Stanford Concepts
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What is it?
The Stanford Encyclopedia article on concepts. Giving an overview of issues to do with ontology, structure, empiricism & nativism, the relation between concepts and language, and the validity of conceptual analysis.
Where can it be found?
Margolis, Eric and Stephen Laurence, “Concepts”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2007/entries/concepts/.
How does it fit in?
Mathematical entities are pretty much accepted to be concepts. Thus considerations regarding the ontological status of concepts in general are likely to be of relevance to the realism debate in mathematics.
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Summary
Ontology
Three views:
- Mental representations — thinking as an internal system of representation — psychological states determined in terms of their causal-functional role — some adherents: there exists a set of ‘basic’ representations of which more complex psychological states are composed — language-like syntax — accounts for productivity of thought — ~: possible to have propositional attitudes without having relevant mental representations tokened — ~: can’t translate one’s first language into a prior mental one {[red [If you ever want to go into this objection in detail (but not now): there’s an interesting paper on this by Mark Walker. Jason] ]}
- Abilities — concepts as abilities that are peculiar to cognitive agents (e.g. discrimination) — ~: can’t account for productivity of thought — ~: doesn’t say much about mental processes
- Fregean senses — concepts as abstract objects mediating between thought and language and referents (i.e. they constitute different modes of presentation of the referent). — {[green I’m not all that on top of what these Fregean terms mean. ]} — Peacocke: different mental states can refer to the same concept in different individuals — ~: how do we access these abstract entities? — ~: why can’t senses themselves have different modes of presentation?
Can we adopt some form of pluralism? - i.e. three different types of concepts to correspond to the three views above - ~: generally have broader methodological implications - ~: debate would just shift to existence and nature of different types of concept
Structure
- The classical theory
- concepts composed of simpler concepts that give necessary and sufficient conditions for falling under the concept
- unifies treatment of acquisition, categorisation and reference determination
- closely connected with conceptual analysis
- prob re: explaining experiments in which some things are taken to be more representative than others (fruit e.g.)
- ~: hard to specify definitions for concepts (e.g. JTB account of knowledge)
- Prototype theory
- probabalistic structure: satisfaction of sufficient number of conditions
- ~: only accurate model of quick, unreflective judgements
- prob re: emergent properties of complex concepts
- prob re: complex concepts without prototype structure ata ll
- prototype as just one part of structure? — then what is the structure of the conceptual core?
- Theory theory
- concepts stand in similar relations to terms in sci. theory — does well at explaining reflective categorisation
- prob re: how do different people have the same concepts (because theory theory is holistic)
- prob re: conceptual change in maturation does not match method of theory change in science
- Conceptual atomism
- lexical concepts have no semantic structure — content determined by direct relation with the world rather than with other concepts
- anti-descriptivist: names achieve reference through causal relation with their referents.
- Structural pluralism
- different structures for different explanatory functions?
- why must all concepts have the same sort of structure?
Empiricism and Nativism Are there innate concepts?
- Empiricism
- content of any concept must analysable in terms of perceptual basis
- log. pos. (couched in linguistic terms)
- modified empiricism: emphasise conceptual relations between the conceptula system and perceptual/motor states — impact of body on the mind it contains (Shapiro) — {[green cf subject naturalism here ]}
- Prinz: all concepts copies or combinations of perceptions — prob re: how to account for abstract concepts — indeed, if thoughts lack logical form (as Prinz also holds), how is one to distinguish between logically equivalent thoughts?
- Nativism
Chomsky: language acquisition research points to innate language dispositions — ~: going beyond the data in language acquisition is not an argument for nativism (any induction does this)
Fodor: prob with treating concept learning as hypothesis testing — formulation of hypoth. presupposes concept to be learned — hence only complex concepts can be learned, the rest must be innate
innateness debate as related to genes/environment debate — hence perhaps empiricism and nativism can’t be fully untangled
Concepts and Language
- Concepts without language?
- language necessary for concepts (Davidson) — i.e.: concept of belief is necessary for other concepts and this concept can only be obtained when one is a member of a linguistic community — prob. re: deciphering why the concept of belief is necessary
- studies of animals give strong evidence for nonlinguistic concpetual mental states
- Davidson: interpretation underdetermined by nonlinguistic evidence — but does linguistic evidence overcome this underdetermination?
- animal mental representations as somehow less than conceptual — prob re: how to give principled distinction between animal and human — sci. evidence just doesn’t support any of the current candidates
- Priority between language and concepts?
- concepts prior to natural language: — language as ambiguous where thought is not — language as having to be learned
- some types of thinking do occur in an internal system similar to our natural language: — impairment of some conceptual capacities when linguistic faculties engaged
- Linguistic determinism & relativism
- determinism: particular language forces one to conceptualise in particular ways — ~: original evidence has been shown to be dodgy
- relativism: particular language influences conceptualisation — maybe consider the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis some other time (or in some other lifetime)
Conceptual Analysis
- phil. as the a priori analysis of concepts and matching with our intuitions — often seen as necessary for dealing with ontological reduction
- some naturalistic approaches are opposed to this sort of analysis due to the employment of a priori techniques
- prob re: role of intuitions here - are they really objective? — preliminary experimental evidence would seem to indicate not when comparing Western to East Asian intuitions
{[red Ha! You try to use emphasis for headings without content! Your civilization will not last long, Earthling! (Try “# Empiricism” until I fix this bug.) ]} {[green Note how I have used the power of our Earth logic (i.e. the cunning insertion of text) to overcome the limitations of your alien communication system! ]}
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What do I think? - certainly seems that at least some of our concepts are arrived at in a ‘mental representation’ type way — although not all - if one uses Carnap’s reasoning to remove the ontological question, then one is just left with the structural, innateness, and relation to language questions — structural pluralism seems like a good way to proceed (although a lot of work will be needed to delineate the various conceptual “territories”) — the relation to language question seems to have been resolved in favour of pre-linguistic concepts if the above interpretation of sci. results is accurate - I’ve had some concerns regarding the role of intuitions lurking in the back of my mind for a while now. It’s good to see it brought out into the open and related to empirical findings. — the naturalistic criticism of coneptual analysis I find less pressing: surely there are many ways in which one can be a naturalist and still find a place for a priori reasoning?
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