It is a necessary condition for recognising change that there is a yardstick against which the change can be perceived. The same applies to changes that philosophical concepts undergo. This paper delineates standards for recognising conceptual change that meet the requirements of conscientious history of philosophy. More particularly, we want to argue for the need of what we will call non-textual standards. These are features of the world of experience that must be assumed to be shared between us and the historical authors we study. While they must be used in tandem with the recognised contextual standards of conceptual change, we will argue that without recourse to at least some non-textual standards, important kinds of conceptual change will remain inexplicable.

识别变化的必要条件是存在可以感知变化的标准。这同样适用于哲学概念所经历的变化。本文描述了识别概念改变的标准，这些标准符合认真的哲学史的要求。更具体地说，我们要争辩所谓非文本标准的需求。这些都是经验世界的特征，必须假定我们和我们所研究的历史作家之间应分享这些特征。尽管必须与公认的概念变化的上下文标准一起使用它们，但我们将争辩说，如果不求助于至少某些非文本标准，那么重要的概念变化种类仍然是无法解释的。