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Inquiry
An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy
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Carnap meets Foucault: conceptual engineering
and genealogical investigations
Catarina Dutilh Novaes
To cite this article: Catarina Dutilh Novaes (2020): Carnap meets Foucault: conceptual
engineering and genealogical investigations, Inquiry, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2020.1860122
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Carnap meets Foucault: conceptual engineering and
genealogical investigations
Catarina Dutilh Novaes
Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Netherlands
ABSTRACT
What is the relevance of historical, and in particular genealogical, investigations
for projects of conceptual engineering? I address this question by bringing
together two prominent authors in each of these traditions: Foucault for
genealogy, and Carnap for conceptual engineering. I argue that Foucaultian
genealogy is a suitable approach to address a specific lacuna in Carnap’s
articulation of explication, namely, insufficient attention for the preliminary
stage of clarifying the explicandum. Moreover, the focus on practices in
Foucaultian genealogies facilitates a reflection on the functions of the
concept to be explicated, which is crucial for the fruitfulness of the
explication as a whole. I start by canvassing a number of commonalities
between Carnap and Foucault, as they were both influenced by Kant and
Nietzsche; they shared a number of philosophical commitments such as a
rejection of metaphysics and a tolerant meta-normative stance. I then discuss
the lacuna in Carnapian explication, and argue that Foucaultian genealogy
provides the right level of detail to remedy this lacuna. I close with a
discussion of a concrete example, the concept of marriage, and conclude that
this combination of Carnapian explication with Foucaultian genealogy is an
illustration of the relevance of historical analysis for conceptual engineering.
ARTICLE HISTORY Received 29 May 2020; Accepted 1 September 2020
KEYWORDS Conceptual engineering; genealogies; Carnap; Foucault
1. Introduction
Conceptual engineering (and its closely related cousin, conceptual
ethics)1 has attracted sustained attention in debates on philosophical
methodology in recent years. There is a growing body of literature on
the topic, and while some progress has been made in understanding
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transformed, or built upon in any way.
CONTACT Catarina Dutilh Novaes c.dutilhnovaes@vu.nl Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amster-
dam, Amsterdam, 1081 HV Netherlands
1See (Burgess and Plunkett 2020) on the relations between conceptual engineering and conceptual
ethics.
INQUIRY
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the role of conceptual engineering for philosophical inquiry, many open
questions and challenges remain. The Introduction in the first volume
entirely dedicated to conceptual engineering/conceptual ethics
(Burgess, Cappelen, and Plunkett 2020) contains a helpful list of these
questions. The last one pertains to the role of conceptual history and gen-
ealogy for conceptual engineering/conceptual ethics:
Some people […] support claims in conceptual ethics by appeal to facts
about the history/genealogy of concepts. […] On the one hand, there is
an obvious worry here that appeals to conceptual history/genealogy might
fall prey to versions of the genetic fallacy. On the other hand, there are
cases where such historical facts seem at least prima facie relevant to our
assessment of our current conceptual practices […]. What role should con-
ceptual history/genealogy have in conceptual ethics? (Burgess, Cappelen,
and Plunkett 2020, 15)
One of the editors of the volume, Plunkett, had previously offered a
thorough discussion of this issue in (Plunkett 2016), defending the view
that conceptual history should play a role for conceptual ethics. At the
same time, Plunkett sees himself as posing a challenge to more ambitious,
‘radical’ views on the relevance of conceptual history for normative
inquiry (conceptual ethics being one form of normative inquiry). He attri-
butes these more radical views to authors such as Nietzsche, Heidegger,
and Geuss.
In this paper, I address the question of the relevance of conceptual
history/genealogy for conceptual engineering by bringing together two
prominent authors in each of these two traditions: Michel Foucault for
genealogy, and Rudolf Carnap for conceptual engineering.2 Carnap’s
method of explication is rightly seen as a paradigmatic example of
conceptual engineering (Brun 2016), and is in fact an important
historical inspiration for recent developments (Carus 2008).3 I argue
that Foucaultian genealogy4 is a particularly suitable approach to
2In (Dutilh Novaes 2015), I focused on the relevance of conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy
more generally, not for conceptual engineering specifically. (It includes a brief discussion of Foucaul-
tian genealogy.) In turn, in (Dutilh Novaes and Reck 2017) and (Dutilh Novaes 2020), I discussed
Carnap’s notion of explication extensively. The present investigation now brings together these two
strands of inquiry.
3But see (Richardson 2013) for a critique of the ‘engineering’ account of Carnap’s notion of explication.
4This paper presupposes some familiarity with Foucaultian genealogy. For readers lacking this knowl-
edge, this brief description may be helpful: ‘“Genealogy” implies doing what Foucault calls the
“history of the present.” A genealogy is an explanation of where we have come from: while Foucault’s
genealogies stop well before the present, their purpose is to tell us how our current situation origi-
nated, and is motivated by contemporary concerns. Of course, one may argue that all history has
these features, but with genealogy this is intended rather than a matter of unavoidable bias. […]
The word “genealogy” is drawn directly from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals: genealogy is a
2 C. DUTILH NOVAES
address a specific and important lacuna in Carnap’s own articulation of
explication.5 Indeed, I argue that a combination of Foucaultian genealogy
and Carnapian explication is a promising approach for philosophical
analysis of the ameliorative kind.6 More generally, my inquiry offers a con-
crete illustrationof the relevance of conceptual history for normative
inquiry: its implications go beyond Carnapian explication and conceptual
engineering, as what is at stake is the relevance of historical analysis for
philosophical theorizing more generally.7
The paper proceeds as follows. I start with a brief discussion of the
respective historical and philosophical backgrounds of Carnap and Fou-
cault, so as to argue that they are not such strange bedfellows after all,
despite appearances (given that the former is typically viewed as a para-
digmatic ‘analytic’ philosopher, and the latter as a paradigmatic ‘conti-
nental’ thinker). I then sketch the outlines of Carnapian explication,
emphasizing in particular some of its limitations pertaining to its disre-
gard for the historicity of concepts. Thirdly, I turn to Foucault and argue
that Foucaultian genealogy is well placed to address some lacunas in Car-
napian explication.8 Finally, I offer a brief illustration of how the two
methods might be fruitfully combined, using the concept of marriage
as an example.
2. Carnap and Foucault: strange bedfellows?9
Prima facie, it might seem imprudent to bring together two thinkers
belonging to (purportedly) radically different intellectual traditions and
Nietzschean form of history, though rather more meticulously historical than anything Nietzsche ever
attempted.’ (Kelly 2010) (section 4)
5The present investigation adopts what Erlenbusch-Anderson (Erlenbusch-Anderson 2018) describes as a
methodologist approach to Foucault’s work, stressing the philosophical value of Foucault’s methods
beyond the topics and questions that he specifically worked on.
6A precursor for the kind of dialogue I seek to establish in this paper, and which served as inspiration for
this set-up, is the ‘conversation’ between Foucault and Dewey in (Koopman 2011).
7This is an uncontroversial point in so-called ‘continental philosophy’, but among analytic philosophers
the relevance of historical analysis is not always recognized (Dutilh Novaes 2015). This being said, two
analytic philosophers who have fruitfully engaged with Foucault’s work are S. Haslanger (for example
in (Haslanger 2005)), and more systematically, I. Hacking—as early as in his groundbreaking book on
probability (Hacking 1975), and further developed in (Hacking 2002).
8There are a number of interpretive controversies regarding Foucault’s thought, giving rise to different
‘camps’ of Foucaultians, but I will not delve into these disputes. My reading of Foucault, and of his
genealogical method in particular, relies primarily on the work of C. Koopman.
9This section presents a fairly lengthy account of the intellectual history that connects Carnap and Fou-
cault. These historical commonalities are not as such essential for the overall argument of the paper,
namely, the relevance of conceptual genealogy for projects of conceptual engineering; this relevance
could exist even without the shared historical background. Nevertheless, a discussion of their respect-
ive intellectual heritages paves the way for the systematic points to be made later in the paper, and
suggests that the systematic commonalities are not merely coincidental.
INQUIRY 3
embracing such dissimilar philosophical orientations such as Carnap and
Foucault.10 Carnap, the story goes, is the most prominent exponent of the
logical positivism of the Vienna circle, a movement known for its attempt
to export methods from the natural and exact sciences to all fields of
human knowledge. His work would represent a crystallization of Enlight-
enment ideals of emancipation by means of (scientific) knowledge (Carus
2008). By contrast, Foucault is often portrayed as a fierce critic of moder-
nity and of these very Enlightenment ideals so dear to Carnap. In terms of
philosophical backgrounds, Carnap belongs to a broadly (neo-) Kantian
philosophical tradition (Friedman 2000), where logic and mathematics
played a prominent role. (He was also influenced by B. Russell in this
respect.) Foucault, in turn, belongs to the French tradition of historical
epistemology epitomized by Bachelard and Canguilhem, with a generous
dash of Nietzschean ideas brought into the mix (Gutting 2018). How could
these two fellows, Carnap and Foucault, possibly get along?
As it turns out, these are oversimplified accounts of each. In fact, and
perhaps surprisingly, Carnap and Foucault shared two powerful intellec-
tual ancestors: Kant and Nietzsche. The Kantian background for
Carnap’s thought is well known and extensively documented in (Carus
2008) and (Friedman 2000), in particular the aspiration to develop a ‘scien-
tific philosophy’. (This does not mean that Carnap is himself a ‘Kantian’, in
a stricter sense.) What is much less acknowledged and yet deeply signifi-
cant is the influence on Carnap of another strand of German philosophical
thought, namely Romanticism, and more specifically Nietzsche (Mormann
2012) (Sachs 2011). Indeed, on closer inspection, a number of Carnap’s
most celebrated ideas, such as that there are no morals in logic and his
principle of tolerance, have a distinctive Nietzschean flavor (Mormann
2012). (I return to Carnap’s views on (meta-)normativity shortly.) What
this means more generally is that Carnap was not simply a naïve Enlight-
enment enthusiast, as he was familiar with the damning critique of some
of these ideals by Nietzsche.
In turn, Foucault’s indebtedness to Nietzsche is widely acknowledged,
even if at different stages of his career Nietzsche’s influence on Foucault is
present to different degrees (Lemke 2019). It is from Nietzsche that
Foucault draws initial inspiration to develop the genealogical method,
10There is evidence that Foucault was familiar with Carnap’s work, and more generally that he engaged
with Anglophone (analytic) philosophical sources (Simonetta 2016). Simonetta reports that there are
14 reading notes on Carnap in a box containing Foucault’s miscellaneous annotations and research
materials. (There may well be more references to Carnap in not yet studied archival material.)
(I owe this reference to M.G. Isaac.)
4 C. DUTILH NOVAES
as documented in an influential 1971 article (Foucault 1984a).11 What is
less well known, or at least not always properly acknowledged, is Fou-
cault’s indebtedness to Kant’s philosophy and to the idea of philosophy
as critique in the sense of a reflection on limits and on conditions of possi-
bility for modes of being and thinking. To be sure, a number of Foucault
readers have rightly stressed the influence of Kant (Koopman 2013) (Men-
dieta 2011), and of course Foucault’s doctoral dissertation had Kant’s
Anthropology as its topic of analysis. But I think it is fair to say that,
outside of circles of specialists, the influence of Kant on Foucault tends
to be underappreciated.
Foucault is a Kantian primarily in the sense that he endorses Kant’s criti-
cal stance.12 However, Foucault formulates a historicist blend of critical
philosophy, as opposed to Kant’s transcendental approach. A passage
from Foucault’s (1984b) ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (one of his very last
texts, and a response to Kant’s eponymous text) is worth quoting in full
as it aptly summarizes this difference:
[…] criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal struc-
tures with universal value, but rather as a historical investigation into the events
that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects
of what we are doing, thinking, saying. In that sense, this criticism is not trans-
cendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genea-
logical in its design and archaeological in its method. Archaeological—and not
transcendental—in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal struc-
tures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the
instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many his-
torical events. And this critique will be genealogical in the sensethat it will not
deduce from the form of what we are what it is impossible for us to do and to
know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we
are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or
think. (Foucault 1984b, 46)
While Kant analyzes the limits of thought and admonishes us not to go
beyond them, Foucault’s emphasis on contingency in fact reveals alterna-
tive ways of being, doing, or thinking, i.e. possibilities for transformation
(Koopman 2013). ‘In other words, [for Foucault] criticism should not be
11‘What Foucault and Nietzsche do share is an understanding of genealogical critique as bringing into
focus the contingency and complexity of the historical present.’ (Koopman 2013, 21)
12‘If Foucault is indeed perfectly at home in the philosophical tradition, it is within the critical tradition of
Kant, and his project could be called the Critical History of Thought.’ (Here Foucault is describing himself
in his intellectual autobiography, written in the last year of his life (Koopman 2013).) See Chap. 2 of
(Allen 2008) and (Han 2002). In fact, Foucault is arguably more clearly a Kantian than Carnap.
INQUIRY 5
about demarcating limits but, rather, about transgressing them’ (Men-
dieta 2011, 121).
Besides being both indebted to Kant and to Nietzsche, Carnap and
Foucault also had a common enemy: Hegel, and speculative metaphysics
more generally.13 Foucault’s rejection of Hegelian philosophy is some-
thing he himself reminds his readers of rather frequently (Allen 1998). It
is arguably to be traced back to Nietzsche’s general critique of metaphy-
sics, especially metaphysical theories based on necessary, atemporal cat-
egories (Foucault 1984a). Carnap, in turn, famously adopted the logical
positivist credo that all metaphysical questions were ‘meaningless’, to
be rejected in favor of empiricism and verificationism (as formulated in
the Vienna Circle manifesto). Carnap’s rejection of metaphysics was
long lasting, going well beyond the early Vienna Circle period (Carnap
1950). As it turns out, here too Nietzsche’s influence on Carnap can be dis-
cerned in his project of ‘overcoming metaphysics’ (Sachs 2011). (Tellingly,
Carnap closes his 1931/2 piece ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through
Logical Analysis of Language’ (Carnap 1966) with a short discussion of
Nietzsche.)
Besides (or perhaps partially because of) these shared relations of
influence, Carnap’s and Foucault’s philosophical orientations, and their
respective projects of explication and genealogy, also display a number
of common features. For starters, both projects can be broadly described
as revisionary in that they challenge some existing status quo. In fact, I
have argued elsewhere that it makes sense to view Carnapian explication
as an ameliorative enterprise (Dutilh Novaes 2020). For Foucault, in turn,
as suggested in the discussion above, a genealogy produces a ‘history
of the present’, describing how we (contingently) came to be where we
are now, while simultaneously stressing the contingencies involved and
thus possibilities for transformation.14
In fact, both Carnapian explication and Foucaultian genealogy are
more than revisionary enterprises: they are both presented as exercises
of human freedom (even if Carnap and Foucault held different con-
ceptions of what exactly freedom amounts to—see below). A quote by
13I owe this observation to C. Koopman.
14‘A critical ontology of ourselves reveals the constructedness of our being, its contingency, its revocabil-
ity and thus its transformatibility. Because we have become, we can also become different. A critical
ontology of ourselves, as a genealogy of our modern selves, allows us to extract from the very con-
tingency that has made us signs or ciphers of the possibility of becoming other than what we presently
are.’ (Mendieta 2011, 122) It is important to note though that a number of readers of Foucault are not
as optimistic concerning the prospects for transformation by means of Foucaultian genealogy (as dis-
cussed in (Lemke 2019), Introduction).
6 C. DUTILH NOVAES
Carnap’s student R. Jeffrey aptly describes explication as related to
freedom:
Philosophically, Carnap was a social democrat; his ideals were those of the
enlightenment. His persistent, central idea was: “It’s high time we took
charge of our own mental lives”—time to engineer our own conceptual
scheme (language, theories) as best we can to serve our own purposes; time
to take it back from tradition, time to dismiss Descartes’s God as a distracting
myth, time to accept the fact that there’s nobody out there but us, to choose
our purposes and concepts to serve those purposes, if indeed we are to
choose those things and not simply suffer them. […] For Carnap, deliberate
choice of the syntax and semantics of our language was more than a possi-
bility—it was a duty we owe ourselves as a corollary of freedom.15 (Jeffrey
1992, 28, my emphasis)
For Foucault, in turn, genealogy and practices of freedom are also
connected:
Genealogy, it could be said, is a science of freedom, of creative freedom that
opens up horizons of being by challenging us to exceed, to transgress, to
step over the limit established by existing modes of subjectivity and subjectiva-
tion. (Mendieta 2011, 113)
A third point of commonality pertains to Carnap’s and Foucault’s respect-
ive meta-normative stances. Both thinkers hold what might be described
as ‘tolerant’, pluralistic positions towards normativity, in the sense that
they eschew substantive, clear-cut conceptions of what is ‘right’ or
‘wrong’. To be clear, the claim is not that either Carnap or Foucault had
fully developed (meta-)normative theories; rather, the point is that both
criticized what might be described as ‘normative absolutism’.16
Carnap’s celebrated Principle of Tolerance as formulated in The Logical
Syntax of Language (1937) (Carnap 2002) is a vivid instantiation of his
meta-normative stance: ‘It is not our business to set up prohibitions, but
to arrive at conventions.’ (51) ‘In logic, there are no morals. Everyone is at
liberty to build up his own logic, i.e. his own form of language, as he
15See also (Mormann 2012) for the possible Romantic origins of (what could be described as) Carnap’s
‘creative impulses’.
16For both, this is arguably a result of Nietzsche’s influence. (But note that the exact details of Nietzsche’s
own meta-normative views are a matter of contention (Hussain 2013).) For Carnap in particular, and as
noted in (Mormann 2012), the terminology used in the Preface of (Carnap 2002) in connection with the
Principle of Tolerance is highly reminiscent of a passage from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. In
Nietzsche’s case the analysis pertains to the moral domain, but Carnap transposes the same general
ideas quite straightforwardly to the logical domain: ‘The first attempts to cast the ship of logic off
from the terra firma of the classical forms were certainly bold ones, considered from the historical
point of view. But they were hampered by the striving after “correctness”. Now, however, that impedi-
ment has been overcome, and before us lies the boundless ocean of unlimited possibilities.’ (Carnap
2002, xv)
INQUIRY 7
wishes.’ (52) For the concept of explication (see next section), this tolerant
stance manifests itself in the view that an explication is not ‘right’ or
‘wrong’, correct or incorrect. The success of an explication is above all
measured by the pragmatic criterion of fruitfulness (Dutilh Novaes and
Reck 2017). Whether a given explication is fruitful will be measured
against its presumed goals and purposes, which are extraneous to the
explication itself (and unfortunately often remain implicit and insuffi-
ciently discussed (Reck 2012)). Indeed, external normative input is
required to establish the goals of a particular explication.17
As for Foucault, the absence of clear normative guidance is one of the
objections voiced by some of his critics (such as Fraser and Habermas,
amongothers) ((Lemke 2019) (Introduction)). Indeed, a common objec-
tion is that Foucault is ultimately a moral relativist who does not have
the conceptual tools to adjudicate, among different situations or out-
comes, which ones are to be preferred. Typically, a genealogy will
explain how we came to be as we happen to be in the present, highlight-
ing the contingencies that shaped the historical paths in question. As
such, it also indicates possibilities for transformation, as noted above.
However, a genealogy by itself does not definewhich of these possibilities
for transformation should be pursued; for this, external normative input is
required.
The tolerant meta-normative stance common to Carnap and Foucault
is interesting not only because it allows for a smoother approximation
between the two thinkers. It is also relevant for our purposes because
the methods of explication and genealogy come out as fairly neutral, nor-
matively speaking, which means that they can be adopted by a wide
range of philosophers18 holding different substantive views (on norma-
tive questions or elsewhere). The relative normative neutrality of these
two methods ensures that they have a significant degree of ‘modularity’,
i.e. they can be combined with different substantive philosophical pos-
itions. While this feature may be seen as a weakness from a substantive,
philosophical perspective, from a methodological perspective it it is in
fact an advantage, ensuring the wide applicability of the two
17This is a point often stressed by Haslanger regarding ameliorative analysis (Haslanger 2012). In (Dutilh
Novaes 2020) I’ve argued that explicit attention to goals and purposes is something that Carnapian
explicators can learn from Haslangerian ameliorators, and this also applies to Foucaultian genealogy
and its focus on functions and practices.
18Moreover, it is still widely (but mistakenly) thought that Carnapian explication is limited to projects of
formalization by means of logical or mathematical tools. But explication goes much beyond formaliza-
tion, as stressed by Carnap himself in his response to critics in the Living Philosophers volume dedicated
to him (Carnap 1963). See also (Dutilh Novaes 2020) for the wider applicability of the explication
framework.
8 C. DUTILH NOVAES
methods.19 In other words, because the two methods are both fairly
neutral with respect to more substantive (meta-)normative commitments,
they can be adopted even by those who hold different views.
To close this section, intellectual honesty demands that attention be
paid also to some of the dissimilarities between Carnap and Foucault.
One of them concerns the kind of freedom fostered by the intellectual
activities theorized by each of them. In line with a Kantian view of the
Enlightenment as liberation from a state of immaturity (Kant 1996),
Carnap remains resolutely optimistic with respect to the possibility of
intellectual emancipation connected with scientific progress (Carnap
1963). For Foucault, by contrast, our ‘impatience for liberty’ (Foucault
1984b) requires constant labor, and he is skeptical as to whether ‘liber-
ation’ can in fact occur at all in a number of contexts. (Intellectual)
freedom is a constant, demanding praxis for Foucault (Mendieta 2011).
A second point of dissimilarity concerns their respective stances
towards (normal, in the Kuhnian sense) science. For Carnap, sustained
engagement with scientific knowledge will by and large lead to emanci-
pation, i.e. to breaking free from prejudice and unscientific worldviews
(Carus 2008). Foucault, by contrast, recognizes in (normal) science also
the potential for domination and coercion, for example in his analysis
of the phenomenon of biopower (Foucault 1978). For Foucault,
(normal) science is not a neutral framework; it represents political
stances as much as any other system of knowledge.
A third, related point of disanalogy are the different ways in which each
of them conceives of the pluralistic picture that emerges from their toler-
ant normative stances. For Carnap, the different perspectives are not
necessarily in competition with each other, whereas for Foucault there
is considerable friction between them. Describing Foucault’s stance as a
form of guerrilla pluralism, Medina observes:
It is not a pluralism that tries to resolve conflicts and overcome struggles, but
instead tries to provoke them and to re-energize them. It is a pluralism that
aims not at the melioration of the cognitive and ethical lives of all, but
rather, at the (epistemic and socio-political) resistance of some against the
oppression of others. (Medina 2011, 24)
On Medina’s reading, the point of Foucaultian genealogy is to excavate
‘subjugated bodies of experiences and memories, bringing to the fore
19This means that the two methods can also be appropriated by those seeking to develop morally pro-
blematic research agendas, such as those promoting inequality and oppression. (Of course, these are
problematic from the perspective of my egalitarian values.)
INQUIRY 9
the perspectives that culturally hegemonic practices have foreclosed.’
(Medina 2011, 11) This is a constant, never-ending process, which
Medina describes as ongoing ‘epistemic friction’; it does not amount to
a mere re-inversion of the relations between oppressor and oppressed.
Carnap, in turn, also conceives of explication as an open-ended process
(Dutilh Novaes and Reck 2017); but with characteristic Enlightenment
optimism, the presupposition seems to be that, at each stage, we can col-
lectively progress towards a more rational epistemic position. In sum,
Carnap seems to represent the (a)meliorist position described in
Medina’s quote above, whereas Foucault would embrace ‘guerilla
pluralism’.
3. Carnapian explication and a lacuna20
Let us now turn to Carnapian explication in more detail. Throughout his
career, Carnap developed a number of constructed formal systems, as
early as in Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928) and Logische Syntax der
Sprache (1934) (Carnap 2002). Indeed, the notion of a constructed
language is perhaps the main theme running through all of Carnap’s
large oeuvre. In later writings, in particular in Meaning and Necessity
(1947) (Carnap 1947) and Logical Foundations of Probability (Carnap
1950), the key methodological concept became that of explication,
which is not exclusively tied to constructed languages and formaliza-
tion,21 but often does take the form of applications of artificially con-
structed languages. Explication is a process whereby a vague, informal
concept, either from everyday life or from more regimented contexts
such as scientific contexts (but in early stages of development), is given
a more exact, often formalized formulation. As such, the approach is a
successor of some related earlier methodologies developed by Frege,
Russell, and others (Beaney 2013). Here is Carnap’s formulation of the
idea of explication in Meaning and Necessity:
The task of making more exact a vague or not quite exact concept used in
everyday life or in an earlier stage of scientific or logical development, or
rather of replacing it by a newly constructed, more exact concept, belongs
among the most important tasks of logical analysis and logical construction.
20This section follows the presentation of Carnapian explication in (Dutilh Novaes and Reck 2017) and
(Dutilh Novaes 2020). As I will argue, the lacuna in question is not inherent to the method of explica-
tion, but rather a feature of how it has de facto generally been described and deployed, and can be
fairly easily remedied.
21‘[The theorist engaging in explication] may merely state a few simple rules, or he may prefer a more or
less elaborate procedure, and for this he may or may not use an artificial language.’ (Carnap 1963, 936)
10 C. DUTILH NOVAES
We call this the task of explicating, or of giving an explication for, the earlier
concept; this earlier concept, or sometimes the term used for it, is called the
explicandum; and the new concept, orits term, is called an explicatum of the
old one. (Carnap 1947, 7–8)
The most detailed exposition of the concept of explication is to be found
in Chapter 1 of Logical Foundations of Probability, where Carnap offers the
following example to illustrate the general idea:
When we compare the explicandum Fish with the explicatum Piscis, we see that
they do not even approximately coincide […]. What was [the zoologists’]
motive for […] artificially constructing the new concept Piscis far remote
from any concept in the prescientific language? The reason was that [they] rea-
lized the fact that the concept Piscis promised to be much more fruitful than
any concept more similar to Fish. A scientific concept is the more fruitful the
more it can be brought into connection with other concepts on the basis of
observed facts; in other words, the more it can be used for the formulation
of laws. (Carnap 1950, 6).
It is thus the fruitfulness of the concept Piscis that motivates the adoption
of Piscis in certain contexts where Fish had so far been used, in particular
scientific contexts. The justification for replacing Fish with Piscis is not
based on greater representational accuracy of a purported ‘natural
kind’, but rather on fruitfulness related to prediction and fit with other
scientific observations. Indeed, Carnap can be viewed as holding a prag-
matic conception of concepts (in the sense of (Thomasson 2020)), in line
with his rejection of traditional metaphysics and his emphasis on fruitful-
ness as the guiding principle for concept choice. (This is important; if he
held a ‘carve the world at its joints’ conception of concepts, the combi-
nation with Foucaultian genealogy would be unviable.)
But fruitfulness is not all that it takes for an explication to be successful
(though it is arguably the main criterion). Carnap discusses four main cri-
teria of adequacy for an explication: similarity, exactness, fruitfulness, and
simplicity (Carnap 1950). Indeed, while there is considerable room for
maneuver when engaging in explication (there is no such thing as the
unique ‘correct’ explication for a given explicandum (Carnap 1950)
(Reck 2012), this does not mean that ‘anything goes’. There are standards
that an explication must satisfy to be deemed adequate, and some expli-
cations will be more adequate than others.
The main concepts to which Carnap applied the method of explication
in his own work are meaning and necessity (Carnap 1947), (logical) prob-
ability and degrees of confirmation (Carnap 1950), and information (with
Bar-Hillel) (Bar-Hillel and Carnap 1953). In (Carnap 1947, 8) he further lists
INQUIRY 11
some examples of philosophical analysis that would count as instances of
explication: Frege’s and Russell’s analysis of the natural numbers; their
work on definite descriptions; Tarski’s analysis of the concept of truth.
Unsurprisingly, these are concepts relevant within logic, mathematics,
and to some extent scientific practice, as these were the areas that
Carnap himself tended to focus on. But this does not mean that the
method of explication cannot be applied to concepts belonging to
other domains of inquiry or human activity (more on this point in
section 5).
An important component of the explication process is the preliminary,
informal analysis of its target, the explicandum. Carnap refers to this stage
as the clarification of the explicandum, and emphasizes its significance:
There is a temptation to think that, since the explicandum cannot be given in
exact terms anyway, it does not matter much how we formulate the
problem. But this would be quite wrong. On the contrary, […] we must […]
do all we can to make at least practically clear what is meant as the explican-
dum. (Carnap 1950, 4)
How does one go about clarifying the explicandum? Here Carnap offers
precious little guidance, with just a few remarks on paying attention to
‘intended uses’ of the explicandum:
An indication of the meaning with the help of some examples for its intended
use and other examples for uses not now intended can help the understanding.
An informal explanation in general terms may be added. (Carnap 1950, 4)
In practice, when deploying the method of explication himself, Carnap
also tends to have a rather ‘cavalier’ (Reck 2012, 101) attitude, often
relying on platitudes on the intended uses of the explicandum. As
argued in (Reck 2012), this is an important lacuna in the method, at
least as explicitly formulated by Carnap.22 In fact, it threatens the
success of the enterprise as a whole, as it leaves room for the explicator
to fall short of developing a good enough sense of the target phenom-
enon, i.e. that which is to be explicated (which may well be a rather het-
erogeneous, ‘messy’ concept in actual practices).
It seems inadequate […] to handle the clarification of the explicandum by just
providing a few examples together with a rough-and-ready explanation. Much
22Shepherd and Justus (Shepherd and Justus 2015) also identify a lacuna in Carnap’s method of explica-
tion (namely that it is not suitable to treat normative concepts), and argue that the X-Phi approach can
help remedy it. As a methodological pluralist, I have no qualms with yet other methods being used to
complement Carnapian explication.
12 C. DUTILH NOVAES
more attention to the context and the practices surrounding the examples seems
called for. (Reck 2012, 104, my emphasis)
But does this mean that Carnapian explication as a method for philoso-
phical analysis is doomed to fail? This conclusion would be too hasty.
The lack of attention to the clarification stage of an explication can be
remedied by combining explication with other methods and approaches.
Reck summarizes this point aptly, against the background of Carnap’s
own intellectual context:
Can’t one supplement a Carnapian formal approach in some ways to get around
it? In fact, two sources for where the needed supplement may come from suggest
themselves: the history and the sociology of science. These are natural sugges-
tions as soon as one realizes that, while Carnap never explored the history or
the sociology of science much himself, other members of the Vienna Circle did.
(Otto Neurath is well known for his emphasis on the sociology of science; and
works by Philip Frank, among others, engage seriously with the history of
science.) Finally, the members of the Vienna Circle clearly saw themselves as
having adopted a division of labor, with some of them focusing on formal
aspects of science, others on sociological and historical aspects. (Reck 2012, 107)
Here Reck refers specifically to the history and sociology of science
because this is the domain he focuses on in his paper (his case study is
the concept of scientific explanation). However, the point applies more
generally, and holds also if one is to explicate concepts belonging to
domains other than science: attending to the relevant sociological and
historical aspects is a particularly suitable manner to clarify the explican-
dum. This is so because current uses of concepts still contain traces of
their past instantiations, as argued in (Dutilh Novaes 2015). This means
that a proper understanding of current uses of a given concept will
require attention to how these uses emerged in the first place, i.e. as
responses to specific needs, functions and applications in the past.
While Carnapmay not have explicitly articulated a conception of concepts
as historically construed, I take it that it is fully compatible with his prag-
matic stance on concepts: he rejects the idea that there are objective,
atemporal ‘essences’ that concepts ought to capture. Moreover, given
that Carnap views explication as a dynamic, open-ended process, it is
natural to think that concepts will evolve over time.
In the next section, I argue that Foucaultian genealogy is an ideal can-
didate to complement Carnapian explication in this respect. This is so
because Foucaultian genealogy is an exceptionally powerful diagnostic
tool when it comes not only tounderstanding a given phenomenon
and associated concept(s), but also to exposing what may be problematic
INQUIRY 13
about it in view of its presumed functions, and pointing in the direction of
possible paths for transformation.
4. Foucaultian genealogy as a tool for Carnapian explication
So let us finally turn to Foucaultian genealogy in more detail. Naturally,
genealogical investigations come in many kinds (as discussed in (Dutilh
Novaes 2015)). In particular, the goal may be to vindicate a particular
concept or practice by unearthing its noble origins, or alternatively a geneal-
ogymay seek to achieve theexactoppositeby revealing its shameful origins.
Craig (Craig 2007) uses the terms ‘vindicatory’ and ‘subversive’, respectively,
for these two kinds of genealogical investigation, and doubts that there can
be (philosophically interesting) instances of genealogy that do not seek to
either aggrandize or denigrate their object of analysis. In turn, Koopman
(Koopman 2013) argues that Foucaultian genealogy is in fact neither vindi-
catorynor subversive (apoint related toFoucault’s ‘tolerant’meta-normative
stance previously discussed), its goal being primarily explanatory:
Foucault problematized in order to conceptualize and make intelligible that
which contingently conditions our present. The crucial difference is between
showing that the present is contingent and showing how the present is contin-
gently made up. Foucault was always more invested in the latter project. A dis-
tinction between the that and the how of contingency helps us recognize that
Foucaultian problematization specifically invites reconstruction: the work of
problematization does not subvert, but rather sets problems that demand
responses and resolutions. (Koopman 2013, 21)
It is because it addresses the how question that Foucaultian genealogy is
primarily explanatory and diagnostic, constantly bringing to the fore
alternatives and subjugated forms of knowledge (see the point about
‘guerilla pluralism’ above).23
For if we are to reconstruct our present so that it may yield better futures, we
first need a grip on the materials out of which our present has been constructed
in the past. Perhaps this diagnostic grip is the greatest advantage of genealogi-
cal philosophy. (Koopman 2013, 12)
And how does genealogy address the how question? Here is a generic
description that nicely captures some of the main components of Fou-
caultian genealogy:
23‘[The genealogist] must be able to diagnose the illnesses of the body, its conditions of weakness and
strength, its breakdowns and resistances, to be in a position to judge philosophical discourse.’ (80)
‘[History’s] task is to become a curative science.’ (90) (Foucault 1984a)
14 C. DUTILH NOVAES
Very roughly, a genealogy of a concept explores its history, not in order to
determine its true meaning by reference to origins, and not for sheer historicist
fascination, but in order to understand how the concept is embedded in evol-
ving social practices. Two points are crucial here: First, our concepts and our
social practices are deeply intertwined. Concepts not only enable us to describe
but also help structure social practices, and our evolving practices affect our
concepts. Second, there is often a significant gap between the dominant or
institutional understanding of a domain and its actual workings, for example,
in the interplay between concept and practice, developments on one side
can get ahead of or stubbornly resist the other. (Haslanger 2005, 13)
The key idea is thus the attention to practices, which in Foucault’s case
translates specifically into attention to bodily conducts and actions (e.g.
his history of sexuality (Foucault 1978)).24 But this does not mean, con-
trary to what is sometimes believed, that the very category of concepts
is alien to Foucault’s enterprise as a whole: as shown in (Koopman
2017), ‘a genealogical attention to practice goes hand in hand with an
attention to the role of the conceptual within our practices.’ (103) As
for the second point, insofar as Foucaultian genealogies are intended
to help produce insurrections of subjugated knowledges, they lead to
challenges to hegemonic and institutional discourse. ‘By resurrecting
these buried and masked blocks of historical knowledge, the critique of
institutions, discourses, and hegemonic histories becomes possible.’
(Medina 2011, 17)
What genealogy is not, Foucault insists, is an investigation into the pur-
ported essence of some phenomenon by reference to its pure origins.
Instead, the complex historical processes that unfold, permeated with
contingencies and vicissitudes along the way, are what constitute what
we do, think, and are in the present. ‘A genealogy of values, morality asce-
ticism, and knowledge will never confuse itself with a question for their
“origins”, will never neglect as inaccessible the vicissitudes of history.’
(Foucault 1984a, 80). A genealogy is also a critique of essentializing con-
ceptions of (social) phenomena—a vindication of the contingent over the
necessary—thus again revealing Foucault’s general rejection of tra-
ditional, speculative metaphysics (see section 2).
Foucault applied the genealogical method (and closely related
methods such as the archeological method) to a number of topics/con-
cepts/phenomena throughout his career, especially (roughly in chrono-
logical order) madness, medicine, punishment and prisons, sexuality,
24‘Genealogy, as an analysis of descent, is thus situated within the articulation of the body and history.’
(Foucault 1984a, 83)
INQUIRY 15
biopolitics, ethics. These are, of course, very different from the concepts
and topics that Carnap focused on in his explications, though they
share a common interest in (but have different orientations towards)
science and scientific practices generally speaking. But here again the
point is that wemay adopt a ‘methodologist’ engagement with Foucault’s
work, which thus allows for the application of his methods, genealogy in
particular, to topics he himself may not have been interested in (Erlen-
busch-Anderson 2018). Hacking’s ground-breaking, Foucault-inspired
work on probability (Hacking 1975) is an excellent illustration of how Fou-
caultian methods can be fruitfully applied to investigate the very con-
cepts that Carnap himself took to be quintessential candidates for
explication, probability in particular (Carnap 1950).
In section 3, I claimed (following (Reck 2012)) that attention to the
history and sociological aspects of the concept to be explicated by a Car-
napian explication would be a promising avenue to remedy the brief and
superficial engagement with the clarification of the explicandum that is
characteristic of Carnap’s own explications. Because it is an excellent diag-
nostic tool, which allows us to understand how a concept is embedded in
evolving social practices—how it works, which functions it has and is
thought to have—genealogy appears to be exactly what is needed to
complement this lacuna in Carnapian explication: it combines historical
investigation with attention to practices.25 Given the avowed pragmatist
commitments of Carnapian explication (as argued in (Dutilh Novaes
2020)), a clarification of the explanandum must take into account its
embeddedness in social practices. Moreover, by investigating how
these practices (contingently) came to be what they now are, i.e. their his-
torical development, the explicator will better understand current uses
and be in a much better position to canvas possibilities for transform-
ation. Furthermore, given the focus on the fruitfulness of an explication,
which in turn is directly related to the roles and functions of concepts,
an in-depth investigation of the functions of a concept by means of
a genealogy provides the elements required for a much needed reflection
on the functions and goals to be achieved in the context of an explication.
But why should we turn specifically to genealogical analysis, instead of
other methods of historicalinvestigation? Let me now compare geneal-
ogy to two other possible candidates, so as to argue that it is a better
fit for Carnapian explication (and in fact for conceptual engineering/
25‘Genealogy explores the embeddedness of a concept within social practices and the history of those
practices.’ (Haslanger 2005, 18)
16 C. DUTILH NOVAES
ameliorative analysis in general) than the alternatives.26 I’ll briefly discuss
intellectual history, and social history of the ‘big picture’ kind.
Intellectual history focuses on the historical development of ideas and
concepts overtime, often (though not always) in connection with the rel-
evant worldly contexts. While there has been more emphasis on contex-
tualization in recent work, it remains an approach that focuses primarily
on intellectual inquiry and on the relation of concepts to other concepts
rather than on their embedding in broader social realities (what can be
described as ‘internalist’ intellectual history (Gordon 2013)). This approach
is of course very much the opposite of what Foucault recommends and
does himself, given his focus on social practices, bodies, and material cir-
cumstances (although Foucault is sometimes classified as an intellectual
historian, in a broader sense).
More relevant for our purposes is the observation that, if we view Car-
napian explication as not only a narrow project of explicating scientific
concepts but as a broader project aiming at social transformation (as
argued in (Carus 2008) and (Dutilh Novaes 2020)), then it becomes clear
that exclusive focus on the conceptual, intellectual dimensions of
phenomena will not suffice. To be fully satisfactory, a clarification of the
explanandum must take into account a much broader range of phenom-
ena, and emphasize the social circumstances that give rise to and embed
particular concepts (these concepts in turn will further influence the social
realities in question, in a feedback loop). Intellectual history is thus in this
sense too narrow to serve the purposes of Carnapian explication.
In contrast, another candidate approach, large-synthesis social history,
is too broad for the purposes of Carnapian explication. Social history
emphasizes social structures and the interaction of different groups in
society rather than focusing exclusively on the ‘official’ history of those
in power. Social history is thus interested not only in grand events such
as wars, coups, successions, revolutions etc., but also in mundane affairs
pertaining to the lived experiences of ordinary people. (So far, this is com-
patible with a Foucaultian perspective.) But while some social historians
adopt a narrow, specialized focus, in some prominent instantiations,
social historical theories were intended as grand syntheses of ‘everything’,
for example in the French tradition of histoire totale. The work of
26True enough, these different approaches may also be seen as complementary rather than as compe-
titors. (I owe this point to an anonymous referee.) The point is rather that Foucaultian genealogy
appears to offer the appropriate level of detail for the explicator, and so would typically be more suit-
able that the others if choices need to be made (which is usually the case).
INQUIRY 17
distinguished historians such as F. Braudel and E. Hobsbawm would be
good examples of this approach (Conrad 2015).
Foucaultian historiography rejects ‘big picture’, synthesis-of-everything
approaches, and focuses instead on more piecemeal analyses.27 In par-
ticular, Foucault thinks that these grand narratives obfuscate the com-
plexity and heterogeneity of counter-discourses and counter-memories
(Medina 2011), thus failing to promote social transformations. Genealo-
gies, by contrast, with their narrower focus and attention for non-domi-
nant discourse, are able to support and foster such transformations.
I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be possible in the
last twenty years in a certain number of areas that concern our ways of being
and thinking, relations to authority, relations between the sexes, the way in
which we perceive insanity or illness; I prefer even these partial transformations
that have been made in the correlation of historical analysis and the practical
attitude, to the programs for a new man that the worst political systems
have repeated throughout the twentieth century. (Foucault 1984b, 46/7)
For Carnapian explication again, ‘big-picture’ histories are not particularly
suitable to assist with the clarification of the explanandum. Explication
operates on specific concepts,28 so a certain level of ‘narrowness’ and
focus is required even if the embedding of the concept in question into
social practices is also relevant.
In sum, following the so-called ‘Goldilocks Principle’ (not too little, not
too much), Foucaultian genealogy is arguably a better fit for Carnapian
explication than the two alternatives discussed here, as it provides just
the right level of detail: not too narrow in that it does not exclude relevant
bodily and material phenomena and practices, but not too broad in that it
focuses on specific phenomena and the corresponding concepts (in Fou-
cault’s own work: madness, prisons, sexuality etc.) rather than aiming at
being a ‘history of everything’. Of course, there may well be other
approaches to historical analysis not considered here that would fare
just as well or better than Foucaultian genealogy as a complement for
Carnapian explication. But by discussing these two alternatives, I hope
to have further clarified the appropriate level of granularity for historical
analysis if it is to provide clarification of the explanandum, as required for
27However, at times he does seem to suggest that a particular principle-concept has very wide-ranging
explanatory power, thus coming closer to an all-encompassing history-of-everything. One example
might be his analysis in terms of the focal concept of war in his 1975/76 series of lectures ‘Society
Must Be Defended’ (Foucault 2003).
28Brun (2017) argues that the focus on individual concepts is in fact a weakness of Carnapian explication.
He recommends instead that systems of concepts and theories rather than individual concepts be
taken as the focus of explication.
18 C. DUTILH NOVAES
a successful explication. Moreover, the genealogical focus on practices
echoes Carnap’s pragmatist approach to explication.
5. An example: marriage
Let us now finally turn to a concrete example of how a Carnapian expli-
cator could go about, relying on a genealogical perspective for the
crucial step of clarification. The example to be discussed is the concept
of marriage, which has undergone significant transformations in recent
decades (in a number of places at least), along with the relevant practices.
It might be objected that marriage is not the right kind of explanan-
dum for Carnapian explication, as it falls outside of Carnap’s original
scope of action, comprising logic, mathematics, and the exact sciences.
But as argued in (Carus 2008) and (Dutilh Novaes 2020), extending the
method of explication beyond these domains is in fact very much in
the spirit of Carnap’s own political views. In a recent paper (Pearson
2017), Pearson focuses precisely on marriage from the point of view of
Carnapian explication. He sums it up thus:
[T]he importance of Carnap’s program of conceptual engineering extends
beyond the fields of mathematics and the physical sciences with which it has
most often been associated, […] in particular, explication is relevant for those
of us wishing to address sociopolitical problems. The reason is that Carnap
gives us a method for refining the professional dialects used to gain insight
into our social problems, such as the interpretive sciences of sociology, anthro-
pology, and history. (Pearson 2017, 24)
Indeed, the ambition of a Carnapian explicator is not that of producing an
explicatum that is meant to replace the explicandum in ordinary parlance,
among laypeople (not immediately at least).Instead, as Carnap’s theory
and practice seem to suggest (though I am not aware of explicit state-
ments by him in this respect), the goal is to formulate a more precise
concept than the original explicandum that will be in first instance
adopted in the relevant professional dialects, i.e. the vocabulary of theor-
ists and scientists. (It may well then go on to become widely adopted more
broadly, but this is presumably not the initial goal of an explication.) In
turn, equipped with the new, more fruitful concept, the theorist can
sharpen her analyses, which may also have consequences for societal
issues if the research in question has such implications.
For example: in (Dutilh Novaes 2020), I discussed the example of a Car-
napian explication of the concept of intersectionality proposed in (Bright,
INQUIRY 19
Malinsky, and Thompson 2016). The point of explicating the concept of
intersectionality for these authors was primarily to equip theorists (sociol-
ogists, economists, legal scholars etc.) with a precise, formally defined
notion of intersectionality. These theorists may then go on to apply the
new formulation of the concept in their theories, (hopefully) leading to
recommendations for concrete interventions to increase levels of social
justice.
Having clarified who are the initial ‘consumers’ of the result of an expli-
cation (predominantly theorists and scientists), let us now turn to the
example of marriage. It is well known that marriage as an institution
has undergone numerous changes over the centuries, for example
when marriage and love became strongly associated—a very recent
phenomenon indeed, apparently dating to the eighteenth/nineteenth
century (Coontz 2006). The push towards legalizing same-sex marriage
in a number of countries in the last decades led to lively ‘metalinguistic
disputes’ on what the core meaning of marriage should be (Pearson
2017). Those opposing same-sex marriage contended that joining a
man and a woman in matrimony is a necessary condition for marriage,
without which the very concept does not apply (especially given the pre-
sumed goal of reproduction). Those in favor of same-sex marriage
retorted that the gender/sex of those involved is not an essential com-
ponent of the concept of marriage, and thus that there should be more
than enough conceptual room to accommodate the idea of same-sex
marriage (Murphy 2011). In this context, clear, precise explications of
the concept marriage may facilitate these discussions.
How should one go about explicating marriage? I submit that a sus-
tained engagement with the ‘ordinary’ notions of marriage, which
would correspond to the clarification of the explanandum, requires his-
torical investigation and has much to benefit from a genealogical
approach. What are the practices involved, and how did they change
over time? How is the official, institutional concept of marriage
reflected in actual practices, in particular in terms of gender (in)equality
in the case of heterosexual relationships? It is well known that, in many
(historical but still some present) contexts, upon marriage a woman
came to be viewed as her husband’s ‘property’ in some sense, which is
reflected in the still widespread convention of a married woman adopting
her husband’s surname (Goldin and Shim 2004). Apparently, traces of
these previous instantiations of marital practices still remain in our
present practices and conceptualizations, and thus must be brought to
light if we are to understand current instantiations. Another potential
20 C. DUTILH NOVAES
benefit of a genealogical investigation would be to indicate that practices
have de facto undergone a number of radical changes over the centuries,
which seems to suggest a plastic, malleable concept rather than some
immutable essence. This would provide further support to revisionary
approaches, precisely in the spirit of genealogy as an instrument for
transformation.29
In short, genealogies of marriage highlight the contingent, varying
faces of this institution across time, and would indicate possibilities for
transformation thanks to their diagnostic grip. Foucault himself under-
took a fairly detailed genealogy of marriage in the medieval Christian
world, presented in the posthumously published Volume 4 of The
History of Sexuality entitled Confessions of the Flesh (Foucault 2021).
There he shows that with the Church Fathers of the early Middle Ages,
sex (especially understood as intercourse) became acceptable only in
the context of marriage, which was not the case in pagan antiquity. More-
over, he argues that ideals of virginity and chastity came to be seen as
superior to marriage and an active sexual life (again, in contrast with
pagan antiquity). Foucault thus documents important historical trans-
formations in practices of marriage whose traces are arguably still with
us today, e.g. with the concept of adultery and ideals of monogamy.
But how does the explicator choose which transformations to pursue,
among the range of possibilities suggested by the genealogical step of
clarification? The explicator may already have a particular normative com-
mitment when engaging in explication, but this normative input is exter-
nal and autonomous with respect to the method of explication itself (as
often emphasized by Haslanger with respect to ameliorative analysis).
So in the case of marriage for example, the external normative commit-
ment may be to egalitarian values, in which case there will be an incentive
to explicate marriage such as to make the concept and accompanying
practices more inclusive (as in the proposal by E. Brake to be discussed
shortly). But if the external normative commitment is a different one
(e.g. marriage should promote reproduction above all),30 the explication
will take a different turn. A genealogy will not decide which values the
explicator should adopt, and thus in which direction to modify the expli-
candum; but it will indicate a number of possibilities for revision, if indeed
29‘Genealogy is a technique of analysis that renders what we took to be natural, ontologically stable,
historically immutable into something that is historically contingent, produced, mutable and thus
open to transformation, revision, abandonment and challenge.’ (Mendieta 2011, 113)
30Such a stance would also be revisionary, as it would oppose marriage for those past reproductive age,
or for people who cannot or do not wish to reproduce; it would render marriage less inclusive than it
currently is.
INQUIRY 21
the concept is to be revised at all. This, again, is very much in the spirit of
Carnap’s own philosophical orientation.
A recent example of what might be described as an explication31 of the
concept of marriage is Brake’s ‘minimal marriage’ proposal, which privi-
leges the component ‘caring relationship’ over other presumed com-
ponents of the concept of marriage (Brake 2012). For Brake, there
should be no restrictions on either gender or the number of people
involved in a marriage. Moreover, there should be no specific restrictions
on the kinds of spousal obligations involved (e.g. the idea that spouses
should entertain a romantic and/or sexual relationship with each other
is not to be privileged). Such a radical reconfiguration of the concept of
marriage could be justified in Carnapian terms of fruitfulness, i.e. if it
would support and foster a greater level of human flourishing and
social justice. Brake believes this to be the case, as minimal marriage
would counter what she calls ‘amatonormative discrimination’ against
people who do not fit the traditional format. Admittedly, Brake does
not engage in the kind of genealogical analysis that I recommend as a
complement to explication. However, it seems that Foucaultian genealo-
gies of marriage, for example in terms of the concepts of biopower and
biopolitics, could offer additional clarity and support to Brake’s proposal,
or to other radical revisions of the concept of marriage.32 (I leave this as a
suggestion for future work.)33In closing, let me quickly mention an example of combining genealogy
with explication for a concept closer to Carnap’s own original field of
action, namely the concept of logical form, from my own previous work.
In (Dutilh Novaes 2012) I presented a genealogy of logical hylomorphism
and the concept of logical form. This genealogy served to motivate a
functionalist reconceptualization of the concept of logical form, one
which does not rely crucially on a demarcation of logical constants (as
is the case with standard notions of logical form), and instead focuses
on the goals and functions of (deductive) arguments. I invite the inter-
ested reader to turn to that paper for further details, as limitations of
31It might be argued that Brake’s analysis might be more suitably described as an instance of Haslanger-
ian ameliorative analysis rather than as Carnapian explication. But as I argued in (Dutilh Novaes 2020),
the two methods share many commonalities and will often overlap in terms of the results produced. So
I submit that Brake’s analysis can be viewed as both.
32The work of Arnold Davidson (Davidson 2001) and his method of historical epistemology is an excellent
illustration of the kind of Foucaultian genealogy that could contribute to projects of conceptual
engineering.
33In (Dutilh Novaes 2015) I argued for a broader relevance of conceptual genealogy for analytic philos-
ophy, not only restricted to the preliminary stage of clarification of the explicandum. But for the pur-
poses of this paper, it makes sense to focus on this narrower application.
22 C. DUTILH NOVAES
space prevent me from further discussing this example. (A brief summary
of this genealogy of logical form is also to be found in (Dutilh Novaes
2015).) But it seems relevant to mention that the potential application
of genealogy combined with explication is not limited to politically/
socially relevant concepts such as marriage.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that an important lacuna in Carnap’s own for-
mulation of the method of explication, namely an all-too-brief engage-
ment with the preliminary stage of clarification of the explanandum
and limited reflection on its functions, can be remedied by deploying Fou-
caultian genealogical investigation. Genealogy can help clarify current
uses of the explanandum because these current uses are arguably conse-
quences of the historical development of the concept and associated
practices, still comprising significant traces of past instantiations. It also
brings to the fore the functions of a given concept, which in turn facili-
tates the formulation of a fruitful explication. Moreover, by highlighting
the contingencies involved in current uses, a genealogical investigation
also indicates possibilities for transformation, which is precisely what
the Carnapian explicator wants to accomplish: a transformation of the
explicandum into a more fruitful, suitable explicatum.
In closing, I want to add a few remarks on the broader significance of
this inquiry. Firstly, it must be noted that it has fairly modest ambitions:
the goal is not to establish that Carnapian explication can only proceed
by relying on Foucaultian genealogy, nor is it to establish that the
primary goal of Foucaultian genealogy should be that of serving projects
of conceptual engineering. Rather, I present the combination of geneal-
ogy and explication as one potentially fruitful approach to conceptual
engineering among others. (I am a methodological pluralist.) Moreover,
the multiple other goals and uses of genealogical investigation remain
just as legitimate as they were before; I am simply suggesting that this
is yet another possible use of the genealogical method, namely, for
projects of conceptual engineering.
More broadly, the methodological approach I sketched in this paper
belongs to a pragmatist, functionalist strand within the conceptual engin-
eering landscape. Amie Thomasson is one exponent of this strand, overtly
under the influence of Carnap, in particular in her rejection of ‘thick’ con-
ceptions ofmetaphysical theorizing and her defense of a functionalist con-
ception of concepts (Thomasson 2020) (section 2). Tellingly, Thomasson
INQUIRY 23
explicitly recognizes the role that genealogical investigations can play for
pragmatist conceptual engineering (Thomasson 2020) (section 4.3). Sally
Haslanger’s ameliorist approach is another example of pragmatist, func-
tionalist conceptual engineering, and she too stresses the contribution
that genealogical investigations can make to such projects (Haslanger
2012). The general point is this: whoever takes function and practices to
be a fundamental component of projects of conceptual engineering will
have much to benefit from engaging with Foucault’s genealogical
method, given its attention to practices and the symbiotic relation
between concepts and practices (Koopman 2017). Moreover, those inter-
ested in political and societal implications of engineering concepts will
also benefit from Foucault’s sustained attention to power relations.
More generally, I submit that Foucault is a thinker whom analytic phi-
losophers would have much to learn from, despite apparent incompatibil-
ities in orientation and methods. In this paper, I’ve sketched how a
Carnapian explicator can fruitfully engage with some aspects of Fou-
cault’s thought, but its relevance for the philosophical questions that ana-
lytic philosophers are interested in arguably goes well beyond this
particular instance of fruitful collaboration.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to an anonymous referee, Elias Anttila, Liam Kofi Bright, Georg Brun, Manuel
Gustavo Isaac, Steffen Koch, Colin Koopman, Erich Reck, and Merel Talbi for comments
on previous drafts of the paper.
This research was supported by the Consolidator grant ERC-2017-COG, project SEA
771074.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This work was supported by H2020 European Research Council [771074-SEA].
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INQUIRY 27
	Abstract
	1. Introduction
	2. Carnap and Foucault: strange bedfellows?9&fn id=
	3. Carnapian explication and a lacuna20&fn id=
	4. Foucaultian genealogy as a tool for Carnapian explication
	5. An example: marriage
	6. Conclusion
	Acknowledgments
	Disclosure statement
	References