Shifting concepts : the philosophy and psychology of conceptual variability /
Marques, Teresa,editor.
Wikforss, Åsa,editor.
Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this0was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. 0This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: Shifting Concepts, Teresa Marques and Åsa Wikforss -- Part 1. How Concepts Shift: Variation Across Individuals, Times, and Contexts : 1. Mapping Thoughts to Words: Cross-Language Differences, Learning, and Communication / Barbara C. Malt -- 2. How to Make Psychological Generalizations When Concepts Differ: A Case Study of Conceptual Development / Gregory L. Murphy -- 3. When does communication succeed? The case of general terms / Peter Pagin -- 4. Investigating Differences in People's Concept Representations / James A. Hampton -- 5. Color Categories in Context / Yasmina Jraissati -- 6. The Myth of the Common-Sense Conception of Colour / Zed Adams and Nat Hansen -- 7. Variation in Natural Kind Concepts / Daniel Cohnitz and Jussi Haukioja -- Part 2. To Shift a Concept: Conceptual Revolution, Amelioration, and Perversion : 8. Conceptual Revolution / Joshua Glasgow -- 9. The Folk Concept of Race / Edouard Machery and Luc Faucher -- 10. On the Conceptual Mismatch Argument: Descriptions, Disagreement, and Amelioration / Esa D az-Le n -- 11. Conceptual Fragmentation and the Use of 'Race' in Scientific Theorizing / Robin O. Andreasen -- 12. How Not to Change the Subject / Sally Haslanger -- 13. Amelioration vs. Perversion / Teresa Marques.
Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this0was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. 0This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change.
Concepts
Concepts