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  1. Language, Mind, and Cognitive Science: Remarks on Theories of the Language-Cognition Relationships in Human Minds.Guillaume Beaulac - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Western Ontario
    My dissertation establishes the basis for a systematic outlook on the role language plays in human cognition. It is an investigation based on a cognitive conception of language, as opposed to communicative conceptions, viz. those that suppose that language plays no role in cognition. I focus, in Chapter 2, on three paradigmatic theories adopting this perspective, each offering different views on how language contributes to or changes cognition. -/- In Chapter 3, I criticize current views held by dual-process theorists, and (...)
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  • (1 other version)Parts and boundaries.Jackendoff Ray - 1991 - Cognition 41 (1-3):9-45.
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  • Concepts, analysis, generics and the canberra plan.Mark Johnston & Sarah-Jane Leslie - 2012 - Philosophical Perspectives 26 (1):113-171.
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  • (1 other version)Learning Matters: The Role of Learning in Concept Acquisition.Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2011 - Mind and Language 26 (5):507-539.
    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 (...)
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  • 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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  • (1 other version)politeness: Towards an evaluative and embodied approach.Chaoqun Xie - 2008 - Pragmatics and Cognition 16 (1):151-175.
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  • Induction from a Single Instance: Incomplete Frames. [REVIEW]Rafal Urbaniak & Frederik Van De Putte - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (4):641-653.
    In this paper we argue that an existing theory of concepts called dynamic frame theory, although not developed with that purpose in mind, allows for the precise formulation of a number of problems associated with induction from a single instance. A key role is played by the distinction we introduce between complete and incomplete dynamic frames, for incomplete frames seem to be very elegant candidates for the format of the background knowledge used in induction from a single instance. Furthermore, we (...)
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  • Why I stopped worrying about the definition of life... and why you should as well.Edouard Machery - 2012 - Synthese 185 (1):145-164.
    In several disciplines within science—evolutionary biology, molecular biology, astrobiology, synthetic biology, artificial life—and outside science—primarily ethics—efforts to define life have recently multiplied. However, no consensus has emerged. In this article, I argue that this is no accident. I propose a dilemma showing that the project of defining life is either impossible or pointless. The notion of life at stake in this project is either the folk concept of life or a scientific concept. In the former case, empirical evidence shows that (...)
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  • Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference.Philip Johnson-Laird & Ruth M. J. Byrne - 2002 - Psychological Review 109 (4):646-678.
    The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities to which conditionals can refer. The mental representation of a (...)
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  • A theory of lexical access in speech production.Willem J. M. Levelt, Ardi Roelofs & Antje S. Meyer - 1999 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (1):1-38.
    Preparing words in speech production is normally a fast and accurate process. We generate them two or three per second in fluent conversation; and overtly naming a clear picture of an object can easily be initiated within 600 msec after picture onset. The underlying process, however, is exceedingly complex. The theory reviewed in this target article analyzes this process as staged and feedforward. After a first stage of conceptual preparation, word generation proceeds through lexical selection, morphological and phonological encoding, phonetic (...)
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  • Meaning postulates and deference.Richard Horsey - unknown
    Fodor (1998) argues that most lexical concepts have no internal structure. He rejects what he calls Inferential Role Semantics (IRS), the view that primitive concepts are constituted by their inferential relations, on the grounds that this violates the compositionality constraint and leads to an unacceptable form of holism. In rejecting IRS, Fodor must also reject meaning postulates. I argue, contra Fodor, that meaning postulates must be retained, but that when suitably constrained they are not susceptible to his arguments against IRS. (...)
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  • Radical concept nativism.Stephen Laurence & Eric Margolis - 2002 - Cognition 86 (1):25-55.
    Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of how new (...)
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  • How to acquire a concept.Eric Margolis - 1998 - Mind and Language 13 (3):347-369.
    In this paper, I develop a novel account of concept acquisition for an atomistic theory of concepts. Conceptual atomism is rarely explored in cognitive science because of the feeling that atomistic treatments of concepts are inherently nativistic. My model illustrates, on the contrary, that atomism does not preclude the learning of a concept.
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  • (1 other version)The Grounds and the Components of Concepts.Jan Claas - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (6):2409-2429.
    In this paper I investigate the idea that in conceptual analysis we are in a substantial way concerned with revealing metaphysical grounds. I argue that a recent proposal fails, according to which we aim to reveal what complex concepts are grounded in. The notion ofcomposition, rather than that ofgrounding, is the best way to understand the intuitive hierarchy of concepts. In an analysis we reveal thecomponentsorpartsof complex concepts and their structure. Finally, I propose an alternative role for grounding in our (...)
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  • Steps towards a semantics of dance.Pritty Patel Grosz, Patrick Georg Grosz, Tejaswinee Kelkar & Alexander Refsum Jensenius - 2022 - Journal of Semantics 39 (4).
    As formal theoretical linguistic methodology has matured, recent years have seen the advent of applying it to objects of study that transcend language, e.g., to the syntax and semantics of music (Lerdahl & Jackendoff 1983, Schlenker 2017a; see also Rebuschat et al. 2011). One of the aims of such extensions is to shed new light on how meaning is construed in a range of communicative systems. In this paper, we approach this goal by looking at narrative dance in the form (...)
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  • Representation and mental representation.Robert D. Rupert - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (2):204-225.
    This paper engages critically with anti-representationalist arguments pressed by prominent enactivists and their allies. The arguments in question are meant to show that the “as-such” and “job-description” problems constitute insurmountable challenges to causal-informational theories of mental content. In response to these challenges, a positive account of what makes a physical or computational structure a mental representation is proposed; the positive account is inspired partly by Dretske’s views about content and partly by the role of mental representations in contemporary cognitive scientific (...)
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  • Poetic Opacity: How to Paint Things with Words.Jesse J. Prinz & Eric Mandelbaum - 2015 - In John Gibson (ed.), The Philosophy of Poetry. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 63-87.
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  • Introduction: Philosophy and Cognitive Science.Richard Samuels, Eric Margolis & Stephen Stich - 2012 - In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press. pp. 3-18.
    This chapter offers a high-level overview of the philosophy of cognitive science and an introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. The philosophy of cognitive science emerged out of a set of common and overlapping interests among philosophers and scientists who study the mind. We identify five categories of issues that illustrate the best work in this broad field: (1) traditional philosophical issues about the mind that have been invigorated by research in cognitive science, (2) issues regarding (...)
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  • Art Concept Pluralism.Christy Mag Uidhir & P. D. Magnus - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (1-2):83-97.
    Abstract: There is a long tradition of trying to analyze art either by providing a definition (essentialism) or by tracing its contours as an indefinable, open concept (anti-essentialism). Both art essentialists and art anti-essentialists share an implicit assumption of art concept monism. This article argues that this assumption is a mistake. Species concept pluralism—a well-explored position in philosophy of biology—provides a model for art concept pluralism. The article explores the conditions under which concept pluralism is appropriate, and argues that they (...)
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  • Principled and statistical connections in common sense conception.Sandeep Prasada & Elaine M. Dillingham - 2006 - Cognition 99 (1):73-112.
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  • A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking.Ardi Roelofs - 1992 - Cognition 42 (1-3):107-142.
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  • Concepts and conceptions: A reply to Smith, Medin and Rips.Georges Rey - 1985 - Cognition 19 (3):297-303.
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  • Representation of Principled Connections: A Window Onto the Formal Aspect of Common Sense Conception.Sandeep Prasada & Elaine M. Dillingham - 2009 - Cognitive Science 33 (3):401-448.
    Nominal concepts represent things as tokens of types. Recent research suggests that we represent principled connections between the type of thing something is (e.g., DOG) and some of its properties (k‐properties; e.g., having four legs for dogs) but not other properties (t‐properties; e.g., being brown for dogs). Principled connections differ from logical, statistical, and causal connections. Principled connections license (i) the expectation that tokens of the type will generally possess their k‐properties, (ii) formal explanations (i.e., explanation of the presence of (...)
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  • Le véritable retour des définitions.Pierre Poirier & Guillaume Beaulac - 2011 - Dialogue 50 (1):153-164.
    In our critical review of Doing without Concepts, we argue that although the heterogeneity hypothesis (according to which exemplars, prototypes and theories are natural kinds that should replace ‘concept’) may end fruitless debates in the psychology of concepts, Edouard Machery did not anticipate one consequence of his suggestion: Definitions now acquire a new status as another one of the bodies of information replacing ‘concept’. In order to support our hypothesis, we invoke dual-process models to suggest that prototypes, exemplars and theories (...)
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  • A semantic resolution of the paradox of analysis.Dennis Earl - 2007 - Acta Analytica 22 (3):189-205.
    The paradox of analysis has been a problem for analytic philosophers at least since Moore’s time, and it is especially significant for those who seek an account of analysis along classical lines. The present paper offers a new solution to the paradox, where a theory of analysis is given where (1) analysandum and analysans are distinct concepts, due to their failing to share the same conceptual form, yet (2) they are related in virtue of satisfying various semantic constraints on the (...)
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  • Designing visual languages for description logics.Brian R. Gaines - 2009 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 18 (2):217-250.
    Semantic networks were developed in cognitive science and artificial intelligence studies as graphical knowledge representation and inference tools emulating human thought processes. Formal analysis of the representation and inference capabilities of the networks modeled them as subsets of standard first-order logic (FOL), restricted in the operations allowed in order to ensure the tractability that seemed to characterize human reasoning capabilities. The graphical network representations were modeled as providing a visual language for the logic. Sub-sets of FOL targeted on knowledge representation (...)
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  • Are there any conceptual truths about knowledge?Finn Spicer - 2008 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (1pt1):43-60.
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  • On Markerese.David Pitt - 2003 - Philosophical Forum 34 (3-4):267–300.
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  • Meno—a Cognitive Psychological View.Benny Shanon - 1984 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (2):129-147.
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  • Concepts and stereotypes.Georges Rey - 1983 - Cognition 15 (1-3):237-62.
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  • (3 other versions)Concepts.Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2002 - In Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. pp. 190-213.
    This article provides a critical overview of competing theories of conceptual structure (definitional structure, probabilistic structure, theory structure), including the view that concepts have no structure (atomism). We argue that the explanatory demands that these different theories answer to are best accommodated by an organization in which concepts are taken to have atomic cores that are linked to differing types of conceptual structure.
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  • (2 other versions)Accessing words in speech production: Stages, processes and representations.Willem J. M. Levelt - 1992 - Cognition 42 (1-3):1-22.
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  • In Defense of Definitions.David Pitt - 1999 - Philosophical Psychology 12 (2):139-156.
    The arguments of Fodor, Garret, Walker and Parkes [(1980) Against definitions, Cognition, 8, 263-367] are the source of widespread skepticism in cognitive science about lexical semantic structure. Whereas the thesis that lexical items, and the concepts they express, have decompositional structure (i.e. have significant constituents) was at one time "one of those ideas that hardly anybody [in the cognitive sciences] ever considers giving up" (p. 264), most researchers now believe that "[a]ll the evidence suggests that the classical [(decompositional)] view is (...)
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  • The Epistemological Relevance of Conceptual Change.Jasper Liptow - 2022 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 99 (3):449-473.
    The purpose of this article is to show that the customary understanding of epistemic progress as a kind of belief change is incomplete and that conceptual change has to be acknowledged as a crucial driving force in epistemic progress. The author’s argument for the epistemological relevance of conceptual change proceeds as follows. First, he develops an account of conceptual change that clearly distinguishes conceptual change from belief change. He then takes a closer look at two kinds of conceptual change that (...)
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  • Concepts and Analytic Intuitions.Bradley Rives - 2016 - Analytic Philosophy 57 (4):285-314.
    In this paper I defend the view that positing analytic, constitutive connections among concepts best explains certain semantic-cum-conceptual intuitions. Jerry Fodor and Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence offer alternative explanations according to which such intuitions can be explained without positing analyticities. I argue that these alternative explanations fail. As a partial diagnosis of their failure, I suggest that critics have failed to recognize the extent to which a psychologized notion of analyticity must depart from the traditional notion of ‘truth in (...)
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  • Can Nomenclature for the Body be Explained by Embodiment Theories?Asifa Majid & Miriam Staden - 2015 - Topics in Cognitive Science 7 (4):570-594.
    According to widespread opinion, the meaning of body part terms is determined by salient discontinuities in the visual image; such that hands, feet, arms, and legs, are natural parts. If so, one would expect these parts to have distinct names which correspond in meaning across languages. To test this proposal, we compared three unrelated languages—Dutch, Japanese, and Indonesian—and found both naming systems and boundaries of even basic body part terms display variation across languages. Bottom-up cues alone cannot explain natural language (...)
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  • For definitions: A reply to Fodor, Garrett, Walker, and Parkes.Renison J. Gonsalves - 1988 - Cognition 29 (1):73-82.
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  • (1 other version)Self-verification and the content of thought.Aaron Z. Zimmerman - 2006 - Synthese 149 (1):59-75.
    Burge follows Descartes in claiming that the category of conceptually self-verifying judgments includes (but is not restricted to) judgments that give rise to sincere assertions of sentences of the form, 'I am thinking that p'. In this paper I argue that Burge’s Cartesian insight is hard to reconcile with Fregean accounts of the content of thought. Burge's intuitively compelling claim that cogito judgments are conceptually self-verifying poses a real challenge to neo-Fregean theories of content.
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  • What is a concept, that a person may grasp it?Ray Jackendoff - 1989 - Mind and Language 4 (1-2):68-102.
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  • Literal and metaphorical meaning: in search of a lost distinction.Nicholas Allott & Mark Textor - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    The distinction between literal and figurative use is well-known and embedded in ‘folk linguistics’. According to folk linguistics, figurative uses deviate from literal ones. But recent work on lexical modulation and polysemy shows that meaning deviation is ubiquitous, even in cases of literal use. Hence, it has been argued, the literal/figurative distinction has no value for theorising about communication. In this paper, we focus on metaphor and argue that here the literal–figurative distinction has theoretical importance. The distinction between literal and (...)
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  • From concepts to lexical items.Manfred Bierwisch & Robert Schreuder - 1992 - Cognition 42 (1-3):23-60.
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  • Concept referentialism and the role of empty concepts.Kevan Edwards - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (1):89-118.
    This paper defends a reference-based approach to concept individuation against the objection that such an approach is unable to make sense of concepts that fail to refer. The main line of thought pursued involves clarifying how the referentialist should construe the relationship between a concept's (referential) content and its role in mental processes. While the central goal of the paper is to defend a view aptly titled Concept Referentialism , broader morals are drawn regarding reference-based approaches in general. The paper (...)
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  • The content and acquisition of lexical concepts.Richard Horsey - 2006
    This thesis aims to develop a psychologically plausible account of concepts by integrating key insights from philosophy (on the metaphysical basis for concept possession) and psychology (on the mechanisms underlying concept acquisition). I adopt an approach known as informational atomism, developed by Jerry Fodor. Informational atomism is the conjunction of two theses: (i) informational semantics, according to which conceptual content is constituted exhaustively by nomological mind–world relations; and (ii) conceptual atomism, according to which (lexical) concepts have no internal structure. I (...)
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  • Reductive paraphrase and meaning: A critique of wierzbickian semantics. [REVIEW]Nick Riemer - 2006 - Linguistics and Philosophy 29 (3):347 - 379.
    This article explores some fundamental issues of definition-based lexical semantic research through a critique of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) theory of semantic and grammatical description (Wierzbicka 1996, Semantics. Primes and Universals, Oxford University Press, Oxford). NSM is criticized for attaching excessive importance to explanatory definition, for its adoption of the reductive requirement that a definiens be simpler than a definiendum, and for its use of ‘canonical contexts’ to disambiguate meaning. The principle of substitutability, according to which a definition of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Self-verification and the content of thought.Aaron Z. Zimmerman - 2006 - Synthese 149 (1):59 - 75.
    Descartes famously argued, on purely conceptual grounds, that even an extremely powerful being could not trick him into mistakenly judging that he was thinking. Of course, it is not necessarily true that Descartes is thinking. Still, Descartes claimed, it is necessarily true that if a person judges that she is thinking, that person is thinking. Following Tyler Burge (1988) we call such judgments ‘self-verifying.’ More exactly, a judgment j performed by a subject S at a time t is selfverifying if (...)
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  • Frameworks, models, and case studies: a new methodology for studying conceptual change in science and philosophy.Matteo De Benedetto - 2022 - Dissertation, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
    This thesis focuses on models of conceptual change in science and philosophy. In particular, I developed a new bootstrapping methodology for studying conceptual change, centered around the formalization of several popular models of conceptual change and the collective assessment of their improved formal versions via nine evaluative dimensions. Among the models of conceptual change treated in the thesis are Carnap’s explication, Lakatos’ concept-stretching, Toulmin’s conceptual populations, Waismann’s open texture, Mark Wilson’s patches and facades, Sneed’s structuralism, and Paul Thagard’s conceptual revolutions. (...)
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  • Sometimes a Great Notion: A Critical Notice of Mark Crimmins’Talk About Beliefs.Kent Bach - 1993 - Mind and Language 8 (3):431-441.
    Anyone weary of endless philosophical debate on belief reports will find welcome relief in this book. Talking not just about belief talk but about belief itself, it offers much that is new, interesting, and subtle. The central thesis, though interestingly and subtly developed, is not exactly new. It is a version of the “hidden indexical theory” (HIT) of..
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  • (1 other version)Animal concepts: Content and discontent.Nick Chater & Cecilia Heyes - 1994 - Mind and Language 9 (3):209-246.
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  • Epistemic boundedness and the universality of thought.Matthew Rellihan - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 125 (2):219-250.
    Fodor argues that our minds must have epistemic limitations because there must be endogenous constraints on the class of concepts we can acquire. However, his argument for the existence of these endogenous constraints is falsified by the phenomenon of the deferential acquisition of concepts. If we allow for the acquisition of concepts through deferring to experts and scientific instruments, then our conceptual capacity will be without endogenous constraints, and there will be no reason to think that our minds are epistemically (...)
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  • Why concepts can't be theories.Jack M. C. Kwong - 2006 - Philosophical Explorations 9 (3):309-325.
    In this paper, I present an alternative argument for Jerry Fodor's recent conclusion that there are currently no tenable theories of concepts in the cognitive sciences and in the philosophy of mind. Briefly, my approach focuses on the 'theory-theory' of concepts. I argue that the two ways in which cognitive psychologists have formulated this theory lead to serious difficulties, and that there cannot be, in principle, a third way in which it can be reformulated. Insofar as the 'theory-theory' is supposed (...)
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