doing without concepts feb 2009

[...]... judgments about the referents of these concepts Theories of concepts attempt to describe the knowledge stored in concepts, the format of concepts, the cognitive processes that use concepts, the acquisition of concepts, and the localization of concepts in the brain By doing so, they can explain the properties of people’s higher cognitive competences Chapter 2 describes what concepts are taken to be in philosophy... theories of concepts have purported to identify the general properties of concepts 1.3.2 What Are the Scientifically Relevant Properties of Concepts? What are psychologists’ generalizations about? In other words, what are the scientifically relevant properties of concepts? Theories of concepts focus on five properties of concepts: (1) the kind of knowledge stored in concepts, (2) the format of concepts, ... Carey has focused on children’s and adults’ concepts of biological entities, including concepts of animals, plants, and biological events such as death or growth.15 The focus here is on the properties that characterize a specific class of concepts the concepts of biological entities Theories of concepts focus neither on specific concepts nor on specific classes of concepts They usually aim at characterizing... USA, June 2003 Contents Introduction 3 1 Concepts in Psychology 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 7 “Concept” in Psychology 7 Evidence for the Existence of Concepts 14 What Is a Psychological Theory of Concepts? 17 Alternative Characterizations of the Notion of Concept Conclusion 29 2 Concepts in Philosophy 21 31 2.1 “Concept” in Philosophy 32 2.2 Concepts in Philosophy versus Concepts in Psychology 34 2.3 How Are... this is strong evidence for the conceptual promiscuity of concepts 1.3 What Is a Psychological Theory of Concepts? Since the 1970s, psychologists have proposed several theories of concepts particularly prototype theories, exemplar theories, theory theories, and neo-empiricist theories (chapter 4) To a large extent, these theories Doing without Concepts 18 give different answers to the same set of questions... 279 220 Doing without Concepts This page intentionally left blank Introduction Once at the center of philosophy, the philosophy of concepts has now been marginalized, maybe because for a few years now, it has been stalled The contrast with the psychology of concepts is stark Psychologists working on categorization, induction, and reasoning have continued developing and refining their theories of concepts, ... naive and deficient answers to the questions of interest in philosophy, I examine them in their own terms, without any preconception about the goals that psychologists attempt to 3 4 Doing without Concepts meet I argue that progress in the psychology of concepts and in the budding neuropsychology of concepts is conditional on psychologists and neuropsychologists eliminating the notion of concept from their... the notion of concept expressed by C (concepts as temporary bodies of knowledge in working memory and concepts as bodies of knowledge under organismic control) Second, I critically discuss two alternatives that, though consistent with C, highlight different aspects of concepts (concepts as constituents of thoughts and concepts as categorization devices) 1.4.1 Concepts as Temporary Bodies of Knowledge... that this notion of concept is not empty In section 1.3, I clarify the nature and goals of the psychological theories of concepts: psychological theories of concepts aim at capturing the general properties of concepts particularly what type of knowledge concepts consist of, how concepts are used in cognitive processes, and what their format is Finally, philosophers of psychology and psychologists themselves... introductory chapters Chapter 1 describes what concepts are taken to be in psychology and identifies the goals of psychological theories of concepts These goals, and only these goals (not the goals that philosophers of concepts attempt to meet), provide the relevant criteria for evaluating psychological theories of concepts I propose that in psychology, concepts are characterized as being those bodies .