The Generality Constraint and the Structure of Thought
Mind 121 (483):563-600 (2012)
Abstract
According to the Generality Constraint, mental states with conceptual content must be capable of recombining in certain systematic ways. Drawing on empirical evidence from cognitive science, I argue that so-called analogue magnitude states violate this recombinability condition and thus have nonconceptual content. I further argue that this result has two significant consequences: it demonstrates that nonconceptual content seeps beyond perception and infiltrates cognition; and it shows that whether mental states have nonconceptual content is largely an empirical matter determined by the structure of the neural representations underlying themAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1093/mind/fzs077
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Citations of this work
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Marking the Perception–Cognition Boundary: The Criterion of Stimulus-Dependence.Jacob Beck - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2):319-334.
Are there different kinds of content?Richard Heck - 2007 - In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. pp. 117-138.
The Emotional Mind: the affective roots of culture and cognition.Stephen Asma & Rami Gabriel - 2019 - Harvard University Press.
Analogue Magnitude Representations: A Philosophical Introduction.Jacob Beck - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4):829-855.
References found in this work
Core systems of number.Stanislas Dehaene, Elizabeth Spelke & Lisa Feigenson - 2004 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (7):307-314.
A theory of magnitude: common cortical metrics of time, space and quantity.V. Walsh - 2003 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (11):483-488.
Contextual effects on number–time interaction.Aitao Lu, Bert Hodges, Jijia Zhang & John X. Zhang - 2009 - Cognition 113 (1):117-122.