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Concepts and proto-conceptsin cognitive science
Ron ChrisleySackler Centre for Consciousness ScienceCentre for Research in Cognitive Science
School of InformaticsUniversity of Sussex
SweCog Summer School in Cognitive ScienceMarston Hill, August 9th-13th 2010
Overview 1
➢ The concept: The workhorse of orthodox cognitive science
➢ Concepts are constituents of mental content that are:➢ Articulable➢ Recombinable➢ Rational➢ Deployable
➢ Because of these features, concepts present the objective world as the objective world
➢ Often thought to be required for any intentional explanation of cognitive phenomena
2 SweCog Summer School 2010
Overview 2
➢ However, there seem to be mental phenomena not adequately characterized in terms of concepts:1. the fineness of grain of experience2. the incorrigibility of illusion3. non-circularity requirements on a theory of perception4. the graded nature of development and evolution5. commonalities in perception for those who do not share
the same concepts6. the minds of animals and infants7. the context-sensitivity and situatedness of some cognitive
processes8. the phenomenology of non-objectual thought3 SweCog Summer School 2010
Overview 3
➢ Proposal: Employ a notion of non-conceptual content that does not suffer from these limitations
➢ Non-conceptual constituents of content can be called proto-concepts
➢ Challenges for non-conceptual content:➢ Specification➢ Relation between conceptual and non-conceptual
content (McDowell)➢ Conceptual objections (McDowell)➢ Empirical objections (e.g., Clark)
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The limits ofconceptual explanation
➢ However, there seem to be mental phenomena not adequately characterized in terms of concepts:1. the fineness of grain of perceptual experience2. the incorrigibility of illusion3. non-circularity requirements on a theory of perception4. the graded nature of development and evolution5. commonalities in perception for those who do not share
the same concepts6. the minds of animals and infants7. the context-sensitivity and situatedness of some cognitive
processes8. the phenomenology of non-objectual thought
➢ Probably won’t have time to discuss all of these15 SweCog Summer School 2010
Alternative specifications
➢ Therefore, an alternative means of content specification is needed➢ A point not fully appreciated in literature➢ Has restricted non-conceptual content research to
theoretical, general discussions, rather than explanatory applications of particular non-conceptual contents
➢ Alternatives have been proposed by➢ Peacocke (scenarios)➢ Bermudez (augmented success semantics)➢ Chrisley (various, including enactive depictions)
➢ Gives purpose to the debate16 SweCog Summer School 2010
