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What is a Concept

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Most folks have an intuitive understanding of what concepts are. ... incommensurability of Fodor's informational atomism and Prinz's proxytypes. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: What is a Concept


1
What is a Concept?
Re-Framing the Question
2
Folk Theory
  • Most folks have an intuitive understanding of
    what concepts are.
  • They likewise understand the difference between
    concepts and their referents and take it as
    obvious.
  • These understandings are important both to their
    understanding of themselves as mental agents and
    here's where the folk psychology comes in
    their understanding of others.

3
Symbols and Representations
Useful Distinction
  • Symbols relationship between the symbol and
    the referent is (in principle) arbitrary.
  • Representations relationship between the
    representation and the referent is (in principle)
    non-arbitrary.

Common (But Unnecessary!) Assumptions
  • Symbols are context-free.
  • Syntax (always) comes apart from semantics.

Symbols go nicely with definionist accounts.
4
Paradox
Does paradox reduce to (simple) contradiction?
  • Contradiction p and p, and there's no way
    out.

true and not true
  • Paradox p and p?... but intuitively, we feel
    that there is a way out! The incommensurability
    is only apparent.

I always lie.
Premise Most interesting paradoxes turn on
self-reference.
5
Resemblance
  • Resemblance need not be visual, but there must
    be an isomorphism.
  • Resemblance is important to the story but cannot
    (Goodman) be the story.
  • Slogan Resemblance does not yield
    representation representation yields
    resemblance.
  • Resemblance is assumed by most if not all
    imagist accounts.

6
Philosophical Baseline
  • Concepts as (mental) representations.
  • Concepts as sub-propositional components of
    thoughts.
  • Evans' Generality Constraint.
  • Systematicity.
  • Productivity.

7
Possible Extensions
  • Concepts as models.
  • Concepts as elements in a language of thought.
  • Concepts as patterns (or expectations).
  • Concepts as shapes.
  • Concepts as perturbations.

8
Conceptual Spaces
  • Concepts can be points within a similarity space
    or convex areas (shapes) within that space.
  • Offered as a way of bridging a symbolic account
    and an associationist account of concepts.
  • Might equally be taken as a way of bridging the
    apparent incommensurability of Fodor's
    informational atomism and Prinz's proxytypes.
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