a democratic club.  But why not?  What does this tell us about (how we use the concept) democracy?  Is the problem that only one member participates in decision-making, or is the problem how that member is chosen (by age rather than capacity to represent the members, etc.)?

4.	Imaginary Cases.  We can also illuminate a concept by making u an imaginary scenario.  For example, what if there were a club in which voting rights were assigned randomly, so that whenever a decision needed to be made, three names were pulled out of a hat, and those three members would make the decision?  Would that be democratic?  Why or why not?

(B) Contextual Considerations
5.	Social Context.  One factor that is often quite illuminating is the social context.  Here we ask questions like, who would use this concept, and when, and to whom might they be speaking?  This can make an important difference.  Perhaps a historian’s use of the term democracy might differ substantially from that of a political activist, a politician making a speech may call things democratic that a political scientist would not, and so on.  Moreover, the way a politician uses the term ‘democracy’ in answering questions from constituents during an election campaign may differ from the way she uses the term while talking to her political advisors in private.  Such considerations of social context can be indispensable aids to clarifying the complexities of a term’s “conceptual geography.”

6.	Conceptual Context.  How one uses a concept is not only shaped by the social context, but also by the conceptual context, that is, the network of concepts to which the concept under scrutiny is related.  For example, the concept of democracy has a certain relationship to the concept of power, and to the concept of equality, etc.  Understanding how we use the concept of democracy may require some understanding of how it relates to these other concepts.

7.	Underlying Anxiety.  When we take the trouble to analyse a concept, it is usually because we have some concern, something we want to find out or clarify.  For instance, we may want to analyse the concept of a person because we are unsure about whether an embryo is a person.  Or, to continue with our example, we may want to analyse the concept of democracy because we want to decide whether to call a certain country a ‘democratic’ state, or whether the enormous social and political power of wealthy individuals and businesses threaten Canada’s claim to be democratic.  The underlying anxiety is worth noting because it can give us an understanding of just what kind s of question our analysis of the concept under consideration will have to address.  An analysis of ‘democracy’ that gave no guidance on whether Canada could claim to be democratic might be of limited help.

8.	Best Use v. Established Use.  One other contextual consideration to take into account is the effect that retaining or transforming our understanding of a concept might have.  Perhaps there are problems with our understanding of a concept.  It might be vague or ambiguous, so that our thinking and speaking would be made more clear by, say, breaking up one concept (such as ‘democracy’) into two (such as ‘governmental accountability,’ which refers to the responsiveness of governments to the will of the people, and ‘majority rule,’ which refers to the role of elections and/or referenda in governmental decision-making).  So, conceptual analysis need not be merely descriptive (clarifying how we do in fact understand a concept),; it may also be prescriptive (recommending how ought to understand a concept, so that we may use it to maximum advantage).