Concepts

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an explication and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of concept formation. I argue that at the core of this theory is a distinction between concepts proper and the kinds of generalities characteristic of perceptual experience, which I call “pre-conceptual generalities.” According to Merleau-Ponty, concepts are developed through a two-stage process: first, the establishment of such pre-conceptual generalities, and second, the clarification of these generalities into concepts. I provide phenomenological evidence for the existence of pre-conceptual generalities and (...) explain how they can serve to ground concept formation. To motivate Merleau-Ponty’s account, I consider objections raised by Husserl, Cassirer, and Sellars to the classical philosophical account of empirical concept formation, abstraction. I show that Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between concepts and pre-conceptual generalities provides a philosophically viable account of the formation of empirical concepts while avoiding the problems faced by accounts that rely on abstraction. (shrink)

William James was one of the most frequently cited authors in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, but the attention paid to James’s Principles of Psycho- logy in that work is typically explained in terms of James having ‘committed in a clear, exemplary manner, fundamental errors in the philosophy of mind.’ (Goodman 2002, p. viii.) The most notable of these ‘errors’ was James’s purported commitment to a conception of language as ‘private’. Commentators standardly treat James as committed to a conception of language as (...) private, and the most notorious instance of this commitment can purportedly be found in his discussion of the feelings associated with logical terms like ‘and’, ‘if ’ and ‘but’ in the Principles’s chapter, ‘The Stream of Thought’. However, the received view stands in need of serious re-evaluation. In particular, there is little reason to think that James’s notorious discussion of the ‘if-feeling’ should be understood as an attempt to give an account of the meaning of ‘if ’ (indeed, there is little reason to even think that Wittgenstein interpreted him this way). The picture of our ideas developed in ‘The Stream of Thought’ sits badly with any theory that identifies meanings with ideas in this way, and while James’s chapter on ‘Conception’ (as well as some portions of Some Problems of Philosophy) has also been portrayed as committing James to the in principle privacy of language, it will be argued here that James’s account of our ‘conceptions’ is radically different from that of the private linguist. (shrink)

I argue that embodied understanding and conceptual-representational understanding interact through schematic structure. I demonstrate that common conceptions of these two kinds of understanding, such as developed by Wheeler (2005, 2008) and Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013), entail a separation between them that gives rise to significant problems. Notably, it becomes unclear how they could interact; a problem that has been pointed out by Dreyfus (2007a, b, 2013) and McDowell (2007) in particular. I propose a Kantian strategy to close the gap between (...) them. I argue that embodied and conceptual-representational understanding are governed by schemata. Since they are governed by schemata, they can interact through a structure that they have in common. Finally, I spell out two different ways to conceive of the schematic interaction between them—a close, grounding relationship and a looser relationship that allows for a minimal interaction, but preserves the autonomy of both forms of understanding. (shrink)

Some use the need to explain communication, agreement, and disagreement to argue for two-dimensional conceptions of belief content. One prominent defender of an account of this sort is David Chalmers. Chalmers claims that beliefs have two kinds of content. The second dimension of belief content, which is tied to what beliefs pick out in the actual world, is supposed to help explain communication, agreement, and disagreement. I argue that it does not. Since the need to explain these phenomena is the (...) main stated motivation for the addition of the second dimension of belief content, my arguments also undermine the motivation for Chalmers’ two-dimensional account of belief content and theories like it. (shrink)

The paper explores the idea that some singular judgements about the natural numbers are immune to error through misidentification by pursuing a comparison between arithmetic judgements and first-person judgements. By doing so, the first part of the paper offers a conciliatory resolution of the Coliva-Pryor dispute about so-called “de re” and “which-object” misidentification. The second part of the paper draws some lessons about what it takes to explain immunity to error through misidentification. The lessons are: First, the so-called Simple Account (...) of which-object immunity to error through misidentification to the effect that a judgement is immune to this kind of error just in case its grounds do not feature any identification component fails. Secondly, wh-immunity can be explained by a Reference-Fixing Account to the effect that a judgement is immune to this kind of error just in case its grounds are constituted by the facts whereby the reference of the concept of the object which the judgement concerns is fixed. Thirdly, a suitable revision of the Simple Account explains the de re immunity of those arithmetic judgements which are not wh-immune. These three lessons point towards the general conclusion that there is no unifying explanation of de re and wh-immunity. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of this kind (...) of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

Through perception we gain information about the world. We also gain information about the world through communication with others. There are concepts — indexical concepts, such as the concept of the present time or of the present place or the concept of oneself — which have a special link to perception. Are there concepts which are tied to communication in the same way in which indexical concepts are tied to perception? After discussing, and criticizing, a deflationary approach to the phenomenon (...) of deference, I argue that 'deferential concepts' are indeed the communicational equivalent of indexical concepts. (shrink)

The renewed interest in concepts and their role in psychological theorizing is partially motivated by Machery’s claim that concepts are so heterogeneous that they have no explanatory role. Against this, pluralism argues that there is multiplicity of different concepts for any given category, while hybridism argues that a concept is constituted by a rich common representation. This article aims to advance the understanding of the hybrid view of concepts. First, we examine the main arguments against hybrid concepts and conclude that, (...) even if not successful, they challenge hybridism to find a robust criterion for concept individuation and to show an explanatory advantage for hybrid concepts. Then we propose such a criterion of individuation, which we will call ‘functional stable coactivation’. Finally, we examine the prospects of hybridism to understand what is involved in recent approaches to categorization and meaning extraction. 1 The Heterogeneity of Conceptual Representations2 Two Challenges for Hybrid Concepts: Individuation and Explanation2.1 The coordination criterion2.2 Concepts as constituents of thoughts3 Individuating Hybrids: Functional Stable Coactivation4 The Explanatory Power of Hybrid Concepts4.1 Categorization4.2 Meaning extraction4.2.1 Linguistic comprehension and rich lexical entries4.2.2 Polysemy and hybrid concepts5 Conclusion. (shrink)

In contrast to earlier views that argued for a particular kind of concept, several recent accounts have proposed that there are multiple distinct kinds of concepts, or that there is a plurality of concepts for each category. In this paper, I argue for a novel account of concepts as pluralistic hybrids. According to this view, concepts are pluralistic because there are several concepts for the same category whose use is heavily determined by context. In addition, concepts are hybrids because they (...) typically link together several different kinds of information that are used in the same cognitive processes. This alternative view accounts for the available empirical data, allows for greater cognitive flexibility than Machery's recent account, and overcomes several objections to traditional hybrid views. (shrink)

_Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo_. Once files are reduced to the status of stylized icons on computer screens, the reign of paper files appears to be over. With the epoch of files coming to an end, we are free to examine its fundamental influence on Western institutions. From a media-theoretical point of view, subject, state, and law reveal themselves to be effects of specific record-keeping and filing practices. Files are not simply administrative tools; they mediate and (...) process legal systems. The genealogy of the law described in Vismann's _Files_ ranges from the work of the Roman magistrates to the concern over one's own file, as expressed in the context of the files kept by the East German State Security. The book concludes with a look at the computer architecture in which all the stacks, files, and registers that had already created order in medieval and early modern administrations make their reappearance. (shrink)

Many philosophers have discussed the ability of thinkers to think thoughts that the thinker cannot justify because the thoughts involve concepts that the thinker incompletely understands. A standard example of this phenomenon involves the concept of the derivative in the early days of the calculus: Newton and Leibniz incompletely understood the derivative concept and, hence, as Berkeley noted, they could not justify their thoughts involving it. Later, Weierstrass justified their thoughts by giving a correct explication of the derivative concept. This (...) paper discusses various accounts of how a thinker manages to think with a concept that they incompletely understand and finds them wanting in the case at hand. Part of the overlooked complexity is that there are many derivative concepts, and it is unclear in virtue of what a thinker would be thinking with one of them rather than another. After critical evaluation of standard accounts, this paper suggests a novel account of how one should think about the derivative concepts with which Newton and Leibniz thought and how Weierstrass could have managed to justify their thoughts even if their thoughts did not involve the same derivative concept as Weierstrass’s. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss several questions related to the manner in which concepts generally, and religious concepts in particular, are formed. Are some concepts necessary in the sense that, considering the physical makeup of the natural world and our own bio-chemical, perceptual, and cognitive nature, these concepts had to emerge by necessity? If we put considerations of divine revelations aside, I ask regarding religious concepts, what would be the proper way of looking at how they came to be formed? (...) What role does causality play in the formation of empirical and religious concepts, if at all? One of my aims in discussing these and other related questions is to revisit Hilary Putnam’s justificatory basis for rejecting the intelligibility of speaking of absolute conceptions of the world. Although I support his position on this issue, I show some of the hermeneutical problems in his reliance on Wittgenstein’s views concerning language games and worldviews. I also revisit Wittgenstein’s own views about concept formation to discuss the similarities and differences between how religious concepts and empirical concepts are formed. My aim here is to show that the idea of an absolute conception of the world rests on confusing the regulative role that concepts play in our lives for a causative role. (shrink)

This article introduces a collection of studies of biological concepts crossing over to other disciplines and nonscholarly discourses. The introduction discusses the notion of nomadic concepts as introduced by Isabelle Stengers and explores its usability for conceptual history. Compared to traveling and interdisciplinary concepts, the idea of nomadism shifts the attention from concepts themselves toward the mobility of a concept and its effects. The metaphor of nomadism, as outlined in the introduction, helps also to question the relation between concepts' movement (...) and the production of boundaries. In this way conceptual history can profit from interaction with translation studies, where similar processes were recently discussed under the notion of cultural translation. (shrink)

Most people find it obvious that concepts like APPLE, DOG, WATER, CACTUS, SWIM, CHIRP, FURRY, and SMOOTH are acquired from perceptual experiences along with some kind of inferential procedure. Models of how these concepts are inferentially acquired, however, force the acquired concepts to be representationally complex, built from, and composed by, the more primitive representations. Since at least the time of Plato, philosophers and psychologists have struggled to find complex sets of representations that have the same meanings, definitionally or probabilistically, (...) as these concepts. For example, to think about the property-kind being gold is not the same as to think about the complex property-kind being yellowish & shiny & malleable.... I call this Fodor's Challenge: Find an acquisition process that is genuinely inferential and yields a concept that genuinely is one of these lexical concepts. Rather than continue the pursuit of a complex representation that has the same meaning as our concept GOLD. I offer a model on which many lexical concepts are acquired from perception and inference, without being built up from, and composed by, the representations involved. The model, Baptizing Meanings for Concepts, is inspired in part by Saul Kripke's baptism process for assigning meanings to linguistic terms. Many lexical concepts, according to the BMC, are acquired by inferring the presence a new property-kind, picking out the property-kind in terms of those perceptible features, and then assigning a simple mental term, a concept, for that property-kind. (shrink)

Theoretical concepts such as "super ego" and "intelligent" are prevalent in scientific hypotheses and theories and have been treated differently by philosophers. Those who advocate empiricism believe that such concepts should be defined explicitly or reduced to the senses. Based on this notion, empiricists hold the view that a rule can be empirical only when its entire aspects are observable.Some others, however, adhere to the belief that these concepts have an essential nature and, therefore, cannot be sensed.And yet there is (...) a third group who maintain that the theoretical concepts either have actual references i.e., they are self -subsistent notions or have mental references. The latter being the case, the concepts are sensible either potentially or practically.As for how these concepts have been developed, it should be noted that they are the result of long-lasting deductions and reasoning. (shrink)

My dissertation is concerned with philosophical problems that attend to our capacity to acquire concepts. Philosophical problems with learning are not new, however, they are especially acute when applied to concept acquisition. What I hope to show is that we can offer an account of concepts which at once overcomes our concerns about first concept acquisition and is nevertheless compatible with the view that concepts are acquired through rational learning mechanisms. Towards this end I consider both cognitivist and noncognitivist theories (...) of concept acquisition. Fodor's noncognitivism fails, I argue, because it requires an untenable nativism, whereas I suggest that Block's theory of concepts makes rational learning impossible. ;To solve this problem, I argue that concepts can be split into two component parts, an ontological classifier and a recognitional criterion. The OC is a kind of sortal term that designates the kind classification for a given concept, what sort of thing it refers to. The RC gives us information relative to our environment that enables us to pick out the referent of the concept. ;But how do we acquire concepts of this type? If every concept of a thing requires a kind of sortal, we would face a regress if we tried to claim that all concepts are learned. However, it seems clear that at least some concepts aren't learned. Our first cognitive steps, I maintain, are a function of the innate classificatory schema that children appear to possess very early in infancy. Cognitive psychologists have begun to show that infants and very young children appear to make specific assumptions about the nature of individual objects and kinds that populate their world. Children have concepts of objects and causes, of particular relations amongst kinds and their numbers, and as such make inferences about what can be expected from their future interactions with those objects. These early sortal classifications correspond very closely to the sorts of ontological classifiers adults employ in making kind determinations. I argue that these classifiers work in combination with the child's rudimentary perceptual or recognitional skills to outline individuals or substances as of various types. Construals of individual type classifications can be bound to other identificatory criteria to form new classifiers and hence new possibilities for rational concept acquisition. (shrink)

The topic of this thesis is the nature of human concepts understood as mental symbols or representations. ;Many discussions in this area presuppose an inferential model of concepts taken together with what I call the standard model of concept learning. An inferential model of concepts says that a concept's identity depends upon its participating in inferential dispositions linking it to certain other concepts. For example, one might think that part of what makes a mental symbol the concept BIRD is that (...) it participates in an inferential disposition linking it to the concept ANIMAL. The standard model of concept learning says that learning a concept involves assembling it from previously available concepts. For example, one might think that the concept BIRD is learned by putting together the concept ANIMAL with concepts like WING, FLIES, and so on, yielding a more complex structure. The standard model of concept learning presupposes a form of the inferential model of concepts. Thus one of the reasons many people endorse the inferential model is that they are committed to a broadly empiricist picture of the mind; they assume that most concepts are learned, so they must also assume that most concepts have the sort of structure that the model presupposes. ;My thesis challenges both of these points with respect to a class of concept that has been of central interest in philosophy and cognitive science, namely, the lexical concepts . I argue that the independent evidence for the inferential model in this case is no good and consequently that the standard model of concept learning doesn't work. Still, it remains plausible that many lexical concepts are learned. What we need are new learning models, ones that depart in significant ways from the standard model. I end the thesis by outlining a proposal that may work for the natural kind concepts. (shrink)

Philosophers have historically been concerned with concepts and their analysis, and in recent decades psychologists have also begun to speculate on what kinds of structures concepts might be. I take concepts to satisfy three core desiderata: they are mental representations, they are the constituents of thoughts, and they are centrally employed in categorization. There are four major theories of concepts currently in play: definitionism, prototype and exemplar theory, the 'theory theory', and conceptual atomism. I survey these theories and argue that (...) none of them adequately satisfies all three of the core properties. The reasons for these failures are principled, and generalize to many other positions that share their assumptions. Concepts do not form a unitary psychological natural kind. I propose taking a pluralist view of concepts. Conceptual representations are adaptively constructed and used by a set of processes that vary with elements of the task, subject, domain, and wider context. (shrink)

Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, many philosophers and psychologists have supposed that the key concepts of a linguistic community are transmitted to initiates by means of exemplars, particular items which the community accepts as representative exemplifications of the concept. Although this view has several advantages over the traditional view that concepts are learned from definitions or analyses, it is incomplete in the absence of a theory of how the transition is made from viewing group-licensed (...) exemplars to possessing a concept which is shared with one's linguistic community. Further, although there is general agreement that the concepts of a given society may change with time, there is not agreement on how this conceptual evolution occurs and whether or not it is a rational process. The dissertation contributes to a resolution of these issues by arguing for a particular descriptive theory of the dynamic processes of conceptual activity. ;According to the theory proposed, concepts are capacities for acquiring states which permit the person who is in those states to treat certain things as distinct from others in his ken. An idealized model of the items in a given exemplar set bridges the gap between examining an exemplar set and possessing the associated capacity. The model completes an explanation of certain properties of the exemplar set in terms of certain other properties and a subject's background beliefs. Such models differ from actual exemplars and, thus, stand in need of justification. ;Case studies of the development of the concept of a feedback control system in engineering and the concept of liability for negligence to noncontracting parties in law reveal some types of arguments which are used to justify conceptual models. Interestingly, the same types of arguments which justify acceptance of a given model are evidently also employed in choosing among competing models and in justifying the extension of a concept to nonexemplars. The battery of arguments, plus an understanding of their function, provides the beginnings of a picture of the transition from exemplars to concepts for societies, as well as for individuals; however, the actual or possible particulars from which a society develops its concepts are not given as exemplars of a concept. Individuals in the society forge new concepts out of items which seem to have valuable or noteworthy properties. The attempt to fulfill this objective is concept "optimization." ;The justifying arguments used in model construction, acceptance, and application all serve as optimizing arguments. In additon, there is a second class of optimizing arguments: those which utilize a concept's record of success or failure in maximizing access to valued properties to justify alterations in the background beliefs and exemplar set which support the associated model. ;The notion of concept optimization provides a picture of conceptual evolution as a rational process. If the account is accurate, the appropriate stance for the learner of complex concepts is optimization. The function of the definitions and analyses which play the central role in traditional theories of conceptual activity is to accelerate the optimizing process for the individual concept learner by directing his attention and suggesting fruitful models. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience has produced some surprising results that provide the materials for an empirical theory of concept acquisition which departs in significant ways from both radical nativism and classical empiricism. In this dissertation I develop a theory of how pre-linguistic infants acquire the capacity to construct causal concepts, in the period from 7 to 24 months of age. In humans the sophisticated modular capacity of the mammalian nervous system to track conditional frequencies of biologically (...) significant environmental variables feeds a higher system that detects causal properties. Human infants can perceptually discriminate some of these properties by 3 months of age. Joint attention and the other social cognitive capacities they develop in the second half of their first year provide the context in which babies develop their first true concepts. These require a degree of self-consciousness not required for perceptual categorization. Early concepts are causal and theoretical, providing powerful tools for induction. Their encoding, use, and updating may be facilitated by the special properties of causal Bayes net type architectures. It is as true of the baby's first concepts as of the complex concepts of a mature discipline that conceptual content is not read off from sensory experience. I attempt to show how a concept the content of which is underdetermined by sensory experience can nonetheless be empirically derived, in a process that endows it with normative semantic properties. (shrink)

The main objective of this dissertation is to give a theoretical reconstruction of concept formation in science and theology. This theoretical reconstruction is limited to an account of concept formation based upon models. Models and their constituent concepts are mental representations. The model or mental representation of one domain is used to conceptualize the domain under investigation . When new concepts are formed in the topic domain on the basis of models of another domain , these concepts are formed out (...) of concepts used in the model domain. The new concepts are formed by deleting, and sometimes adding, content from the concepts of the model domain. Since concepts have other concepts as their content, the adding and deleting of content is the adding and deleting of concepts which make up the content of some concept. ;The next objective of this dissertation is to show that scientific theories and theologies determine what content is deleted and added. Scientific theories and theologies must describe a domain and explain its phenomena. It is these requirements that determine what the content of the new concept will be, and thus, we can say that it is scientific theories and theologies that determine what content the new concepts will have. ;The terms that express these new concepts are called T-terms. A theory of the linguistic meaning of these T-terms is presented. Since part of the meaning of any T-term is the content of the concept that the term expresses, it follows that scientific theories and theologies also determine part of the meaning of T-terms. ;Finally, I apply the theory of concept formation to divine mental and action concepts. The contents of these concepts are derived from the contents of human mental and action concepts. While the contents of the divine concepts are different in many respects, these concepts are shown to be intelligible. At the same time their content does not compromise God's "otherness" from his creatures. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to analyze the structure of concepts, treated as fuzzy subsets of a certain set. The concepts are assumed to be composed out of more elementary ones. Such an approach was developed mainly to get an empirical access to the values of membership functions of concepts.