Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T08:15:44.100Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The theoretical indispensability of concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2010

Daniel A. Weiskopf
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302. [email protected]://www2.gsu.edu/~phldaw/

Abstract

Machery denies the traditional view that concepts are constituents of thoughts, and he more provocatively argues that concepts should be eliminated from our best psychological taxonomy. I argue that the constituency view has much to recommend it (and is presupposed by much of his own theory), and that the evidence gives us grounds for pluralism, rather than eliminativism, about concepts.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Fodor, J. A. (1975) The language of thought. Crowell.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (2008) LOT 2: The language of thought revisited. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machery, E. (2009) Doing without concepts. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weiskopf, D. A. (2009a) Atomism, pluralism, and conceptual content. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79:130–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiskopf, D. A. (2009b) The plurality of concepts. Synthese 169(1):145–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiskopf, D. A. (2010) Concepts and the modularity of thought. Dialectica 64:107–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiskopf, D. A. (forthcoming) The functional unity of special science kinds. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science .Google Scholar