Abstract

Hybrid and pluralist accounts of concepts agree that the class of concepts includes a multiplicity of heterogeneous representational structures, such as prototypes, sets of exemplars and theories. In this paper I argue that these accounts agree on two additional central claims related to the ways in which they articulate those structures: each type of representational structure can be used independently in psychological processes, and co-referential concepts are associated in a distinctive way as representations of the same category. Although they disagree on concept individuation, they seem to agree that on a processing dimension there are multiple independent representations for a given category and on a long-term storage dimension concepts that represent the same category conform an epistemic unity.