Concepts and cognitive structures

Philosophical Psychology (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The broad topic of this paper is the relationship between the theoretical notion of a concept and familiar types of cognitive structures (prototypes, exemplars, causal models, etc.) The discussion is organized around different ways that theorists about concepts can attempt to accommodate what has been dubbed the Heterogeneity Hypothesis (roughly: the claim that various types of structures with which concepts have been identified co-exist and form a heterogeneous class). The most general goal of the paper is to clarify the dialectical geography when it comes to different ways of construing the relationship between concepts and familiar cognitive structures. A more focussed and more polemical goal of the paper is to raise problems for so-called pluralist approaches to concepts. This paper will not offer a comprehensive defense of any particular view about the relationship between concepts and cognitive structures, but the discussion will be a convenient venue in which to highlight some virtues of what I will call Higher-Level Unity approaches to concepts.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Unity amidst heterogeneity in theories of concepts.Kevan Edwards - 2010 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3):210-211.
Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Religion.Rohollah Haghshenas & Mohammadsadegh Zahedi - 2013 - پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین 11 (2):145-162.
Cognitive Networks: Interactivity, Intersubjectivity, and Synergy.Helena Knyazeva - 2017 - Філософія Освіти 20 (1):52-78.
Conceptual fingerprints: Lexical decomposition by means of frames – a neuro-cognitive model.Wiebke Petersen & Markus Werning - 2007 - In U. Priss, S. Polovina & R. Hill (eds.), Conceptual structures: Knowledge architectures for smart applications. Heidelberg: pp. 415-428.
Concepts and Cognitive Science.Stephen Laurence & Eric Margolis - 1999 - In Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence (eds.), Concepts: Core Readings. MIT Press. pp. 3-81.
Concepts are not a natural kind.Edouard Machery - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (3):444-467.
Inflating the social aspects of cognitive structural realism.Majid D. Beni - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-18.
Is a Unified Account of Concepts Possible?James David Byrd - 2003 - Dissertation, University of California, Davis

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-09-28

Downloads
31 (#445,444)

6 months
12 (#122,989)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Kevan Edwards
Syracuse University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Psychophysical and theoretical identifications.David K. Lewis - 1972 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):249-258.
Special sciences.Jerry A. Fodor - 1974 - Synthese 28 (2):97-115.
Physicalism, or Something near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (223):306-310.

View all 26 references / Add more references