Online research in philosophy

In recent times, Evans’ idea that mental states could have non-conceptual contents has been attacked. McDowell (Mind and World, 1994) and Brewer (Perception and reason, 1999) have both argued that that notion does not have any epistemological role because notions such as justification or evidential support, that might relate mental contents to each other, must be framed in conceptual terms. On his side, Brewer has argued that instead of non-conceptual content we should consider demonstrative concepts that have the same fine grainess of non-conceptual contents while having conceptual structure. In what follows I will argue that, first, that the notion of demonstrative concept is not viable and, second, that there is an epistemological role for non-conceptual content.

Gärdenfors (Conceptual spaces, 2000) argues that the semantic domains that natural language deals with have a geometrical structure. He gives evidence that simple natural language adjectives usually denote natural properties, where a natural property is a convex region of such a “conceptual space.” In this paper I will show that this feature of natural categories need not be stipulated as basic. In fact, it can be shown to be the result of evolutionary dynamics of communicative strategies under very general assumptions.

Dienes & Perner make three mistakes in their account of the “natural language meaning” of implicit-explicit knowledge: They fail to take the multiplicity of use of a concept seriously enough, they arbitrarily separate use of a concept and its conceptual structure, and they tend to tailor their analysis for use by the Representational Theory of Knowledge.

This now-classic work challenges what Ryle calls philosophy's "official theory," the Cartesians "myth" of the separation of mind and matter. Ryle's linguistic analysis remaps the conceptual geography of mind, not so much solving traditional philosophical problems as dissolving them into the mere consequences of misguided language. His plain language and esstentially simple purpose place him in the traditioin of Locke, Berkeley, Mill, and Russell.

Mind and Supermind offers a new perspective on the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. Keith Frankish argues that the folk-psychological term 'belief' refers to two distinct types of mental state, which have different properties and support different kinds of mental explanation. Building on this claim, he develops a picture of the human mind as a two-level structure, consisting of a basic mind and a supermind, and shows how the resulting account sheds light on a number of puzzling phenomena and helps to vindicate folk psychology. Topics discussed include the function of conscious thought, the cognitive role of natural language, the relation between partial and flat-out belief, the possibility of active belief formation, and the nature of akrasia, self-deception, and first-person authority. This book will be valuable for philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists.

Philosophers often hold that the aim of conceptual analysis is to discover the representational content of a given concept such as free will , belief , or law . In From Metaphysics to Ethics and other recent work, Frank Jackson has developed a theory of conceptual analysis that is one of the most advanced systematizations of this widespread idea. I argue that this influential way of characterizing conceptual analysis is too narrow. I argue that it is possible that an expressivist account could turn out to be correct as a genuine conceptual analysis of a genuine concept . I claim that since an expressivist analysis does not aim to discover the representational content of a given concept—and, indeed, might itself be based on the idea that the concept in question is not even representational in nature—the possibility of expressivist conceptual analysis shows that Jackson’s theory of conceptual analysis is incomplete as it currently stands. I conclude that Jackson needs to either shift his basic understanding of the nature of conceptual analysis or commit to a particular normative reinterpretation of his project.

The structure of words is often thought to provide important evidence regarding the structure of concepts. At the same time, most contemporary linguists posit a great deal of structure in words. Such a trend makes some atomists about concepts uncomfortable. The details of linguistic methodology undermine several strategies for avoiding positing structure in words. I conclude by arguing that there is insufficient evidence to hold that word-structure bears any interesting relation to the structure of concepts.

Individuals do not operate “at a stage of development.” They operate at a range of different levels of hierarchical complexity depending on skill area, task, context, degree of support, and other variables. It is thus necessary to postulate the concept of domain to refer to the particular conceptual, behavioral, or affective area within which activity operates. The concept raises questions and implications for theory building and application. Such issues are elaborated by discussing a variety of domains and social contexts. A postformal case example of leadership in higher education illuminates the concept of domains and the interrelationships among domains.

Abstract Recent empirical studies of categorization, concept development, semantic structure, and reasoning reveal the inadequacies of all theories that regard knowledge as static, propositional, and sentential. These studies show that conceptual structure and reason are grounded in patterns of bodily experience. Structures of our spatial/temporal orientations, perceptual interactions, and motor programs provide an imaginative basis for our knowledge of, and reasoning about, more abstract domains. Such a view transcends both foundationalism and extreme relativism or scepticism.

Folk psychology is the psychology deployed by ordinary folk and by scientists in ordinary life. At its most basic level, it consists of deploying the concept of mind to explain and predict behavior. This article (i) considers how folk psychology may have begun, by considering an imaginary race of primitive folk deploying the rudimentary nucleus of the psychology, or a rudimentary concept of mind, and (ii) examines one argument for the evolutionary emergence and adaptivity of folk psychology. The crucial issue emerging from this is how primitive folk could have competently deployed the concept or the psychology in such a way as to survive and proliferate in consequence of successfully predicting behavior. Dennett and others are on the right track when they regard folk psychology as adaptive. But care and caution are needed in resolving the issue of competent deployment.