Abstract

This dissertation has three parts. Part I, comprising chapters 1 and 2, addresses some basic commitments which must be presupposed in theorizing about concepts. Concepts, to a first approximation, are mental representations that are constituents of thoughts. Chapter 1 attempts to clarify the notion of representing. Chapter 2 reconstructs arguments in the work of Frege against the mental nature of thoughts and (by the same token) of concepts, arguing that they are confused and leave the notion of concepts as mental representations unscathed. Part II, comprising chapters 3 to 5, pursues the aim of closing in on concepts in light of the widely shared understanding that concepts form a more specific class than just any kind of subpropositional mental representations. This part, if successful, should also help clarify the interrelations among a certain cluster of ideas which are customarily connected to the property of being a concept. Chapter 3 advocates storage in long-term memory as a basic, explanatorily principled criterion of delimiting concepts from nonconceptual mental representations. In leading up to this criterion, the chapter subjects to methodological critique the typical manner in which philosophers justify their assumption of a conceptual/nonconceptual-distinction. Chapter 4 investigates the idea that concepts are, in some sense, mental representations under which we categorize things in the world. Two versions of this idea of categorizing mental representations are distinguished, one metaphysical, the other psychological in kind. Both of these ideas, it is claimed, are inadequate to capture concepthood as such. Chapter 5 continues on the positive side, reconnecting to an earlier introduced idea which places concepts, other than sensory-perceptual events, in the realm of so-called high-level cognition. Concepts are not only stored in long-term memory, they are also capable of entering into cognitive processes that are “flexible”, rather than “hardwired”. Subdistinctions and explanations are provided that hopefully make the relevant notions workably precise. Part III of the dissertation moves on to engage in more specific debates in the theory of concepts. In one way or another, all three chapters in this part take as their points of departure the influential compositionality arguments against prototype theory often reiterated by Fodor, until recently the agenda-setting concept theorist in the philosophy of psychology. The chapters jointly aim to identify and correct a number of errors committed in the context of this debate: in the basic, generally accepted, presuppositions of these arguments (chapter 6); in the topography of concept-theoretical positions assumed by Fodor and adopted by subsequent commentators (chapter 7); and in the followup comments with which Fodor has intended to support and supplement these arguments (chapter 8).