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Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong

Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press (1998)

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  1. 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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  • How to Learn the Natural Numbers: Inductive Inference and the Acquisition of Number Concepts.Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2008 - Cognition 106 (2):924-939.
    Theories of number concepts often suppose that the natural numbers are acquired as children learn to count and as they draw an induction based on their interpretation of the first few count words. In a bold critique of this general approach, Rips, Asmuth, Bloomfield [Rips, L., Asmuth, J. & Bloomfield, A.. Giving the boot to the bootstrap: How not to learn the natural numbers. Cognition, 101, B51–B60.] argue that such an inductive inference is consistent with a representational system that clearly (...)
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  • Defending ethical naturalism: The roles of cognitive science and pragmatism.Andrew Ward - 2005 - Zygon 40 (1):201-220.
    In various essays, Paul Churchland explores the relevance of studies in cognitive science to issues in ethics. What emerges is a kind of ethical naturalism that has two components. The first component is a descriptive‐genealogical one whose purpose is to explain how people come to have their ethical beliefs. The second component is a normative one whose purpose is to explain why some values are better than other values. Given this distinction, the problem of integrating ethics with beliefs about the (...)
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  • More on the Interactive Indexing Semantic Theory.John Dilworth - 2010 - Minds and Machines 20 (3):455-474.
    This article further explains and develops a recent, comprehensive semantic naturalization theory, namely the interactive indexing (II) theory as described in my 2008 Minds and Machines article Semantic Naturalization via Interactive Perceptual Causality (Vol. 18, pp. 527–546). Folk views postulate a concrete intentional relation between cognitive states and the worldly states they are about. The II theory eliminates any such concrete intentionality, replacing it with purely causal relations based on the interactive theory of perception. But intentionality is preserved via purely (...)
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  • Introspection.Eric Schwitzgebel - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Ontological Minimalism about Phenomenology.Susanna Schellenberg - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1):1-40.
    I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense-data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind-independent objects or property-instances. These concepts and nonconceptual structures are identified with modes of presentation types. (...)
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  • Knowledge and abilities: The need for a new understanding of knowing-how. [REVIEW]Eva-Maria Jung & Albert Newen - 2010 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (1):113-131.
    Stanley and Williamson (The Journal of Philosophy 98(8), 411–444 2001 ) reject the fundamental distinction between what Ryle once called ‘knowing-how’ and ‘knowing-that’. They claim that knowledge-how is just a species of knowledge-that, i.e. propositional knowledge, and try to establish their claim relying on the standard semantic analysis of ‘knowing-how’ sentences. We will undermine their strategy by arguing that ‘knowing-how’ phrases are under-determined such that there is not only one semantic analysis and by critically discussing and refuting the positive account (...)
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  • Possessing moral concepts.David Merli - 2009 - Philosophia 37 (3):535-556.
    Moral discourse allows for speakers to disagree in many ways: about right and wrong acts, about moral theory, about the rational and conative significance of moral failings. Yet speakers’ eccentricities do not prevent them from engaging in moral conversation or from having (genuine, not equivocal) moral disagreement. Thus differences between speakers are compatible with possession of moral concepts. This paper examines various kinds of moral disagreements and argues that they provide evidence against conceptual-role and informational atomist approaches to understanding our (...)
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  • The Rise and Fall of the Mind-Body Problem.Katalin Balog - forthcoming - In Corine Besson, Anandi Hattiangadi & Romina Padro (eds.), Meaning, Modality and Mind: Essays Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Naming and Necessity. Oxford University Press.
    In this paper, I examine the relationship between physicalism and property dualism in the light of the dialectic between anti-physicalist arguments and physicalist responses. Upon rehearsing the moves of each side, it is hard not to notice that there is a puzzling symmetry between dualist attacks on physicalism and physicalist replies. Each position can be developed in a way to defend itself from attacks from the other position, and it seems that there are neither a priori nor a posteriori grounds (...)
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  • (1 other version)Idiolects.Richard Heck - 2006 - In Judith Jarvis Thomson & Alex Byrne (eds.), Content and modality: themes from the philosophy of Robert Stalnaker. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Defends the view that the study of language should concern itself, primarily, with idiolects. The main objections considered are forms of the normativity objection.
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  • Thought structure, belief content, and possession conditions.Wayne A. Davis - 2008 - Acta Analytica 23 (3):207-231.
    According to Peacocke, concepts are individuated by their possession conditions, which are specified in terms of conditions in which certain propositions containing those concepts are believed. In support, Peacocke tries to explain what it is for a thought to have a structure and what it is for a belief to have a propositional content. I show that the possession condition theory cannot answer such fundamental questions. Peacocke’s theory founders because concepts are metaphysically fundamental. They individuate the propositions and thoughts containing (...)
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  • Social Ontology as Convention.Mark H. Bickhard - 2008 - Topoi 27 (1-2):139-149.
    I will argue that social ontology is constituted as hierarchical and interlocking conventions of multifarious kinds. Convention, in turn, is modeled in a manner derived from that of David K. Lewis. Convention is usually held to be inadequate for models of social ontologies, with one primary reason being that there seems to be no place for normativity. I argue that two related changes are required in the basic modeling framework in order to address this (and other) issue(s): (1) a shift (...)
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  • Thought, language, and the argument from explicitness.Agustín Vicente & Fernando Martínez-Manrique - 2008 - Metaphilosophy 39 (3):381–401.
    This article deals with the relationship between language and thought, focusing on the question of whether language can be a vehicle of thought, as, for example, Peter Carruthers has claimed. We develop and examine a powerful argument—the "argument from explicitness"—against this cognitive role of language. The premises of the argument are just two: (1) the vehicle of thought has to be explicit, and (2) natural languages are not explicit. We explain what these simple premises mean and why we should believe (...)
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  • Language, logic and ontology: Uncovering the structure of commonsense knowledge.Walid Saba -
    The purpose of this paper is twofold: (i) we argue that the structure of commonsense knowledge must be discovered, rather than invented; and (ii) we argue that natural language, which is the best known theory of our (shared) commonsense knowledge, should itself be used as a guide to discovering the structure of commonsense knowledge. In addition to suggesting a systematic method to the discovery of the structure of commonsense knowledge, the method we propose seems to also provide an explanation for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Language of thought hypothesis: State of the art.Murat Aydede - manuscript
    [This is an earlier (1997), much longer and more detailed version of my entry on LOTH in the _Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy_] The Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH) is an empirical thesis about thought and thinking. For their explication, it postulates a physically realized system of representations that have a combinatorial syntax (and semantics) such that operations on representations are causally sensitive only to the syntactic properties of representations. According to LOTH, thought is, roughly, the tokening of a representation that (...)
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  • Semantic underdetermination and the cognitive uses of language.Agustin Vicente & Fernando Martinez-Manrique - 2005 - Mind and Language 20 (5):537–558.
    According to the thesis of semantic underdetermination, most sentences of a natural language lack a definite semantic interpretation. This thesis supports an argument against the use of natural language as an instrument of thought, based on the premise that cognition requires a semantically precise and compositional instrument. In this paper we examine several ways to construe this argument, as well as possible ways out for the cognitive view of natural language in the introspectivist version defended by Carruthers. Finally, we sketch (...)
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  • Cognitive dynamics and indexicals.Simon Prosser - 2005 - Mind and Language 20 (4):369–391.
    Frege held that indexical thoughts could be retained through changes of context that required a change of indexical term. I argue that Frege was partially right in that a singular mode of presentation can be retained through changes of indexical. There must, however, be a further mode of presentation that changes when the indexical term changes. This suggests that indexicals should be regarded as complex demonstratives; a change of indexical term is like a change between 'that φ' and 'that ψ', (...)
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  • Thought-experiment intuitions and truth in fiction.Jonathan Ichikawa & Benjamin Jarvis - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 142 (2):221 - 246.
    What sorts of things are the intuitions generated via thought experiment? Timothy Williamson has responded to naturalistic skeptics by arguing that thought-experiment intuitions are judgments of ordinary counterfactuals. On this view, the intuition is naturalistically innocuous, but it has a contingent content and could be known at best a posteriori. We suggest an alternative to Williamson's account, according to which we apprehend thought-experiment intuitions through our grasp on truth in fiction. On our view, intuitions like the Gettier intuition are necessarily (...)
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  • Troubles with the causal homeostasis theory of reference.Charles Nussbaum - 2001 - Philosophical Psychology 14 (2):155 – 178.
    While purely causal theories of reference have provided a plausible account of the meanings of names and natural kind terms, they cannot handle vacuous theoretical terms. The causal homeostasis theory can but incurs other difficulties. Theories of reference that are intensional and not purely causal tend to be molecularist or holist. Holist theories threaten transtheoretic reference, whereas molecularist theories must supply a principled basis for selecting privileged meaning-determining relations between terms. The causal homeostasis theory is a two-factor molecularist theory, but (...)
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  • Human categories beyond non-essentialism.Ron Mallon - 2007 - Journal of Political Philosophy 15 (2):146–168.
    In recent years, numerous articles and books in the humanities and the social sciences have been devoted to understanding the ascription of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and other ‘human kind’ concepts to persons. What may be more surprising given the enormous volume of this research and the diversity of its sources is that much of it shares a common commitment to understanding the categories picked out by these concepts in an non- essentialist way. For example, Iris Marion (...)
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  • (1 other version)The rise and fall of experimental philosophy.Antti Kauppinen - 2007 - Philosophical Explorations 10 (2):95 – 118.
    In disputes about conceptual analysis, each side typically appeals to pre-theoretical 'intuitions' about particular cases. Recently, many naturalistically oriented philosophers have suggested that these appeals should be understood as empirical hypotheses about what people would say when presented with descriptions of situations, and have consequently conducted surveys on non-specialists. I argue that this philosophical research programme, a key branch of what is known as 'experimental philosophy', rests on mistaken assumptions about the relation between people's concepts and their linguistic behaviour. The (...)
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  • An Overview of Lexical Semantics.Kent Johnson - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (1):119-134.
    This article reviews some linguistic and philosophical work in lexical semantics. In Section 1, the general methods of lexical semantics are explored, with particular attention to how semantic features of verbs are associated with grammatical patterns. In Section 2, philosophical consequences and issues arising from this sort of research is reviewed.
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  • Linguistic communication and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.Robyn Carston - 2008 - Synthese 165 (3):321-345.
    Most people working on linguistic meaning or communication assume that semantics and pragmatics are distinct domains, yet there is still little consensus on how the distinction is to be drawn. The position defended in this paper is that the semantics/pragmatics distinction holds between encoded linguistic meaning and speaker meaning. Two other ‘minimalist’ positions on semantics are explored and found wanting: Kent Bach’s view that there is a narrow semantic notion of context which is responsible for providing semantic values for a (...)
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  • Thought-contents and the formal ontology of sense.Steven E. Boër - 2003 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 32 (1):43-114.
    This paper articulates a formal theory of belief incorporating three key theses: (1) belief is a dyadic relation between an agent and a property; (2) this property is not the belief's truth condition (i.e., the intuitively self-ascribed property which the agent must exemplify for the belief to be true) but is instead a certain abstract property (a "thought-content") which contains a way of thinking of that truth condition; (3) for an agent a to have a belief "about" such-and-such items it (...)
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  • (1 other version)Sellars vs. the given.Daniel Bonevac - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (1):1-30.
    John McDowell, Richard Rorty, and Robert Brandom invoke Sellars’s arguments against the Myth of the Given as having shown that the Given is nothing more than a myth. But most of Sellars’s arguments attack logical atomism, not the framework of givenness as such. Moreover, they do not succeed. At crucial points the arguments confuse the perspectives of a knower and those attributing knowledge to a knower. Only one argument-the “inconsistent triad” argument-addresses the Myth of the Given as such, and there (...)
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  • Kantian non-conceptualism.Robert Hanna - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 137 (1):41 - 64.
    There are perceptual states whose representational content cannot even in principle be conceptual. If that claim is true, then at least some perceptual states have content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content. Furthermore the intrinsically “orientable” spatial character of essentially non-conceptual content entails not only that all perceptual states contain non-conceptual content in this essentially distinct sense, but also that consciousness goes all the way down into so-called unconscious or (...)
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  • Varieties of representation in evolved and embodied neural networks.Pete Mandik - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (1):95-130.
    In this paper I discuss one of the key issuesin the philosophy of neuroscience:neurosemantics. The project of neurosemanticsinvolves explaining what it means for states ofneurons and neural systems to haverepresentational contents. Neurosemantics thusinvolves issues of common concern between thephilosophy of neuroscience and philosophy ofmind. I discuss a problem that arises foraccounts of representational content that Icall ``the economy problem'': the problem ofshowing that a candidate theory of mentalrepresentation can bear the work requiredwithin in the causal economy of a mind and (...)
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  • Intuitions in linguistics.Michael Devitt - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (3):481-513.
    Linguists take the intuitive judgments of speakers to be good evidence for a grammar. Why? The Chomskian answer is that they are derived by a rational process from a representation of linguistic rules in the language faculty. The paper takes a different view. It argues for a naturalistic and non-Cartesian view of intuitions in general. They are empirical central-processor responses to phenomena differing from other such responses only in being immediate and fairly unreflective. Applying this to linguistic intuitions yields an (...)
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  • Innateness and the situated mind.Robert D. Rupert - 2008 - In Murat Aydede & P. Robbins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 96--116.
    forthcoming in P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (Cambridge UP).
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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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  • (1 other version)Before and below 'theory of mind': Embodied simulation and the neural correlates of social cognition.Vittorio Gallese - 2007 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 362 (1480):659-669.
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  • Does intentional psychology need vindicating by cognitive science?Jonathan Knowles - 2001 - Minds and Machines 11 (3):347-377.
    I argue that intentional psychology does not stand in need of vindication by a lower-level implementation theory from cognitive science, in particular the representational theory of mind (RTM), as most famously Jerry Fodor has argued. The stance of the paper is novel in that I claim this holds even if one, in line with Fodor, views intentional psychology as an empirical theory, and its theoretical posits as as real as those of other sciences. I consider four metaphysical arguments for the (...)
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  • Computing mechanisms.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (4):501-526.
    This paper offers an account of what it is for a physical system to be a computing mechanism—a system that performs computations. A computing mechanism is a mechanism whose function is to generate output strings from input strings and (possibly) internal states, in accordance with a general rule that applies to all relevant strings and depends on the input strings and (possibly) internal states for its application. This account is motivated by reasons endogenous to the philosophy of computing, namely, doing (...)
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  • The computational theory of mind.Steven Horst - 2005 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Over the past thirty years, it is been common to hear the mind likened to a digital computer. This essay is concerned with a particular philosophical view that holds that the mind literally is a digital computer (in a specific sense of “computer” to be developed), and that thought literally is a kind of computation. This view—which will be called the “Computational Theory of Mind” (CTM)—is thus to be distinguished from other and broader attempts to connect the mind with computation, (...)
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  • Content and Its vehicles in connectionist systems.Nicholas Shea - 2007 - Mind and Language 22 (3):246–269.
    This paper advocates explicitness about the type of entity to be considered as content- bearing in connectionist systems; it makes a positive proposal about how vehicles of content should be individuated; and it deploys that proposal to argue in favour of representation in connectionist systems. The proposal is that the vehicles of content in some connectionist systems are clusters in the state space of a hidden layer. Attributing content to such vehicles is required to vindicate the standard explanation for some (...)
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  • Is there a future for AI without representation?Vincent C. Müller - 2007 - Minds and Machines 17 (1):101-115.
    This paper investigates the prospects of Rodney Brooks’ proposal for AI without representation. It turns out that the supposedly characteristic features of “new AI” (embodiment, situatedness, absence of reasoning, and absence of representation) are all present in conventional systems: “New AI” is just like old AI. Brooks proposal boils down to the architectural rejection of central control in intelligent agents—Which, however, turns out to be crucial. Some of more recent cognitive science suggests that we might do well to dispose of (...)
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  • Colour irrealism and the formation of colour concepts.Jonathan Ellis - 2005 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (1):53-73.
    According to colour irrealism, material objects do not have colour; they only appear to have colour. The appeal of this view, prominent among philosophers and scientists alike, stems in large part from the conviction that scientific explanations of colour facts do not ascribe colour to material objects. To explain why objects appear to have colour, for instance, we need only appeal to surface reflectance properties, properties of light, the neurophysiology of observers, etc. Typically attending colour irrealism is the error theory (...)
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  • The phenomenal content of experience.Athanassios Raftopoulos & Vincent C. Müller - 2006 - Mind and Language 21 (2):187-219.
    We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a (...)
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  • (1 other version)Kant and nonconceptual content.Robert Hanna - 2005 - European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2):247-290.
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  • Perception and its objects.Bill Brewer - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 132 (1):87-97.
    Physical objects are such things as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in. therefore expresses a commonsense commitment to physical realism: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone.
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  • The plurality of concepts.Daniel Aaron Weiskopf - 2009 - Synthese 169 (1):145-173.
    Traditionally, theories of concepts in psychology assume that concepts are a single, uniform kind of mental representation. But no single kind of representation can explain all of the empirical data for which concepts are responsible. I argue that the assumption that concepts are uniformly the same kind of mental structure is responsible for these theories’ shortcomings, and outline a pluralist theory of concepts that rejects this assumption. On pluralism, concepts should be thought of as being constituted by multiple representational kinds, (...)
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  • From impossible words to conceptual structure: The role of structure and processes in the lexicon.Kent Johnson - 2004 - Mind and Language 19 (3):334-358.
    The structure of words is often thought to provide important evidence regarding the structure of concepts. At the same time, most contemporary linguists posit a great deal of structure in words. Such a trend makes some atomists about concepts uncomfortable. The details of linguistic methodology undermine several strategies for avoiding positing structure in words. I conclude by arguing that there is insufficient evidence to hold that word-structure bears any interesting relation to the structure of concepts.
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  • Should we trust our intuitions? Deflationary accounts of the analytic data.Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2003 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (3):299-323.
    At least since W. V. O. Quine's famous critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction, philosophers have been deeply divided over whether there are any analytic truths. One line of thought suggests that the simple fact that people have ' intuitions of analyticity' might provide an independent argument for analyticities. If defenders of analyticity can explain these intuitions and opponents cannot, then perhaps there are analyticities after all. We argue that opponents of analyticity have some unexpected resources for explaining these intuitions and (...)
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  • 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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  • Fodor on concepts and Frege puzzles.Murat Aydede - 1998 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (4):289-294.
    ABSTRACT. Fodor characterizes concepts as consisting of two dimensions: one is content, which is purely denotational/broad, the other the Mentalese vehicle bearing that content, which Fodor calls the Mode of Presentation (MOP), understood "syntactically." I argue that, so understood, concepts are not interpersonally sharable; so Fodor's own account violates what he calls the Publicity Constraint in his (1998) book. Furthermore, I argue that Fodor's non-semantic, or "syntactic," solution to Frege cases succumbs to the problem of providing interpersonally applicable functional roles (...)
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  • Concepts and epistemic individuation.Wayne A. Davis - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):290-325.
    Christopher Peacocke has presented an original version of the perennial philosophical thesis that we can gain substantive metaphysical and epistemological insight from an analysis of our concepts. Peacocke's innovation is to look at how concepts are individuated by their possession conditions, which he believes can be specified in terms of conditions in which certain propositions containing those concepts are accepted. The ability to provide such insight is one of Peacocke's major arguments for his theory of concepts. I will critically examine (...)
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  • Mental Representation.David Pitt - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The notion of a "mental representation" is, arguably, in the first instance a theoretical construct of cognitive science. As such, it is a basic concept of the Computational Theory of Mind, according to which cognitive states and processes are constituted by the occurrence, transformation and storage (in the mind/brain) of information-bearing structures (representations) of one kind or another.
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  • Mind as process.Mark H. Bickhard - 2002 - In F.G. Riffert & Marcel Weber (eds.), Searching for New Contrasts. Vienna: Peter Lang. pp. 285-294.
    assumptions about the phenomena of interest with process models. Thus, phlogiston has been replaced by combustion, caloric by random thermal motion, and vital fluid by far- from-equilibrium self-reproducing organizations of process. The most significant exceptions to this historical pattern are found in studies of the mind. Here, substance assumptions are still ubiquitous, ranging from models of representation to those of emotions to personality and psychopathology. Substance assumptions do pernicious damage to our ability to understand such phenomena. In this discussion, I (...)
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  • Intentionality.Pierre Jacob - 2003 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Intentionality is the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. The puzzles of intentionality lie at the interface between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. The word itself, which is of medieval Scholastic origin, was rehabilitated by the philosopher Franz Brentano towards the end of the nineteenth century. ‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher's word. It derives from the Latin word intentio, which in turn derives from the verb (...)
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  • Foundationalism, coherentism, and rule-following skepticism.Henry Jackman - 2003 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 11 (1):25-41.
    Semantic holists view what one's terms mean as function of all of one's usage. Holists will thus be coherentists about semantic justification: showing that one's usage of a term is semantically justified involves showing how it coheres with the rest of one's usage. Semantic atomists, by contrast, understand semantic justification in a foundationalist fashion. Saul Kripke has, on Wittgenstein's behalf, famously argued for a type of skepticism about meaning and semantic justification. However, Kripke's argument has bite only if one understands (...)
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