Abstract

In the first chapter, I consider why it is we need a theory of conceptual cognition. Our experience of things often changes as a function of prior experience, even when the things we experience have not themselves changed. Thus, there must be something on the side of the cognizing subject that contributes to his or her experience of the world and is itself altered by that experience. This something is a concept. I argue that a concept, in its simplest form, is to be understood as a recognitional capacity. Furthermore, I claim that we can be aware of our concepts as capacities. ;After discussing the nature of conceptual development in Chapter 2, I go on, in Chapter 3, to explicate the need for providing a philosophical account of conceptual cognition. Why do we need a philosophical account, rather than, for example, a scientific account? I suggest that, inter alia, we need a general philosophical account of conceptual cognition, if we are to be able to assess the adequacy of any scientific account that is proffered. ;In Chapter 4, I claim that to recognize an X is to be aware of the X in experience as capable of recurring; it is to know an object as a potential object as well as an actual object in experience. I argue that this is to be understood in terms of our awareness of our concept of an X as applicable to other cases of experience. By using 'real potentiality' I mean to suggest that concepts, understood as recognitional capacities, are to be accorded fundamental, irreducible ontological status as a kind of actual states. ;Finally, in Chapter 5, I defend the claim, made in Chapters 1 and 4, that concepts, understood as recognitional capacities, which are themselves understood as real potentialities, are ontologically fundamental or irreducible. I consider various reductionist attempts to account for capacities or dispositions. I argue that all fail to account for the relevant subjunctive conditionals involved in talk of capacities or that they must themselves tacitly appeal to the notion of potentiality