Christopher Peacocke defends a sophisticated version of Conceptual Role Theory. For him, the nature of a concept is completely determined by an account of what it is to possess that concept. The possession conditions he puts forward rest on the notion of primitively compelling transitions or, more recently, on the idea of implicit conceptions. I show that his account is circular and appeals to a dubious distinction between constitutive transitions (or conceptions) and transitions (or conceptions) that depend on factual beliefs. I also point out that his possession conditions violate the Publicity Constraint; and, finally, I raise doubts about the psychological reality of primitively compelling transitions and implicit conceptions.

Taine aspired to place his philosophical project in the synthesis of the two major theoretical tendencies of the nineteenth century: positivism, on the one hand, giving preference to the English tradition, and German metaphysics, mostly Hegelianism, on the other. What does this attempt mean in the field of aesthetics? Taine based his interpretation of the production of art on a series of objective laws, following the naturalist method, as he clearly stated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris where he taught for several years from January 1864.