On Sun, 25 Sep 2011, Andy Blunden wrote:
Currently, I am writing a book on Concepts, which is meant to make
inroads into analytical science.
Might Adorno be of interest? Here's from Adorno, Theodor W. Negative
Dialectics. New York: Seabury Press (1973) Continuum (1983):
[p. 11] DISENCHANTMENT OF THE CONCEPT
Philosophy, Hegel's included, invites the general objection that by
inevitably having concepts for its material it anticipates an
idealistic decision. In fact no philosophy, not even extreme
empiricism, can drag in the _facta bruta_ and present them like cases
in anatomy or experiments in physics; no philosophy can paste the
particulars into the text, as seductive paintings would hoodwink it
into believing. But the argument in its formality and generality takes
as fetishistic a view of the concept as the concept does in
interpreting itself naïvely in its own domain: in either case it is
regarded as a self-sufficient totality over which philosophical
thought has no power. In truth, all concepts, even the philosophical
ones, refer to nonconceptualities, because concepts on their part are
moments of the reality that requires their formation, primarily for
the control of nature. What conceptualization appears to be from
within, to one engaged in it--the predominance of its sphere, without
which nothing is known--must not be mistaken for what it is in itself.
Such a semblance of being-in-itself is conferred upon it by the motion
that exempts it from reality, to which it is har¬nessed in turn.
Necessity compels philosophy to operate with concepts, but this
necessity must not be turned into the virtue of their priority--no
more than, conversely, criticism of that virtue can be turned into a
summary verdict against philosophy. On the other hand, the insight
that philosophy's conceptual knowledge is not the absolute
[p. 12] of philosophy--this insight, for all its inescapability, is
again due to the nature of the concept. It is not a dogmatic thesis,
much less a naïvely realistic one. Initially, such concepts as that of
"being" at the start of Hegel's _Logic_ emphatically mean
nonconceptualities; as Lask put it, they "mean beyond themselves."
Dissatisfaction with their own conceptuality is part of their meaning,
although the inclusion of nonconceptuality in their meaning makes it
tendentially their equal and thus keeps them trapped within
themselves. The substance of concepts is to them both immanent, as far
as the mind is concerned, and transcendent as far as being is
concerned. To be aware of this is to be able to get rid of concept
fetishism. Philosophical reflection makes sure of the nonconceptual in
the concept. It would be empty otherwise, according to Kant's dictum;
in the end, having ceased to be a concept of anything at all, it would
be nothing.
A philosophy that lets us know this, that extinguishes the autarky of
the concept, strips the blindfold from our eyes. That the concept is a
concept even when dealing with things in being does not change the
fact that on its part it is entwined with a non-conceptual whole. Its
only insulation from that whole is its reification--that which
establishes it as a concept. The concept is an element in dialectical
logic, like any other. What survives in it is the fact that
nonconceptuality has conveyed it by way of its meaning, which in turn
establishes its conceptuality. To refer to nonconceptualities--as
ultimately, according to traditional epistemology, every definition of
concepts requires nonconceptual, deictic elements--is characteristic
of the concept, and so is the contrary: that as the abstract unit of
the noumena subsumed thereunder it will depart from the noumenal. To
change this direction of conceptuality, to give it a turn toward
nonidentity, is the hinge of negative dialectics. Insight into the
constitutive character of the nonconceptual in the concept would end
the compulsive identification which the concept brings unless halted
by such reflection. Reflection upon its own meaning is the way out of
the concept's seeming being-in-itself as a unit of meaning.