Concepts, Misc

ABSTRACTI defend the view that aspect-perception – seeing as a duck, or a face as courageous – typically involves concept-application. Seemingly obvious, this is contested by Avner Baz: ‘aspects ma...

A survey of innateness in cognitive science, focusing on (1) what innateness might be, and (2) whether concepts might be innate.

Kevin Scharp’s influential work on the alethic paradoxes combines an extensively developed inconsistency theory with a substantial conceptual engineering project. I argue that Scharp’s inconsistency theory is in tension with his conceptual engineering project: the inconsistency theory includes an account of concepts that implies that the conceptual engineering project will fail. I recommend that Scharp revises his account of concepts, and show how doing so allows him to resolve the tension. The discussion is important for ongoing work on conceptual engineering. (...) Firstly, it is important to get clear on whether Scharp’s conceptual engineering project is—or could be—successful. Secondly, the issues discussed herein may generalise to other conceptual engineering projects, such as explication and ameliorative projects. In particular, the discussion has implications for how conceptual engineers can think about concepts and their relation to how we use words. (shrink)

We have a mentalistic view of objects. This is due to the interdependence of folk psychology and folk physics, where these are interconnected by what I call Teleological Commingling. When considering events that don’t involve agents, we naturally default to tracking intentions, goal-directed processes, despite the fact that agents aren’t involved. We have a deep-seated intentionality bias which is the result of the pervasive detection of agency cues, such as order or non-randomness. And this gives rise to the Agentive Worldview: (...) we view nature as a whole as being infused with agency and purpose. Teleological Commingling and the Agentive Worldview it gives rise to are at the core of our conception of objects. I maintain that the ordinary view of material objects is rooted in an implicit, false theory. It should be given no weight in metaphysical debates about the nature of material objects. And this problematizes the central methodological assumption that metaphysical theories of material objects should be beholden to common sense. (shrink)

Coordination in thought is the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. Such treatment can be indirect, via an identity belief, or direct. Direct coordination presents a problem concerning how this treatment is justified. Dickie accounts for the justification of coordination in terms of aptness to a motivational state: coordination serves to fulfil a need to represent things outside the mind. I argue that this account gets the problem coordination presents wrong, and so does not (...) present an adequate solution. While the material of that account may be reconfigured to provide a more promising proposal, I argue that this depends on a specious psychology of belief, and will anyway end up being circular. I propose an account that, while similar in some ways, improves on both the official and reconfigured Dickie-style accounts, and points to some broader conclusions about the nature of rational cognition. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge in research on abstract concepts, there remain puzzles at the foundation of their empirical study. These are most evident when we consider what is required to assess a person’s abstract conceptual abilities without using language as a prompt or requiring it as a response—as in classic non-verbal categorization tasks, which are standardly considered tests of conceptual understanding. After distinguishing two divergent strands in the most common conception of what it is for a concept to be abstract, (...) we argue that neither reliably captures the kind of abstraction required to successfully categorize in non-verbal tasks. We then present a new conception of concept abstractness—termed Trial Concreteness—that is keyed to individual categorization trials. It has advantages in capturing the context-relativity of the degree of abstraction required for the application of a concept and fittingly correlates with participant success in recent experiments. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors. Throughout the past several decades, psychological essentialism has emerged as an extremely active area of research in cognitive science. More recently, it has also attracted attention from philosophers, who put the empirical results to use in many different philosophical areas, ranging from philosophy of mind and cognitive science to social (...) philosophy. This article aims to give philosophers who are new to the topic an overview of the key empirical findings surrounding psychological essentialism, and some of the ways the hypothesis and its related findings have been discussed, extended, and applied in philosophical research. (shrink)

A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts have two independent (...) sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Across four experiments, we found evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, we found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions of moral character have a central role to play in driving dehumanization. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a central problem for conceptual engineering: the problem of showing concept-users why they should recognise the authority of the concepts advocated by engineers. I argue that this authority problem cannot generally be solved by appealing to the increased precision, consistency, or other theoretical virtues of engineered concepts. Outside contexts in which we anyway already aim to realise theoretical virtues, solving the authority problem requires engineering to take a functional turn and attend to the functions of (...) concepts. But this then presents us with the problem of how to specify a concept’s function. I argue that extant solutions to this function specification problem are unsatisfactory for engineering purposes, because the functions they identify fail to reliably bestow authority on concepts, and hence fail to solve the authority problem. What is required is an authoritative notion of conceptual function: an account of the functions of concepts which simultaneously shows why concepts fulfilling such functions should be recognised as having authority. I offer an account that meets this combination of demands by specifying the functions of concepts in terms of how they tie in with our present concerns. (shrink)

In Fredericks (2018b), I argued that we can be morally responsible for our concepts if they are mental representations. Here, I make a complementary argument for the claim that even if concepts are abstract objects, we can be morally responsible for coming to grasp and for thinking (or not thinking) in terms of them. As before, I take for granted Angela Smith's (2005) rational relations account of moral responsibility, though I think the same conclusion follows from various other accounts. My (...) strategy is to focus on the relations that can obtain between concepts (understood as abstract objects) and morally responsible agents. I conclude by discussing some of the reasons why my arguments matter, which have to do with consequential choices between conceptual options, purposefully seeking out concepts that are new to us, and moral education. (shrink)

Are words like ‘woman’ or ‘man’ sex terms that we use to talk about biological features of individuals? Are they gender terms that we use to talk about non-biological features e.g. social roles? Contextualists answer both questions affirmatively, arguing that these terms concern biological or non-biological features depending on context. I argue that a recent version of contextualism from Jennifer Saul that Esa Diaz-Leon develops doesn't exhibit the right kind of flexibility to capture our theoretical intuitions or moral and political (...) practices concerning our uses of these words. I then float the view that terms like 'woman' or 'man' are polysemous, arguing that it makes better sense of the significance of some forms of criticisms of mainstream gender ideology. (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s invective is legendary among philosophers, and is unmatched in the historical canon. But these complaints are themselves worthy of careful consideration: they are rooted in Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language, which itself reflects the structure of his metaphysics. This short chapter argues that Schopenhauer’s vitriol rewards philosophical attention; not because it expresses his critical take on Fichte, Hegel, Herbart, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, but because it neatly illustrates his philosophy of language. Schopenhauer’s epithets are not merely spiteful slurs; instead, they reflect (...) deep-seated theoretical and methodological commitments to transparency of exposition. (shrink)

This paper argues for a view of free will that I will call the conceptual impossibility of the truth of free will error theory - the conceptual impossibility thesis. I will argue that given the concept of free will we in fact deploy, it is impossible for our free will judgements - judgements regarding whether some action is free or not - to be systematically false. Since we do judge many of our actions to be free, it follows from the (...) conceptual impossibility thesis that many of our actions are in fact free. Hence it follows that free will error theory - the view that no judgement of the form ‘action A was performed freely’ - is false. I will show taking seriously the conceptual impossibility thesis helps makes good sense of some seemingly inconsistent results in recent experimental philosophy work on determinism and our concept of free will. Further, I will present some reasons why we should expect to find similar results for every other factor we might have thought was important for free will. (shrink)

What is it for two people to think of an object, natural kind or other entity under the same mode of presentation (MOP)? This has seemed a particularly difficult question for advocates of the Mental Files approach, the Language of Thought, or other ‘atomistic’ theories. In this paper I propose a simple answer. I first argue that, by parallel with the synchronic intrapersonal case, the sharing of a MOP should involve a certain kind of epistemic transparency between the token thoughts (...) of the two thinkers. I then explain how shared words help bring about this transparency. Finally, I show how this account can be extended for thoughts expressed using demonstratives or indexicals. (shrink)

Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments (...) used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3) and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers and scientists have argued or accepted that it is impossible to learn primitive sensory concepts like “blue” and “red”. This paper defends a more qualified picture. I try to show that some received characterisations of “learning” are nonequivalent and point towards different learning-nonlearning distinctions. And, on some ways of specifying such a distinction, it might be correct that we do not and cannot “learn” a concept of blue. But on other ways of specifying such a (...) distinction, we can and do sometimes “learn” a concept of blue from experiences of blue. The latter part of the argument connects with some traditional “abstractionist” views, and I defend the present claims in view of some widely circulated concerns about “abstracting” concepts from experience. I close with some reflections on how one might, in view of all this, think about “the learning-nonlearning distinction”. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel conception of mental files, aimed at addressing Frege puzzles. Classical Frege puzzles involve ignorance and discovery of identity. These may be addressed by accounting for a more basic way for identity to figure in thought—the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. This manifests itself in rational inferences that presuppose the identity of what the beliefs are about. Mental files help to provide a functional characterization of a mind capable of (...) this presupposition, but more must be said to show how it may be rational. I argue that this can be done by drawing out the way in which mental files interact with a thinker's motivational states and so come to have normative functional properties. I show how this theory works better than some other treatments of mental files. (shrink)

I argue that we are sometimes morally responsible for having and using (or not using) our concepts, despite the fact that we generally do not choose to have them or have full or direct voluntary control over how we use them. I do so by extending an argument of Angela Smith's; the same features that she says make us morally responsible for some of our attitudes also make us morally responsible for some of our concepts. Specifically, like attitudes, concepts can (...) be (a) conceptually and rationally connected to our evaluative judgments, (b) in principle subject to rational revision (reasons‐responsive), and (c) the basis for actual and potential moral assessments of people that we have good reasons to endorse. Thus, we are open to moral appraisal on the basis of having and using (or not using) our concepts when they reflect our evaluative judgments, though even then it is not always appropriate to praise or blame us on that basis. (shrink)

This paper aims to clear a path for the thesis that inner speech, in the very languages we speak, is the sole medium of all conceptual thought. First, it is argued that inner speech should not be identified with the auditory imagery of speech. Since they are distinct, there may be many more episodes of inner speech than those that are accompanied by auditory imagery. Second, it is argued that it is not necessary to conceive of linguistic communication as a (...) matter of the speaker’s revealing through words an underlying thought. Rather, acts of speech may be conceived as producing cooperation by intervening on processes of thought that are essentially imagistic. So conceived, the practice of speaking in language may acquire a function wholly internal to the individual, where it adds a layer of coordination to an underlying foundation of imagistic cognition. (shrink)

A thesis I call the name-based singular thought thesis is part of orthodoxy in contemporary philosophy of mind and language: it holds that taking part in communication involving a proper name puts one in a position to entertain singular thoughts about the name’s referent. I argue, first, that proponents of the NBT thesis have failed to explain the phenomenon of name-based singular thoughts, leaving it mysterious how name-use enables singular thoughts. Second, by outlining the reasoning that makes the NBT thesis (...) seem compelling and showing how it can be resisted, I argue that giving up the NBT thesis is not a cost, but rather a benefit. I do this by providing an expanded conception of understanding for communication involving names, which sheds light on the nature of communication involving names and the structure of name-using practices. (shrink)

A Review of Paweł Sikora’s Pojęciowa treść percepcji w filozofii nowożytnej, Wyd. UMCS, Lublin 2016.

Like others who work with language, many lawyers no doubt appreciate good kennings. However, metaphors also play a much deeper role in thought and law than style, ornament, or verbal virtuosity. As we shall see, metaphors play a necessary role in our categories of thought. As a result, metaphors are a necessary part of thought itself, including legal thought.

It has become popular of late to identify the phenomenon of thinking a singular thought with that of thinking with a mental file. Proponents of the mental files conception of singular thought claim that one thinks a singular thought about an object o iff one employs a mental file to think about o. I argue that this is false by arguing that there are what I call descriptive mental files, so some file-based thought is not singular thought. Descriptive mental files (...) are mental files for which descriptive information plays four roles: determines which object the file is about, if any, it sets limits on possible mistakes that fall within the scope of successful reference for the file, it acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ for the file, and it determines persistence conditions for the file. Contrary to popular assumption, a description playing these roles is consistent with the file-theoretic framework. Recognising this allows us to distinguish the notion of singular thought from that of file-thinking and better understand the nature and role of both. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper traces a Kantian and pragmatist line of thinking that connects the ideas of conceptual content, object cognition, and modal constraints in the form of counterfactual sustaining causal laws. It is an idea that extends from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason through C. I. Lewis’s Mind and the World-Order to the Kantian naturalism of Wilfrid Sellars and the analytic pragmatism of Robert Brandom. Kant put forward what I characterize as a modal conception of objectivity, which he developed as (...) an extended argument stretching from the transcendental deduction through the analogies of experience to the regulative maxims of reason and reflective judgment. In related ways in Lewis and Sellars, the very idea of an object of knowledge (and of intentionality more generally) is connected with a certain lawfulness or modal constraint the necessary representation of which, they argue, is an achievement of conceptualization. While Sellars agreed with the spirit of Lewis’s famous pragmatic conception of the a priori, Sellars’s conception of meaning and conceptual content differed in crucial ways with important consequences for this issue. I argue furthermore that a certain phenomenalist temptation threatens to spoil this insight both among some of Kant’s interpreters and in Lewis’s thought. Finally, I point out that Brandom’s “Kant-Sellars thesis” provides new support for this line of thought. Although questions concerning idealism continue to raise controversies for neo-Kantians and pragmatists, the line of thought itself represents a distinctive and still promising approach to questions concerning intentionality and conceptual content. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the phenomenal concept strategy and in favor of what Chalmers has called type-A materialism. On her release, Mary makes no cognitive discovery at all; not even a thin non-possibility-eliminating discovery, as Tye has recently claimed. When she is imprisoned, Mary already knows everything that is to be known about the phenomenal character of her experiences. What Mary acquires is a new non-cognitive and nonconceptual representation.

The central problem addressed by this thesis is how narrow content can be genuinely representational and relate to the individuation of mental representations. A second problem relates to the explanatory role of narrow content. The challenge facing the proponent of narrow content is that externalism is the standard position with regard to representation, individuation, and explanation, and it is often held that narrow content is either incoherent or explanatorily redundant. To this end, I defend a version of a two-component theory (...) of content which accepts that wide content is relatively uncontroversial but holds that narrow content has an important role to play. The thesis is divided into two main parts. In part one I focus on the problem of representation and the individuation of mental representations. In Chapter 1 I consider two of the main accounts of wide content from Putnam and Fodor and show that in each case there is a notion of narrow content that is compatible with the externalist approach to representation. In particular, I discuss versions of narrow content associated with two-dimensionalism and radical internalism, among other views, and highlight important objections to these existing accounts of narrow content. In response to these problems, I defend a pluralistic view of narrow content according to which there are two main forms of narrow representation, and contend that this account can be systematically supported by understanding the supervenience claim made by the internalist, the kinds of properties represented by mental representations, and the nature of the underlying mental representations that bear narrow content. I then show that this account of narrow content has the resources to respond to a common objection to narrow content. In support of this approach to narrow content I show in Chapter 2 that internalism is consistent with recent work on concepts, and in particular with concept pluralism – the view that concepts are comprised of a variety of conceptual structures. I argue that such conceptual structures can be coherently individuated by the narrow contents outlined in Chapter 1, giving rise to an internalist version of concept pluralism. I support the internalist construal of concept pluralism by identifying problems with externalist versions and responding to objections to narrow content. In Chapter 3 I develop an extended critique of social externalism, and accounts of perceptual psychology, both of which purport to have anti-internalist consequences for the individuation and nature of mental representations and provide a challenge to the account of narrow content and mental representations developed in Chapters 1 and 2. In part two, I defend the explanatory role of narrow content. In Chapter 4 I contend that the truth conditions of propositional attitude ascriptions may relate to the narrow contents expressed by attitude ascribing sentences. To show this, I defend a Fregean theory of attitude ascriptions and consider two objections to Fregean accounts that would block the relevant semantic role of narrow content. In addition, I show how this account provides a basis for rejecting two externalist arguments that rely on assumptions about the nature and role of attitude ascriptions. I contrast this account with existing internalist accounts, and show how it provides a response to Soames’ Perfect Earth objection. In Chapter 5 I critically assess two existing accounts of the role of narrow content in psychological explanations of behaviour, focusing on objections raised in connection with proximal causes and explanatory generality and causal relevance. In response to these objections, I develop an alternative approach which appeals to the rational role of reasons, and contend that only narrow content can provide a suitably rational explanation of behaviour. I show how this provides a response to the objections raised, and how the appeal to reasons provides a basis for rejecting Fodor’s more recent externalist account of behaviour. (shrink)

My main aim is to answer the question regarding the relationship between concepts and sensuous cognition on the basis of Kant’s critical philosophy. I argue that concepts are a part of the sensuous experience. The key question regarding the shape of this relation and the way concepts interconnect with sensibility are formulated in terms of the so-called rule-following problem that I try to resolve with reference to the function of the so-called power of judgment and Kant’s Third Critique. I argue (...) that the Kantian answer to the rule-following problem is not based only on the rejection of the necessity of a metaphysical criterion, since concepts and intuitions are epistemologically indiscriminable, and the rejection of an epistemological criterion, since the possibility of cognition and meaning presupposes a subjective feeling of agreement between singular and general representations. I claim that the possibility of rule-following presupposes having an ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant rules. (shrink)

Review of Anna Tomaszewska's _The Contents of Perceptual Experience: A Kantian Perspective_, De Gruyter Open, Warsaw/Berlin 2014.

The olfactory system processes smells in a structural manner that is unlike the composition of thoughts or language, suggesting that some of the content of our olfactory experiences are represented in a format that does not involve concepts. Consequently, formative non-conceptual content is offered as an alternative theory of non-conceptual content according to which the difference between conceptual and non-conceptual states is simply a matter of the format of their structural parts and relations within a system of representations. Aside from (...) the theoretical merits of rethinking the quagmire of a debate regarding non-conceptual content as a format issue, studying olfaction shows that formative non-conceptual content is empirically plausible. (shrink)

I shall argue, however, that there can be genuine ambivalence between a judgment that A is v and a judgment that A is not v. Such ambivalence may, moreover, be precisely of the kind that appears to be either impossible or destructive for ethics. Objectivist ambivalence, as we shall call it, is neither an accidental nor peripheral feature of our value discourse. At the same time it is not destructive to ethics or to value judgments in general, but only to (...) certain received philosophical conceptions of ethics and value. Once the phenomenon of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment is identified, it can be analyzed, and in conducting that analysis I shall set out three aspects that are involved in it. The analysis of the mental attitude of ambivalence will have consequences for the logic of values. We shall see that this logic allows and invites tensions in a non-mysterious way. (shrink)

Huw Price proposes a strategy for dissolving ontological puzzles through a pragmatist account of our conceptual activity. Here I consider the proper place for conceptual content in Price’s pragmatism. Price himself rules out any explanatory role for content, just as he rules out any explanatory role for representational notions such as reference and truth. I argue that the cases are disanalogous and that he offers no good reasons for avoiding explanatory appeal to content. Furthermore, I argue that doing so is (...) incompatible with his pragmatist project. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene dos objetivos centrales. Primero caracterizaré una variante de pragmatismo conceptual según la cual algunos conceptos deben entenderse como habilidades para identificar sustancias e identificar propiedades del entorno, y mostraré que quien cuenta con esas dos habilidades satisface, en grados diversos en cada caso, distintos requisitos centrales para la posesión de conceptos. Posteriormente defenderé la viabilidad de extender este enfoque a los animales no humanos, apelando a evidencia empírica que indica que distintas especies son capaces de identificar (...) sustancias de su entorno y que sugiere la presencia de habilidades para identificar propiedades en algunos primates y pájaros. (shrink)

What does cognitive neuroscience contribute to our philosophical understanding of concepts? Over the past several decades, brain researchers have employed the tools of cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology to probe the structure and func­tion of the conceptual system. The results of this effort, which are often extremely surprising, raise more questions than they resolve. Brain research has invigorated age-old philosophical debates about the nature of concepts—such as whether concepts are perceptual representations—and generated new controversies about how conceptual knowledge is organized. In (...) this essay, I examine three debates in the neuroscience of conceptual knowledge: whether concepts are embodied or couched in amodal representations, whether conceptual knowledge is organized according to evolved categories, and whether the brain has multiple conceptual systems. My purpose is not to resolve these debates—rather, I intend to show how many of the proposed solutions fail to accommodate the diverse range of data emerging from cognitive neuroscience. I am therefore skeptical that brain data alone will resolve these issues, but remain optimistic that neuroscience has much to contribute to philosophical accounts of concepts. (shrink)

This book offers an overview of theories of the Concept, drawing on the philosopher Hegel and the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Concepts are shown to be both units of the mind and units of a cultural formation.

In this paper I defend the claim that concepts are not public. I argue that two of the main constraints for theories of concepts, namely (1) that concepts are public and (2) that they serve to explain Frege Cases, are in tension. (1) requires concepts to be individuated coarsely, while (2) requires ..

The importance given by historian and philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem to the role of practice, techniques, and experimentation in concept-formation was largely overlooked by commentators. After placing Canguilhem’s contributions within the larger history of historical epistemology in France, and clarifying his views regarding this expression, I re-evaluate the relation between concepts and experimental practices in Canguilhem’s philosophy of science. Drawing on his early writings on the relations between science and technology in the 1930s, on the Essai sur quelques problèmes (...) concernant le normal et le pathologique , and on La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles , I argue that the formation and rectification of concepts in Canguilhem’s sense are intrinsically bound with the experimental, material, technical, and cultural contexts in which concepts are operationalized. (shrink)

I examine two arguments for the existence of demonstrative concepts—one due to Chuard (2006) and another due to Brewer (1999). I point out some important difficulties in each. I hope to show that much more work must be done to legitimize positing demonstrative concepts.

In this paper I explore a famous part of Plato’s Theaetetus where Socrates develops various models of the mind (picturing it first as a wax tablet and then as an aviary full of specimen birds). These are to solve some puzzles about how it is possible to make a mistake. On my interpretation, defended here, the discussion of mistakes is no digression, but is part of the refutation of Theaetetus’s thesis that knowledge is “true doxa”. It reveals that false doxa (...) is possible only if there is a certain stock of abstract knowledge, conceptual knowledge, that is not awareness of the particular individual that is being described. The individual must be identified under some description, or seen as something of a certain kind. Error can only occur if the description applied misdescribes the situation, but then if it is to be applied falsely it must first have been known from somewhere else. So knowledge cannot be reduced to the application of descriptions to particulars, but is to be found in the prior possession of abstract descriptions that can be deployed in identifying particular individuals on the ground. (shrink)

Through a study of the history of the concepts of wealth and poverty, this paper investigates the onset of a transition in the conceptual architecture of epidemiological research concerning social differences in mortality rates from 1858 to 1914. It raises the question as to what the concepts of wealth and poverty meant to those who used them and what objects of interventions the conceptual architecture surrounding the concepts enabled the researchers to create. It argues that a transition began in the (...) late 19th century in which an important framework for the understanding of causal relations behind the mortality patterns changed and that this change in turn influenced the scope of what was conceived as relevant objects of intervention. (shrink)

Carey speculates that the representations of core cognition are entirely iconic. However this idea is undercut by her contention that core cognition includes concepts such as object and agency, which are employed in thought as predicates. If Carey had taken on board her claim that core cognition is iconic, very different hypotheses might have come into view.

This paper explores how words relate to concepts. It argues that in many cases, words get their meanings in part by associating with concepts, but only in conjunction with substantial input from language. Language packages concepts in grammatically determined ways. This structures the meanings of words, and determines which sorts of concepts map to words. The results are linguistically modulated meanings, and the extralinguistic concepts associated with words are often not what intuitively would be expected. The paper concludes by discussing (...) implications of this thesis for the relation of word to sentence meaning, and for issues of linguistic determinism. (shrink)

In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as _a desire to know._ Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to things unknown. The book introduces the notion of inostensible reference. Ilhan connects this notion to related concepts in philosophy of language: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description; the referential and the (...) attributive uses of definite descriptions; the _de re/de dicto_ distinction; and Kripke’s distinction between rigid and accidental designators. Continuing with a discussion of the conditions for curiosity and its satisfaction, Inan argues that the learning process—starting in curiosity and ending in knowledge—is always an effort to transform our inostensible terms into ostensible ones. A contextual account is adopted for the satisfaction of curiosity. It then discusses the conditions of successful reference to the object of curiosity and its presuppositions. The book concludes with a discussion on the limits of curiosity and its satisfaction. (shrink)

In LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited, Jerry Fodor argues that concept learning of any kind—even for complex concepts—is simply impossible. In order to avoid the conclusion that all concepts, primitive and complex, are innate, he argues that concept acquisition depends on purely noncognitive biological processes. In this paper, we show (1) that Fodor fails to establish that concept learning is impossible, (2) that his own biological account of concept acquisition is unworkable, and (3) that there are in fact (...) many promising general models for explaining how concepts are learned. (shrink)