Broadening Explication : An interpretation and development of Carnap’s method of explication

In this thesis I critically evaluate and develop the method of explication. To explicate a concept is, roughly, to replace it with a similar but more theoretically useful concept. The method was first articulated in the 1940s by Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) but had been pursued in science and philosophy long before that. I begin the thesis with a critical evaluation of Carnap’s own writings on explication, and comment on contemporary interpretations of Carnapian explication. I discuss the relative importance of the criteria of adequacy for explication, and the internal structure among them. I also give an overview of various versions and conceptions of explication beside Carnap’s. As part of this task I will include accounts of concept formation in the social sciences which previously have not been treated as explications, and I argue that they may plausibly be understood as versions of explication. Most importantly, I will propose new ways to develop and modify Carnap’s method. The modifications are partly based on insights from the literature on concept formation in the social sciences. In this sense I am broadening explication. Although I adapt Carnap’s method for purposes beyond those intended by him, my project is in certain aspects in the spirit of Carnap. While I modify and supplement his criteria of adequacy, I retain the ideal of a common standard of evaluation for concepts in distinct fields of inquiry. The overall aim is to shed light on the question of how we should deal with concepts that are defective (at least in some contexts) and yet indispensable to our cognitive lives.