So let us now turn our attention to the prospects for framing a true alternative to intellectualism. What would such an alternative look like?

A genuine alternative to intellectualism will be pluralist in that it will reckon that there are different legitimate and non-derivative modes of understanding, and so it will hold fast to the intellectualist’s insight that understanding is in play everywhere in our lives even as it rejects the intellectualist thesis.

One resource for such a pluralism is Wittgenstein (1953). Wittgenstein proposed that a concept is a technique, and that understanding, therefore, is a form of mastery, akin to an ability. An important fact about abilities is that they can be exercised in a multiplicity of ways. I can exercise my understanding of what a house is by building one, looking at one, painting one, living in one, talking about one, or buying one. So, from this standpoint, there is nothing more surprising about the fact that my knowledge can find expression in what I do, as well as in my knowledge of a proposition, than there is in the fact that my ability to read gets exercised both when I read a novel and also when I blush at the words on the bathroom wall.

This idea also helps us explain the unity of understanding. If concepts can be applied in walking the dog as well is in writing a treatise about dogs, what is the connection between these two self-standing and non-derivative modes of exercise of something that, surely, is a single conceptual capacity: an understanding of the concept dog? What gives unity to this understanding?

The idea that understanding a concept is mastery of a technique, a mastery that has multiple, distinct, context-sensitive ways of finding expression, helps here. One way to express understanding of dog is to talk and write about dogs. Another way is to be able to spot dogs on the basis of their appearance. Still another is to work or play comfortably with dogs. And the list goes on and on. We put our singular understanding of what dogs are to work in these different ways, and the understanding consists in the ability to do (more or less) all of that.

We are now in a position to appreciate that the claim that perception and action are, with judgement, non-derivative, original modes of understanding does not entail that these modes are independent of each other. The idea that the unity of a concept is a matter of unity-in-ability helps bring this out. The fact that perception isn’t beholden to judgement for its conceptuality doesn’t mean that there could be perception in the absence of capacities for judgement. After all, typically, you can’t be said to know a concept if you can’t apply it in normal perceptual settings. Can you know what a tomato is if you are incapable of any active or perceptual engagement with tomatoes?

But we should also be careful. In so far as our concepts have unproblematic unity, then, on this Wittgensteinian view, this is because they are exercises of common abilities—abilities which are, of their nature, such as to admit a genuine multiplicity of expressions. But the unity of our concepts is not something that we can always take for granted.

Is there one concept of dog, or several, brought to life in different situations and subcultures at different times, for different purposes? Is there unity or just fragmentation? Is this a shared understanding? These are important questions, not for philosophy, particularly, but for culture. Look at the changes that have taken place in our thinking about matter over the last few hundred years. Or, to give a different kind of example, about gender. We have no choice but to work it out as we go along.

And crucially, there is no standpoint outside our thinking, talking, writing, persuading, imposing, regulating, prescribing and also describing, from which these questions can be adjudicated. This doesn’t make the existence of dogs a matter of social construction. (Of course, dogs are, literally, bred and so constructed by us.) No, surely dogs have a mind-independent nature. But it does mean that it is hard and creative and unending work to bring that reality into focus in our shared thought, talk, perception, and activity.

There is no standpoint outside our thoughtful practices from which to ask after our own concepts. For our concepts are our own tools and techniques. This is where Frege went wrong. He seems to have thought that the only way to achieve objectivity—that is, sharability, articulability, and lawfulness—was by supposing concepts were out there, indifferent to how we grasp or understand them. In fact, they supervene on our grasping, negotiating, communicative activity. Frege made no allowance for fragility.