XV*—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY

MATTER?

by Rosanna Keefe

ABSTRACT This paper asks whether a good philosophical account of something

can ever be circular. It explores the kind of circumstances in which an account
of F might involve F itself while still serving the functions of and meeting the
requirements on a philosophical account. The paper discusses two criteria for
acceptable circularity, based on ideas from Humberstone 1997. And it illustrates
the surprisingly wide variety of kinds of accounts in which circularity need not
be bad.

I n analysing or giving a philosophical account of something,

philosophers generally seek to avoid circularity—they aim to
avoid accounts of F formulated in terms which employ the con-
cept F itself, whether overtly or covertly. But, are good accounts
ever circular? In what circumstances, if any, might circularity be
acceptable?
There are various different projects that philosophers might
be interested in when pursuing a philosophical account of
something (whether of a concept or a kind). These different
projects, however, have certain key features in common. In
particular, an account of F is intended to give the conditions
of being F in a way that is informative and explanatory. Not
only does it specify conditions satisfied by all Fs, but those
conditions should be such as to explain why those various
things are F—for example, stating, in other terms, what they
have in common. An account may also be called upon to play
various other explanatory roles; the analysis of necessity may
play a role in explaining the logical behaviour of ‘necessarily’,
for example, or an account of causation may be used to explain
its temporal direction. And often the purpose of an account is to
explain a problematic notion in unproblematic terms (e.g. giving
an account of meaning in terms of use). I will concentrate on
biconditionals of the form ‘x is F iff Φ (x)’ (or ‘Rxy iff Φ (x,y)’,
etc.) for some complex conditions Φ, taking this as the general

*Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London,

on Monday, 24th June, 2002 at 4.15 p.m.
254 ROSANNA KEEFE

form of an account of F. For such a biconditional to give an

account of F, it must also be necessary (at least in some sense),
in particular it must give counterfactual support, so that the
account also tells us that something would be F if it fulfilled the
right-hand-side conditions.
In what follows, I take the task of giving a philosophical
account to be that of providing a biconditional of the form ‘x is
F iff Φ (x)’ which is informative, explanatory and necessarily true.
Many philosophical projects will have additional requirements;
for example, with some approaches to philosophical analyses, the
two sides of the biconditional are required to be synonymous.
But my notion of an account captures the core features common
to various philosophical projects.
Section I briefly sketches some problems that circularity often
yields, while noting that not all circular accounts need face such
problems. Section II asks whether we can formulate a good cri-
terion of acceptable circularity using Humberstone’s notion of
inferential circularity (Humberstone 1997), and argues that we
cannot. Section III considers, and again rejects, an alternative,
more formal, criterion for acceptable circularity, also based on
Humberstone 1997. Section IV considers the consequences of cir-
cularity in a wider range of cases. The paper finishes with some
speculative conclusions about the prospects for a criterion of
when circularity is acceptable.

I
Circularity. The proposal that circularity is sometimes tolerable
has recently looked more attractive and fruitful than it once
would have done. Here are three very different sorts of cases
where at least some philosophers seem to endorse circularity
within an account. First, take accounts of response-dependent
concepts. Many have thought that the essence and application
conditions of various concepts must be characterised by reference
to judgements involving the very notions in question. For
example, they specify the conditions in which the concept of red
applies to something in terms of people’s judgements that it is
red; similarly, perhaps being money requires being regarded as
money. Second, some philosophers have proposed self-professed
‘non-reductive’ analyses of, for example, possibility. They deny
 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 255

the notion of possibility can be reduced to non-modal notions

and claim to give illuminating analyses, despite presupposing, or
employing, some (primitive, or unanalysed) possibility. Third, it
is sometimes said that circularity can be fine if the circle of con-
cepts is big enough. Perhaps we can analyse concepts by tracing
their conceptual connections with other concepts, where, argu-
ably, circularity is unavoidable, since you cannot escape the net-
work of inter-connected concepts.1
Nonetheless, it is sometimes still thought that no good account
can be circular. And even if occasionally circularity is acceptable,
it is generally assumed that it usually isn’t. So, what general
grounds might there be for rejecting either all or at least most
circular accounts? One thought could be the following. If F is
itself employed in the conditions for being F, won’t that result in
a trivial set of conditions? ‘Fx iff Fx’, for example, is no account
of F, it might be said: that (true) biconditional is utterly unin-
formative and unexplanatory. Not all circularity need result in
such a simple, vacuous biconditional, but it might be thought
that triviality is nonetheless unavoidable. For example, if you
attempt to analyse free will in terms of agent causation and it
turns out that agent causation amounts to causation via an act
of free will, then the so-called account of free will looks trivial
and uninformative.
But triviality does not automatically follow from circularity.
Using the target term on the right-hand-side does not always
lead to a trivially true biconditional. For example, the coher-
ence theory of truth has been criticised on the grounds of
disguised circularity—that coherence cannot cashed out with-
out employing the notion of truth. But, clearly this circularity
by no means guarantees that the corresponding biconditional is
true, let alone trivially true: plausibly, the theory still delivers the
wrong extension because a set of sentences can be coherent but
not true.
There is scope for triviality in either or both directions of the
biconditional. To illustrate with schematic examples: with a
biconditional of the form ‘Fx iff (Gx or Fx)’, it would be trivial
that all Fs satisfy the right-hand-side, but not trivial that every-
thing satisfying the right-hand-side is F. The coherence theory of

1. See, e.g., Strawson 1992.

256 ROSANNA KEEFE

truth may be trivial in this way. By contrast, a biconditional of

the form ‘Fx iff (Gx and Fx)’ would trivially guarantee that any-
thing satisfying the right-hand-side is indeed F, but imply the
often non-trivial claim that all Fs are G. Take, for example,
Langford’s ‘X is a cube if and only if X is a cube with 12 edges’.2
Cases where neither direction is trivial can be gerrymandered
from the above cases, e.g. ‘Fx iff (Gx and (Fx or Hx))’. Though
triviality might be avoided with such cases, the circularity still
does not seem to be harmless.
Triviality will prevent a biconditional from giving an account
that is sufficiently informative. Such an account will also fail to
be explanatory. But, as we will see, circular accounts can fail to
be explanatory without being trivial. And many circular accounts
are not trivial.
One way an account may be circular but not trivial is if the
target term appears in a suitable context on the right-hand-side.
What is special about a response-dependent account which
employs the target notion is that it appears there in the context
of an operator such as ‘−− judges’.3 It may be acceptable to
characterise what it is for something to be red in terms of when
it is judged to be red, but unacceptable to characterise it in terms
of when it is red. And, similarly, it would not do to characterise
it in terms of what people know to be red. Exactly how to dis-
tinguish the good contexts from the bad ones is a question
addressed in detail by Humberstone 1997. His is one of the few
discussions that suggest detailed criteria for the circumstances in
which circularity can be acceptable. I will examine two such cri-
teria suggested by Humberstone’s discussion. Both of them raise
interesting general issues about circularity.

2. Langford 1942, p. 328.

3. We are ignoring, here, the issue of whether such accounts face (disguised) circu-
larity in specifying, for example, by whom, and in what circumstances, a red thing
must be judged red. Arguably, it must be normal observers in normal conditions,
where such normality involves being such as to correctly judge red things red. The
acceptability or otherwise of using ‘judges x to be F’ in the account of F looks to be
independent of this other potential circularity. More generally, in much of what fol-
lows, the focus will be on overt circularity rather than disguised circularity.
 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 257

II
Inferential Circularity. Humberstone draws a useful distinction
between two types of circularity, which he calls analytical circu-
larity and inferential circularity (Humberstone 1997). We will
focus on inferential circularity, which is a special case of analyti-
cal circularity. An account of F is analytically circular iff ‘F ’ is
employed on the right-hand-side of the biconditional. To under-
stand inferential circularity, we need to think about using a philo-
sophical account to determine the extension of a concept: we
determine whether F applies to a by determining whether a satis-
fies Φ (...). If we need to ask whether a is F to find out whether a
does fulfil those conditions (e.g. because F is part of the specified
conditions), then the circularity is unacceptable for the purposes
in hand. Humberstone calls this ‘inferential circularity’ because
of the alleged circularity of the instance of the inference ‘Φ (a)
therefore Fa’. So, an account is inferentially circular iff argu-
ments of the form ‘Φ (x) therefore Fx’ (call these application
arguments) are circular.4
Humberstone suggests that Butler’s familiar criticism of using
memory in a criterion of personal identity amounts to a charge
of inferential circularity, since it complains that if we are to con-
clude that something satisfies the memory conditions, we must
presuppose facts about personal identity. An inferentially circu-
lar account will typically not be informative: if determining that
x is F requires presupposing Fx then the account cannot give an
informative route to the knowledge that x is F. Nor can it pro-
vide an explanation of the extension of ‘F ’.
Humberstone shows that an account can be analytically circu-
lar without being inferentially circular, for the target concept
may appear on the right-hand-side in such a way that inferential
circularity is avoided. For example, consider ‘x is F iff S judges
x to be F ’. In determining whether S judges a to be F, we do not
4. Humberstone seems to require that an account is only inferentially circular if eûery
x yields a circular application argument (see p. 250). ‘x is F iff either xGa or (x ≠ a
and x is F)’ would not then count as inferentially circular since it can be informative
in yielding the conclusion that a is F, though with every other case the application
argument is circular. An alternative requirement is that for an account to be inferen-
tially circular, application arguments need only be circular for some x. This is the
interpretation suggested by Humberstone’s more detailed formal account, discussed
in Section III below. My main criticism in the text below applies to both
interpretations.
258 ROSANNA KEEFE

need first to presuppose an answer to whether a actually is F—

so there need be no inferential circularity and, perhaps, no threat
to the informative use of the biconditional in determining the
extension of F. Similarly, such an account can be explanatory—
it commits us to the substantive claim that things count as F
because of people’s judgements about them. So, even if they are
analytically circular, many response-dependent accounts are not
guilty of the more damaging charge of inferential circularity.
The hypothesis to examine is that inferentially circular
accounts are the ones that are unacceptably circular, and that by
avoiding inferential circularity, an account can be circular but
informative and explanatory.
Unfortunately, however, this will not do. Consider (J): ‘S
knows that p iff S has a true belief that p which S knows to be
justified’. To determine whether S knows that p we do not have
to ask whether S knows that p: the application argument is not
circular. But we do have to ask whether S knows that q, where
q states that S’s belief that p is justified, and this, in turn, depends
on whether S has a true belief that q and knows her belief that q
is justified. And so on, through a never-ending regress of cases
of knowledge. More generally, suppose that instead of needing
to know whether a is F to determine whether a satisfies the right-
hand-side of the biconditional for F, we need to know whether
something else, say b, is F. The argument ‘Φ (a) therefore Fa’ is
not then likely to be circular. Yet, determining whether b is F via
the condition that Φ (b) will require asking whether y is F for
some (other) y. And so on. We will typically not then escape
either circularity (in particular, being led eventually back to the
condition that Fa) or a never-ending regress.
We can describe such accounts as failing to give conditions
where the application of the target notion is grounded in the satis-
faction of the right-hand-side; and, correspondingly, we can call
such an account ungrounded. With an ungrounded circular
account, as with one exhibiting inferential circularity, the circu-
larity blocks the possibility of an informative and explanatory
route to knowledge of the extension.5
So, although with inferentially circular accounts, Φ (x) gener-
ally involves Fx, we also need to avoid many accounts which
5. The requirement of groundedness on an account can be seen as part of the need
for an account to be explanatory. Consider the asymmetry in good accounts (despite
symmetry of the biconditional)—one way to express this might be that the appli-
 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 259

involve Fy, for some other y, for example, accounts of the form
‘Fx iff ∃y(... Fy ... & y ≠ x)’. To take another example: if ‘x is red
iff S knows that x is red’ is an unacceptable account for reasons
of circularity, it is not an acceptable fix to adapt this to ‘x is red
iff there is some y such that S knows that y is red and that y is
the same colour as x’ even though the latter may avoid circular
application arguments.
To summarise: the notion of inferential circularity is not the
key to identifying when circularity is a bad thing: it is not enough
to avoid inferential circularity in an account.
Humberstone offers another detailed account of when circu-
larity is unacceptable, which he presents, at least initially, as a
formal account of the phenomenon of inferential circularity, but
which can also be considered on its own merits. In the next sec-
tion, I turn to that alternative condition on circularity. As I shall
argue, Humberstone’s formal conditions do not coincide with a
ban on inferential circularity. Some of the ways in which they
come apart suggest that the formal account will not face the dif-
ficulty facing the inferential circularity criterion that has been
raised in this section.

III
Context matters. Return to the suggestion that what matters is
the context in which ‘F ’ appears on the right-hand-side of the
account of F. While it can reasonably appear in a context such
as ‘S judges x to be F ’, the contexts ‘S knows that x is F ’ or ‘it
is true that x is F ’ are unacceptable.6 Humberstone takes up
cation of the target notion is grounded in the satisfaction of the right-hand-side and
not vice versa. This asymmetry is crucial to the whole idea of accounts and to the
idea that in giving the conditions for being F, an account of F gives some kind of
explanation of why those things are F or of what it is to be F. Reductive analyses
are clearly grounded; and in a framework where everything must be analysable in
terms of a clear-cut set of primitives (e.g. sense-data), we can say (somewhat loosely)
that everything is grounded in those primitives.
6. Peacocke’s treatment of concepts (1992) also stresses the importance of the context
in which the target concept appears, but, by contrast, he warns against employing
judgement and other propositional attitude operators, while allowing appearances of
the concept outside such contexts. The contrast can be explained by the fact that,
unlike Humberstone, Peacocke is interested in conditions for possessing a concept
(though these are then used in the conditions for individuating that concept). So, in
particular, he rejects conditions that would assume that the subject already possesses
that concept (as would reference to that subject’s propositional attitude involving
that concept).
260 ROSANNA KEEFE

Wright’s suggestion that what is good about a ‘... judges that ...’
context is that p and ‘... judges that p’ are somehow independent.
Wright offers an Independence Condition: ‘The relevant concepts
are to be involved in the formulation of the C-conditions only in
ways which allow the satisfaction of those conditions to be logi-
cally independent of the details of the extensions of those
concepts.’7 Humberstone’s conditions provide a precise formu-
lation of the required independence, by introducing a notion of
‘compositional independence’.
Two or more sentences are compositionally independent iff
eûery combination of truth-values for those sentences is possible.
In other words, no combination of truth-value can be ruled out,
as one is in the case of p and ‘S knows that p’, where the latter
cannot be true when the former is false. A sentence operator, ψ ,
has the compositional independence property if and only if there
is some sentence p such that ψ p and p are compositionally inde-
pendent in this sense, i.e. iff for some p all of the following are
possible: ψ p & p, ψ p & ™p, ™ψ p & p, and ™ψ p & ™p. (For
an n-ary operator to be compositionally independent, there must
be some sentences p1, ... pn, such that p1, ... pn and ψ ( p1, ... pn)
are compositionally independent.) As desired, ‘S believes that ...’
passes this test (typically p and S believes that p are compo-
sitionally independent) while ‘S knows that ...’ does not ( p and
S knows that p will not be independent for any p).
Note that if the account of Fx by Φ (x) were correct, the only
possible combinations of truth-values for Fx and Φ (x) would be
both true or both false, and Fx and Φ (x) could not be compo-
sitionally independent. So, Humberstone’s condition cannot be
given directly in terms of the compositional independence of Fx
and Φ (x). By formulating the condition in terms of operators
with the compositional independence property, Humberstone
can capture a generality that extends beyond the account itself
to ask whether it uses resources that trivialise the account.
The suggestion I will consider here is that the circularity of an
account is acceptable iff the target term appears on the right-
hand-side only in the context of compositionally independent
operators.

7. Wright 1992, p. 123.

 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 261

III.1. Is this Inferential Circularity? This suggestion about accept-

able circularity requires that eûery occurrence of the target term
must be in the context of a compositionally independent oper-
ator, regardless of whether the conditions for Fx involve Fx itself
or Fy for some other y. The alternative of forbidding only those
cases where Fx itself appears outside such a context on the right-
hand-side would correspond more closely to inferential circu-
larity as initially characterised. But, like the condition in terms
of inferential circularity, this would misclassify an analysis such
as (J), where the biconditional for ‘S knows that p’ involves ‘S
knows that q’ for q ≠ p, for it would fail to identify this as unac-
ceptably circular. The suggested ban looks more suitable.
This shows that the inferential circularity condition and Hum-
berstone’s formal condition do not coincide, and it counts in fav-
our of the compositional independence conditions. But the
compositional independence requirement can be seen to be
stronger than the inferential circularity condition in other ways
that look unmotivated.
We can summarise the compositional independence require-
ment as follows. If ‘F ’ is to appear in the account of F, it must
be in the context of an operator, ψ , such that, for some p (which
need not be of the form Fx) the following holds:
(I) 䉫(ψ p & p) & 䉫(ψ p & ™p) & 䉫(™ψp & p)
& 䉫(™ψ p & ™p).
Weaker notions can be constructed by including only some of
the four conjuncts of (I). But what are the grounds for
demanding that each of those conjuncts holds for ψ to be an
appropriate context? Considering inferential circularity may sug-
gest that we should require that the argument ‘ψ p therefore p’ is
not always valid, so that it is possible that ψ p is true and p
false—i.e. 䉫(ψ p & ™p)—for some p.8 For, if ‘ψ p therefore p’
were always valid then telling us that x is F when ψ Fx would
not tell us anything informative about F specifically. But what
about the other three conjuncts of (I)? We may also be interested

8. In fact, we have seen that if ψ Fy appears in the conditions for Fx, an objection
on the grounds of inferential circularity may be misplaced (consider the known justi-
fication case), but I put that issue aside here. Also, the fact that y may only be part
of the right-hand-side conditions Φ(x) may cast doubt on this justification of the
clause.
262 ROSANNA KEEFE

in using the ‘only if ’ direction of the biconditional to deduce that

F does not apply to something given that it does not fulfil those
conditions. This would suggest forbidding a context ψ p, when
the argument ‘™ψp therefore ™p’ is always valid, which would
justify the requirement 䉫(™ψ p & p). For, if the argument from
™ψ p to ™p were always valid, the ‘only if ’ direction of the
biconditional would simply reflect the general logical behaviour
of ψ, not the conditions specifically of F. The other two conjuncts
of (I) cannot be similarly justified, however. 䉫(ψ p & p)—or
䉫(™ψ p & ™p)—would be similarly justified if we wanted to for-
bid, in general, valid arguments from ψ p to ™p—or from ™ψ p
to p. But why should we be concerned to do that? To draw the
parallel of the justification of the first clause, why should we be
concerned if to know that the conditions obtain we already need
to know (or presuppose) that the concept does not apply? How
can that challenge the informativeness of the conditions in telling
us when the concept does apply? In short, what is the motivation
for such a strong requirement on circularity, given that it does
not capture the original notion of inferential circularity?
Humberstone acknowledges that his conditions might be too
strong to capture inferential circularity, considering that they dic-
tate that negation is not an acceptable context even though it
wouldn’t yield circular application arguments.9 His response is
to construe the question as a terminological one—we could con-
tinue to call his final account one of inferential circularity, while
loosening the connection with circular arguments, or we could
call it something other than inferential circularity (‘blatant circu-
larity’) and leave the connection between inferential circularity
and circular arguments intact. But further reasons are needed to
believe that the kind of circularity Humberstone has described in
terms of compositional independence is the one that matters.
So, it is not clear why we should think that only accounts
which pass the compositional independence test are acceptable.
In Section IV I will discuss different kinds of cases suggesting
that meeting Humberstone’s conditions isn’t necessary for
acceptable circularity. First, in the next section, I show that the
conditions are also not sufficient, arguing that compositional
independence can’t be the feature of contexts that matters for the

9. Humberstone 1997, pp. 270–2.

 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 263

purposes we have been considering, such as the requirement that

accounts are explanatory.

III.2. Non-Psychological Contexts. In addition to operators like

‘S judges...’ or ‘S believes...’, what other operators are compo-
sitionally independent? Consider the one-place operator ‘in
slightly different circumstances it would be that ...’. This operator
is compositionally independent, for with many contingent p, p
and ‘in slightly different circumstances it would be that p’ are
compositionally independent.
With an account of F involving ‘in slightly different circum-
stances x would be F ’ would we avoid the kind of worries that
threaten accounts in which F appears outside a compositionally
independent context? It is hard to see why we should.
Consider analyses of knowledge that employ the necessary
condition for S to know that p that in slightly different circum-
stances S would (still ) believe that p.10 An alternative analysis of
knowledge that replaced this condition with the requirement that
in slightly different circumstances S would know that p would
surely be unacceptable for reasons of circularity. For, whether
something is F cannot be grounded in the fact that it is or isn’t
F in similar circumstances. The biconditional is supposed to give
conditions not only of when something is actually F, but of the
range of possible circumstances in which it would be F. In poss-
ible worlds talk, whether or not something would be F is a matter
of whether it is F is some close possible world, but that can’t be
(partly) explained by facts about it being F in other worlds, for
what could ground those F-facts in other worlds? We would face
circularity or a never-ending regress for any instance of F.11
So, the target term may appear only in the context of this
compositionally independent operator and yet be insufficiently

10. Take Nozick’s tracking conditions (1981), according to which, to know that p,
the subject must track the truth, so they would not believe p were p false, and would
still believe it if it were still true, yielding a condition involving something like our
‘slightly different circumstances’ operator.
11. Would such an account be inferentially circular? Probably not: the argument ‘in
slightly different circumstances Fx; so x is actually F’ does not seem to be circular.
Again, this does not look to the point. So, this case also suggests another challenge
to the Section II criterion involving inferential circularity, which fails to rule the case
out as problematically circular.
264 ROSANNA KEEFE

informative and explanatory because of that circularity. By con-

trast, facts about what is judged to be F (or about certain other
psychological attitudes to ‘... is F ’) need not presuppose anything
about what really is, could or would be F, or, indeed, what it is
to be F.
In Section III I have shown that Humberstone’s compositional
independence conditions do not capture the circumstances in
which circularity is acceptable. The next section turns to cases
where there is groundedness and, arguably, acceptable circu-
larity, despite the target notion appearing outside the scope of
any appropriate operators. As well as providing another argu-
ment that satisfying Humberstone’s compositional independence
conditions is not necessary for a circular account to be reason-
able for the purposes he has in mind, the discussion will advance
and widen our general debate about when accounts might be
circular but still informative and explanatory.

IV
Inductiûe Definitions.
IV.1. Groundedness Again. The appearance of Fy in the con-
ditions for Fx need not always result in the kind of
ungroundedness we have seen in some accounts of this type. For,
consider an account of F corresponding to an inductive or recur-
sive definition of F: this can be used to establish members of the
extension of F despite the appearance of F itself on the right-
hand-side.
Such a biconditional can involve a disjunction where one dis-
junct picks out some particular case or cases of F—the base
case(s)—and the second disjunct specifies conditions fulfilled by
other Fs using F itself, enabling us to determine that something
is F by reference to things previously determined to be F. One
general form would be ‘x is F iff (x is a or x bears R to some
F )’. So, an inductive definition of number specifies that for x to
be a number it must be either 0 or the successor of a number.12
Or consider the recursive definition of the wffs of propositional
logic that includes clauses such as ‘if A is a wff, so is ™A’. And

12. I ignore here the fact that there may also be covert circularity because of the use
of ‘successor’ which arguably depends on the notion of number.
 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 265

such definitions are common in mathematics; for example, being

a Fibonacci number is a matter of being a member of a sequence
starting 1,1 and such that a number is the (nC2)th Fibonacci
number iff it is the sum of the nth and (nC1)th Fibonacci num-
bers. Some such definitions give us a paradigm way of delivering
knowledge of the extension of a term (without prior presuppo-
sitions about that extension). Unlike with (J), an analysis of
knowledge in terms of known justification, the charge of
ungroundedness is unwarranted, for the first disjunct protects
against an infinite regress.
Before considering the range of such cases in more detail, let
us pause to return to the criterion of acceptable circularity con-
sidered in the previous section, based on Humberstone’s compo-
sitional independence conditions. Note that in a typical recursive
definition, the appearance of the target term on the right-hand-
side is not inside any compositionally independent operator. So,
if some such accounts are acceptable despite the circularity, the
proposed criterion of acceptable circularity again fails. We could
adapt the condition so that it banned circularity only in those
cases where Fx itself appears without an appropriate operator in
the conditions for x to be F (recursive definitions are never like
this). But we have objected to this kind of position already (Sec-
tion II). The compositional independence conditions provide no
way of ruling against problematic cases without also eliminating
recursive definitions.13
IV.2. Types of Base Clause. An inductive definition for F typi-
cally has a base clause to establish that certain objects are F, and
13. Rather than determining an extension by building on cases that the account
determines to be base cases, a related form of account employs ‘revision rules’ of the
kind Gupta and Belnap offer in their circular definition of truth (1993). With revision
rules, we need to start with a hypothesis about the extension—the rules then operate
on that hypothesis to yield a new extension. We can then deduce things about the
real extension by taking note of stability on repeated application of the revision rules
and for various different initial hypotheses. Gupta and Belnap maintain that
instances of the Tarski (T) schema, ‘‘‘p’’ is true iff p’, each provide a partial definition
of truth, where circularity enters because some of these biconditionals themselves use
‘true’ on the right-hand-side (e.g. when ‘p’ is ‘‘‘snow is white’’ is true’). Humberstone
takes their talk of rules of revision to show that they are not stating the application
conditions of the concept concerned (p. 257), but Gupta and Belnap are interested in
application conditions, it is just that sometimes, they claim, facts about application
can only be determined through rules of reûision. The cases where the rules do not
settle whether the truth predicate is applicable are cases such as Liar and Truth-teller
sentences, and arguably it is an advantage of the theory that such problematic sen-
tences remain unclassified as to their truth.
266 ROSANNA KEEFE

an induction clause giving a way to show that something else is

F given objects previously determined to be F. There may also
be an extremal clause stating that nothing is F unless it can be
shown to be F by repeatedly applying the base and inductive
clauses. In the typical case we are considering, the inductive
clause introduces the circularity, and the base clause ensures
groundedness. Inductive definitions have a similar structure to a
certain kind of foundationalist account of knowledge that speci-
fies a few privileged methods that are guaranteed to deliver
knowledge and states that S knows that p iff S has a true belief
that p, acquired by one of those privileged methods, or if S has
a true belief that p which is (in some specified way) based on, or
justified by, other knowledge. The base cases can be established
as knowledge using the base clause, then the inductive clause can
be used to determine as knowledge cases based on the base cases,
then building up to those based on those based on the base cases,
etc.
We can distinguish between three forms of base clause (or foun-
dational disjunct): (a) the account may give a list of special cases
(perhaps a single such case); or (b) it may specify non-circular con-
ditions that foundational elements need to fulfil (as is envisaged in
the sketched foundationalist account of knowledge); or (c) there
might be a circular way of picking out the relevant cases. (c)
initially looks problematic—it looks as if ungroundedness and兾or
triviality worries would then return—but I will return to it in the
next section. First, a brief discussion of the other two cases.
The main difference between (a) and (b) is that an account of
the form of (a) raises questions about why the special cases
singled out have their special status. Nothing in the biconditional
can help us explain why those things are F. It may then seem that
an account with a clause of this form will fail to be informative
and explanatory in the way we expect of an account. Relatedly,
using a clause of the form of (a) might be thought to be on a par
with listing off the members of the extension of F, which will not
be at all explanatory and will lack counterfactual support. On
the other hand, perhaps the account as a whole could count as
sufficiently informative and explanatory with a clause of form (a)
since it may succeed in explaining the rest of the extension by
reference to the few basic cases. Nonetheless, however we adjudi-
cate on such cases, a base clause of the form (b) certainly prom-
ises to be more explanatory.
 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 267

Given that our biconditionals are supposed to give the exten-

sion of the target term across all possible worlds, a clause of the
form (a), which specifies certain things as part of the extension,
will generally only do if the account of F can build on a basis
of necessarily F things. The inductive definition of ‘number’ is
unproblematic because the extension of ‘number’ does not vary
from possible world to possible world. But this form of definition
looks unlikely to work in typical non-mathematical cases. A
clause of form (b) avoids this problem: by specifying particular
conditions the base elements must satisfy, we allow for those con-
ditions being satisfied by different objects in different possible
situations. So, for the envisaged foundationalist account of
knowledge, different things could count as the foundational
instances of knowledge; indeed, certain specifications of the base
clause could allow that different methods of acquiring true beliefs
could give foundational cases of knowledge in different possible
worlds, provided there are general conditions satisfied by the dif-
ferent methods across the different possible situations.
IV.3. Circular Base Clauses. A circular base clause might be
needed for an inductive definition when clauses of form (a) and
(b) are unavailable. There may not be (non-circular) conditions
with which we could pick out the relevant basis, so we cannot
use (b), but those privileged cases may vary from world to world,
blocking the possibility of something of form (a). It may be that
we can only pick out the relevant cases in the basis by employing
the concept in question. The circularity here need not render the
account trivial and uninformative, for it could be that once the
relatively small class of key cases in the basis are determined
(albeit by a circular route), the rest of the extension can be estab-
lished (without any presuppositions about those non-basic cases).
Now, the base clause for F must not simply be of the form ‘x is
F ’ for that would yield utter triviality, but it may be of the form
‘x is G and x is F ’, where the type of cases in the basis are things
that are G.
This corresponds to one way of taking a little primitive F-ness
in the account of F. If we circularly establish some cases of F
and then build up to the rest of the extension using an inductive
clause involving F, there is circularity in both clauses, raising
issues about the legitimacy of each kind of circularity. Nonethe-
less, an account that builds on a circularly determined basis need
268 ROSANNA KEEFE

not have the normal sort of recursive clause. For example, the
requirement on non-basic cases might be that they stand in
relation R to a basic case (rather than to any other F), where we
could get to the extension from the base cases in a single step
rather than recursively. Issues specifically about employing some
primitive F-ness will be relevant whenever there is a circular base
clause, whatever the other clauses.
Examples of the kind of accounts in question include some of
those offered as so-called non-reductive analyses of modality.
These acknowledge that they take some modality as primitive in
order to build their systematic account of modality in general.
Lewis, as sympathetic opponent, writes ‘it would be no small
advance if we could explain modality in general by taking one
very special case of it ... as primitive. If that were to be had, the
offer of safe and sane ontology with just a smidgin of primitive
modality would indeed be hard to refuse.’14 Lewis is discussing
linguistic ersatzism, according to which something is possible iff
it is true according to some ersatz world, where such worlds are
sets of sentences; in particular he is considering a form which
employs modality in the account of which sets of sentences count
as worlds.15 The required consistency of the set of sentences must
be more than a narrow logical consistency (defined syntactically),
which would allow, for example, the possibility of particles that
were both positively and negatively charged. We could thus try
to formulate some axioms to provide extra requirements on what
sets of sentences count as worlds. Perhaps it is an axiom that
nothing is both positively and negatively charged; and axioms
reflecting certain other fundamental incompatibilities may be
needed. But, on the other hand, perhaps it is only contingent that
nothing is both positively and negatively charged. Until we know
what properties are genuinely incompatible, the required axioms
would be unavailable to us. Perhaps all we can say is that if it is
impossible for anything to be both positively and negatively
charged, then let there be an axiom stating that nothing is both

14. Lewis 1986, p. 155.

15. The most straightforward way to do this is to specify that the sets must be maxi-
mally consistent, where consistency is a matter of possibly being true together (see
e.g. Adams 1974). This form of circular account does not seem to fit the form of
having a circular base clause and another clause determining other cases on the basis
of those.
 XV—WHEN DOES CIRCULARITY MATTER? 269

positive and negative and so on. Lewis is thus considering a the-

ory that uses this kind of (modal ) clause. It thereby uses primi-
tive modality, but only in relation to certain axiomatic cases—
presupposing ‘the incompatibility between determinates of one
determinable, and even that only for the special case of a few
‘‘fundamental’’ properties and relations’.16
Such an account could still be highly informative, dictating the
modal status of all but those axiomatic cases in a non-circular
way. It is certainly not trivial. And nor is it clearly ungrounded.
The application of the target notion in general is grounded in its
application in just a few cases, and so in this way, such accounts
are like inductive definitions. More generally, such an account
can be suitably explanatory. For example, it may still allow us
to explain what is a philosophically problematic notion by some-
thing less problematic, for it may be unproblematic in the most
simple cases—the base cases.
It might be objected, however, that an account with a circular
base clause must be just a temporary step on the way to the
full account—an account that does succeed in explaining of all
members of the set of Fs why they are F. It could be just a step,
but it need not be. There may be no non-circular way of specify-
ing the basis. With some concepts, it is a good question whether
an analysis is really needed or possible, or whether those concepts
could reasonably be taken as primitive: this form of analysis pro-
vides one kind of middle ground between the options of taking
it as primitive or analysing it.

V
Conclusion. We have seen a range of cases where circularity is
not necessarily bad and is compatible with various things we
expect of our philosophical accounts. I looked at two suggested
criteria for when circularity is acceptable and rejected both.
Indeed, I suggest that there is no formal account of when circu-
larity is acceptable in general. For a start, the extent to which
circularity is a bad thing will depend on exactly what we expect
of an account and what conditions we place on successful
accounts; and, correspondingly, the features that an acceptable

16. Lewis 1986, p. 155.

270 ROSANNA KEEFE

but circular account must exhibit will vary. There is no clear-cut

and uncontroversial set of uses for and conditions on accounts,
and the search for accounts often proceeds without one. More-
over, even if we identified a particular set of uses and conditions
for a particular context, there may still be no precise criterion
for when circularity is acceptable in that context. For example,
if we focused on explanatoriness and clarified the ways in which
an account must be explanatory, there will be a question of how
explanatory an account needs to be. And a range of different
circular accounts could succeed in being explanatory in very dif-
ferent ways. Relatedly, if we are prepared to accept an account
of F-ness that assumes some primitive F-ness, there will be a
question as to how much is sufficiently little primitive F-ness on
which to ground the other cases, and this is unlikely to have a
clear-cut answer. But having no precise account of when circu-
larity is acceptable is no reason to think that it never is. Circular
accounts should not be automatically rejected for their circu-
larity—many are worth examining on an individual basis.17
Department of Philosophy,
Uniûersity of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN
R.Keefe@Sheffield.ac.uk

REFERENCES
Adams, R. M., 1974, ‘Theories of Actuality’, Nous, 8: 211–31.
Gupta, A. and Belnap, N., 1993, The Reûision Theory of Truth (Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press).
Humberstone, I. L., 1997, ‘Two Types of Circularity’, Philosophy and Pheno-
menological Research, 57: 249–80.
Langford, C. H., 1942, ‘The Notion of Analysis in Moore’s Philosophy’, in The
Philosophy of G.E. Moore, ed. P.A. Schilpp (Northwestern University).
Lewis, D., 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell ).
Nozick, R., 1981, Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Peacocke, C., 1992, A Study of Concepts (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press).
Strawson, P. F., 1992, Analysis and Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University
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Wright, C., 1992, Truth and Objectiûity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press).

17. Many thanks to Dominic Gregory, Chris Hookway and Steve Laurence for very
helpful comments and advice. And thanks, too, to the audience of the Philosophy
Seminar at Bradford University.