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  1. Concepts as shared regulative ideals.Laura Schroeter & Francois Schroeter - manuscript
    What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non-accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as samesaying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoughts. The key question, then, is what psychological (...)
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  2. The New Philosopher-Kings: Conceptual Engineering and Social Authority.Nick Smyth - manuscript
    Many philosophers have recently become interested in conceptual engineering, or the activity of producing better conceptual schemes in human populations. But few, if any, are asking the question: what would it mean for actual human agents to possess the social authority to modify a conceptual scheme in this way? This paper argues for a deontological approach to conceptual engineering, wherein we have to secure social authority qua engineers before attempting to modify social concepts. I show that the dominant, consequentialist conception (...)
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  3. What Makes Normative Concepts Normative.Shawn Hernandez & N. G. Laskowski - forthcoming - Southwest Philosophy Review 37 (1).
    When asked which of our concepts are normative concepts, metaethicists would be quick to list such concepts as GOOD, OUGHT, and REASON. When asked why such concepts belong on the list, metaethicists would be much slower to respond. Matti Eklund is a notable exception. In his recent book, Choosing Normative Concepts, Eklund argues by elimination for “the Normative Role view” that normative concepts are normative in virtue of having a “normative role” or being “used normatively”. One view that Eklund aims (...)
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  4. Metaphysics of concepts: In defense of the abilitist approach.Ilya Bulov - 2023 - Theoria 89 (5):625-639.
    Abilitism is an approach to the metaphysics of concepts according to which each concept consists of a managing cognitive ability coordinating other abilities (cognitive and non-cognitive) and a set of subordinate abilities associated with this managing ability. As I argue here, if we accept the abilitist approach, we can efficiently solve such puzzles in the metaphysics of concepts as the partial possession problem, the concept pluralism problem, etc. However, there are some possible objections to abilitism, concerning the abilitist explanation of (...)
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  5. Bridging mainstream and formal ontology: A causality-based upper ontology in Dietrich of Freiberg.Luis M. Augusto - 2021 - Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 2 (2):35.
    Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...)
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  6. Acerca de la naturaleza del “yo” narrativo en Dennett.Malena Leon - 2020 - Griot : Revista de Filosofia 20 (2):109-128.
    Dennett elabora una concepción del “yo” entendido como un centro de gravedad narrativo. Uno de los obstáculos principales para valorar esta propuesta radica en que resulta dificultoso entender cuál es la naturaleza del concepto dennettiano de “yo”: concretamente, cuáles son los compromisos ontológicos y epistemológicos que cabe atribuir al fenómeno en cuestión. En este artículo defendemos que el mejor modo de realizar una reconstrucción interpretativa de su noción de “yo” es apelando a la distinción elaborada por Reichenbach entre tres clases (...)
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  7. Representing Concepts by Weighted Formulas.Daniele Porello & Claudio Masolo - 2018 - In Stefano Borgo, Pascal Hitzler & Oliver Kutz (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference, {FOIS} 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, 19-21 September 2018. IOS Press. pp. 55--68.
    A concept is traditionally defined via the necessary and sufficient conditions that clearly determine its extension. By contrast, cognitive views of concepts intend to account for empirical data that show that categorisation under a concept presents typicality effects and a certain degree of indeterminacy. We propose a formal language to compactly represent concepts by leveraging on weighted logical formulas. In this way, we can model the possible synergies among the qualities that are relevant for categorising an object under a concept. (...)
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  8. The Cell and Protoplasm as Container, Object, and Substance, 1835–1861.Daniel Liu - 2017 - Journal of the History of Biology 50 (4):889-925.
    (Recipient of the 2020 Everett Mendelsohn Prize.) This article revisits the development of the protoplasm concept as it originally arose from critiques of the cell theory, and examines how the term “protoplasm” transformed from a botanical term of art in the 1840s to the so-called “living substance” and “the physical basis of life” two decades later. I show that there were two major shifts in biological materialism that needed to occur before protoplasm theory could be elevated to have equal status (...)
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  9. Rationalizing Self-Interpretation.Laura Schroeter & Francois Schroeter - 2015 - In Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 419–447.
    A characteristic form of philosophical inquiry seeks to answer ‘what is x?’ questions. In this paper, we ask how philosophers do and should adjudicate debates about the correct answer to such questions. We argue that philosophers do and should rely on a distinctive type of pragmatic and meta-representational reasoning – a form of rationalizing self-interpretation – in answering ‘what is x?’ questions. We start by placing our methodological discussion within a broader theoretical framework. We posit a necessary connection between epistemic (...)
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  10. Concetti: capacità o rappresentazioni?E. Lalumera - 2008 - Epistemologia 31 (1):75-96.
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  11. The ontology of concepts: Abstract objects or mental representations?Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2007 - Noûs 41 (4):561-593.
    What is a concept? Philosophers have given many different answers to this question, reflecting a wide variety of approaches to the study of mind and language. Nonetheless, at the most general level, there are two dominant frameworks in contemporary philosophy. One proposes that concepts are mental representations, while the other proposes that they are abstract objects. This paper looks at the differences between these two approaches, the prospects for combining them, and the issues that are involved in the dispute. We (...)
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  12. Words as concepts.Andrea Bianchi - 2005 - In Juan José Acero & Paolo Leonardi (eds.), Facets of Concepts. Padova: pp. 83-108.
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  13. Concepts and Cognitive Science.Stephen Laurence & Eric Margolis - 1999 - In Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence (eds.), Concepts: Core Readings. MIT Press. pp. 3-81.
    Given the fundamental role that concepts play in theories of cognition, philosophers and cognitive scientists have a common interest in concepts. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of controversy regarding what kinds of things concepts are, how they are structured, and how they are acquired. This chapter offers a detailed high-level overview and critical evaluation of the main theories of concepts and their motivations. Taking into account the various challenges that each theory faces, the chapter also presents a novel approach (...)
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  14. Incommensurability in cognitive guise.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 1998 - Philosophical Psychology 11 (1):29 – 43.
    Philosophers and historians of science have made the claim that successive scientific theories are incommensurable, that is, that many or all of their concepts fail to coincide. This claim has been echoed by cognitive psychologists who have applied it to the successive conceptual schemes of young children, or of children and adults. This paper examines the psychological evidence for the claim and proposes ways of reinterpreting it which do not involve imputing incommensurability. An alternative approach to understanding conceptual change is (...)
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  15. Concept.George Bealer - 1995 - In Jaegwon Kim & Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Metaphysics. Blackwell. pp. 89-90.
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  16. Two concepts of concept.Muhammad ali KhAlidi - 1995 - Mind and Language 10 (4):402-22.
    Two main theories of concepts have emerged in the recent psychological literature: the Prototype Theory (which considers concepts to be self-contained lists of features) and the Theory Theory (which conceives of them as being embedded within larger theoretical networks). Experiments supporting the first theory usually differ substantially from those supporting the second, which suggests that these the· ories may be operating at different levels of explanation and dealing with different entities. A convergence is proposed between the Theory Theory and the (...)
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  17. Blueprint for a Science of Mind: A Critical Notice of Christopher Peacocke's A Study of Concepts.Kirk Ludwig - 1994 - Mind and Language 9 (4):469-491.
    A review essay on Peacocke's book A Study of Concepts. Raises questions about the role of the concept of finding an inference primitively compelling and questions of detail about the basic framework, its application to the systematicity of thought, the response to potential objections in the chapters on the metaphysics of concepts and naturalism, and the treatment of the concept of belief.
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