Abstract

According to ‘conceptual lingualism’, concepts are language dependent in the sense that possessing a natural language is a necessary and sufficient condition for having any concepts. Since concepts constitute thoughts, the latter are also seen as language dependent. Over the last few decades the language dependency of thoughts and concepts has been called increasingly into question. The existence of nonlinguistic thoughts is now widely assumed in the philosophy of mind. In this essay we allow for nonlinguistic thoughts by understanding concepts as specific abilities that can be exercised independently of linguistic abilities. We distinguish between several types of abilities and argue that concepts as a whole are abilities of intelligence exercised in understanding objects, events and situations, without necessarily involving the exercise of linguistic abilities. We claim that understanding can be performed practically, and we introduce the idea of practical concepts to account for practical understanding. In order to demonstrate the use of practical concepts and render them more precise, we apply them to a recent discussion between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell concerning the connection between concepts and action