Analogue Magnitudes, the Generality Constraint, and Nonconceptual Thought

(P1) is what Evans (1982) calls the Generality Constraint. It holds that mental states with conceptual content must be closed under all meaningful recombinations of the constituents of the sentences that best express them. For example, anyone who can conceptually think that Albert is friendly and that Bob is gracious must also be able to conceptually think that Albert is gracious and that Bob is friendly. The Generality Constraint does not deny that some mental states might fail to be systematic. It just maintains that non-systematic mental states will lack conceptual content. Gillett thus seems to misunderstand my argument when he claims that I ‘argue that the [generality] constraint is not definitive of conceptual states in the way that Evans claimed’ (Gillet 2014, p. 1147). On the contrary, I assume that the Generality Constraint is a necessary truth and use it as a premiss in my argument for (C). At no point do I deny that the Generality Constraint is definitive of conceptual content.