Chapter

Concepts and Cognitive Science

Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis

L. Introduction: Some Preliminaries Concepts are the most fundamental constnrcts in theories of the mind. Given their importance to all aspects of cognition, ifs no su{prise that concepts raise so many .oitto,rersies in philosophy and cognitive science. These range from the relatively
local Should concepts be thought of as bundles of feafures, or do they embody mental theories?

to the most global Are concepts mental representations, or might they be abstract entities?
Indeed, it's even controversial whether concepts are objects, as oPPosed to cognitive or behavioral abilities of some sort. Because of the scope of the issues at stake, it's inevitable that some disputes arise from radically different views of what a theory of

concepts ought to achieve-differences that can be especially plonounced across discipiinary boundaries. Yet in spite of these differertces, there has been a significant amount of interdisciplinary interaction among theorists working on concepts. In this respect, the theory of concepts is one of the great success stories of cognitive science. Psychologists and linguists have borrowed freely from philosophers in develoPing detailed empirical theories of concepts, drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein's discussions of family resemblance, Frege's distinction between sense and reference, and Kripke's and Putnam's discussions of externalism and essentialism. And piilosophers have found psycJrologists' work on categorization to have powerful implications for a wide r*g" of philosophical debates. The philosopher Stephen Stich (1993) has gone so far as to remark that current empirical models in psychology undermine a traditional approach to philosophy in which philosophers engage in _co:rceptual analyses. As a .*"qrrence of this *ork Stich and others have come to believe !h{ philosophers have to rethink their approach to topics in areas as diverse as the philosophy of mind and ethics. So even if disciplinary boundaries have generated the appearance of dis;oint research, it's hard to deny that significant interaction has taken place. We hope this volume will underscore some of these achievements and- open the way for increased cooperation. In this introduction, we sketch the recent history of theories of concepts. However, our purpose isn't solely one of exposition. We also provide a number of reinteqpretations of what have come to be standard arguments in the field and develop a framework that lends more prominence to neglected areas
This paper was fully collaborative; the order of the authors'narnes is arbihary.

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Concepts and Cognitive

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fured concepts are primitive or atomic. What exactly it means to say that a concept or lacfcs, stmcture is another matter. This brings us to our second preliminary point.
has, Two Models of Conceptual Stntcture

Most theories of concepts treat lexical concepts as structured complexes. This raises the issue of what it is for such representational complexes to have structure. Despite the important role that conceptual structure plays in many debates, there has been little explicit discussion of this question. We discem two importantly different models of stmcture that are irnplicit in these debates. The first view we'll call the Containment Model. On this view, one concept is a structwed complex of other concepts iust in case it literally has those other concepts as proper parts. In this way, a concept C might be composed of the concepts X, Y, *a Z. fnen an occturence of C would necessarily involve an occuffence of X, Y, and Z because X, Y, and Z are contained within C, C couldn't be tokened wiihout X, y, and Z being tokened. For example, the concept DRoppED rHE AccoRDloN couldn't be tokened without AccoRDroN being tokened. As an analogy, you might think of the relation that words bear to phrases and sentences. The word "accordion" is a strucfural element of the sentence 'Tony dropped the accordion" in the sense that it is a proper part of the sentence. Consequently, you can't utter a token of the sentence 'Tony dropped the accordion" without thereby uttering a token of the word
"accordion." The second view, which we'll can the Inferential Model, is rather different. According to this view, one concept is a stmcfured complex of other concepts just in case it stands in a privileged relation to these other concepts, generally, by way of some type of inferential disposition. On this model, even though X, Y, arrd Z may be part of the structure of C, C can still occur without necessitating their occurence. For example, RED might have a structure implicating the concept colo& but on the Inferential Model, one could entertain the concept nEo without having to token the concept coloR. At most, one would have to have certain dispositions linking nno and coloR-for example the disposition to infer X s coLonEp from X s nEp. Thus, for any claim that a concept has such-and-such structure-or such-and-such tVpe of strucfure (see sec. 7)-there will be, in principle, two possible inteqpretations of the daim: one in terms of the Containment Model and one in terrns of the Inferential Model. The signiftcance of these distinctions will become clearer once we present some speciftc theories of concepts. For now we simply want to note that discussions of concepfual strucfure are often based on an implicit commitment to one of these models and th"t a proper evaluation of a theory of concepts may hrrn on which model is adopted.
Concepts as Abstracta os. Concepts as Mental Representations

The third and last preliminary point that we need to discuss concerns a more basic issue-the ontological status of concepts. In accordance with virtually all discussions of concepts in psychology, we will assume that concepts are mental particulars. For examplq your concept cRANDMoTHER is a mental representation of a certain type Perhaps a shructured mental representation in one of the two senses we've isolated. It should be sai4 however, that not all theorists accept as their starting point the thesis that concepts are mental particulars. In philosophy especially it's not uncommon to

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Concepts and Cognitive

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expression "the morning stay'' refers to the object it does because this expression has the sense it does. g. Senses are the indirect referents of erpressions in intmsional conterts Certain

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linguistic contexts (e.g ., "... believes that . . ." and other propositional attitude reports) have distinctive and peorliar semantic properties. Outside of these contexts, one can freely substitute coreferential terms without affecting the truth value of the sentence ("the morning star is bright" + "the evening star is bright"), but within these contexts, the same substifutions are not possible ("Sue believes that the morning star is bright" # "Sue believes that the evening star is bright"1. Frege's explanation of this bype of case is that in such contexts expressions do not refer to their customary referents, but rather to their customary ssrrses. Since the expressions have different customary senses, they actually have different referents in these contexts. Thus Frege is able to maintain the principle that coreferring terms can be substituted one for the other without a .t *gL in truth value, despite what otherwise may have appeared to be a decisive counterexample to the principle.

Frege's semantic theory, and the phenomena he used to motivate it, have generated a great deal of controversy, and they have had an enorrnous influence on the development of semantic theories in philosophy and linguistics. For now, though, the important issue is the ontological stafus of senses. Frege argued that senses, construed in terms of these theoretical roles, cannot be mental entities. Since it's conrmon

in philosophy to hold that concepts just are Fregean senses, it would seem that

Frege's case against mental entities is especially pertinent. The problem, in his view, is that mental entities are subjective, whereas senses are supposed to be obiective. Two people "are not prevented from grasptng the same sense; but they cannot have the same idea" (159211966, p. 60). (Note that for Frege ideas are mental entities.) If this is the argument against the view that concepts are mental representations, however, it isn't the least bit convincing. To see why, one has to be careful about teasing apart several distinctions that can get lumped together as a single contrast between the subjective and the objective. One of these concerns the difference between mental representation+ thoughts, and experiences, on the one han4 and exha-mental entities on the other. In this sensg a stone is objective but a mental representation of a stone is subiective; it's subjective simply because ifs mental. Notice, however, that sublectivity of this kind doesn't preclude the sharing of a mental representation, since two people can have the same type of mental representation. Whaf isn't possible is for two people to have the very same tolcen representation. This brings us to a second subjective-obiective distinction. It can be put this way: Mental reptisentations are subjective in that their tokens are uniquely possessed; they belong to one and only one subject. Their being subiective in this sense, however, doesn't preclude their being shareable in the relevant sense, since, again, two people can have lhe sa*e representation by eac} having tokens of the same type. When someone says that two people have the same concept, there is no need to suppose that she is saying that they both possess the same token concept. It would make as much sense to say that two people cannot utter the same sentence because they cannot both produce the same token sentence. Clearly what matters for being able to utter the same sentence, or entertain the same concept, is being able to have tokens of the same type. So while mental representations are subiective in the two senses

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Concepts and Cognitive

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Theory holds that most concepts-especially lexical concepts-have deffnitional skucfure. What this means is that mo.st concepts encode necessary and sufficient conditions for their own application.s Considet for examplq the concept BAcHELoR. According to the Classical Theory, we can think of this concept as a complex mental representation that speciftes necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a bachelor. So BACHELoR might be composed of a set of representations such as Is Nor MARRTED, rs MAIE, and s ANr ADULT. Each of these components specifies a condition that something must meet in order to be a bacJrelor, and anything that satisftes them all thereby cowrts as a bacJrelor. These components, or feafures, yield a semantic inteqpretation for the complex representation in accordance with the principles of a
compositional semantics. T[is conception of concepts has a long history in philosophy. The seventeenthcentury philosopher Iohn Locke seems to be assuming u *t"tsion of the Classical Theory when he gives his account of the concepts strN and cor^o (169A11975, pp. 2gS-299 and p. 317, respectively):

it, but an aggregate of those several simple ldeas, having a constant regular motion, at a certain distance Bright, Hot, Roundish, from us, an4 perhaps, some other....
[TJhe ldea of the Sun, What is

[Tlhe greatest part of the ldeas, that make our complex ldea of Gold, are Yellowness, great Weight, Ductility, Fusibility, and Solubility, in Aquo Regia, etc. all united together in an unknown Substratum ...e

On the Classical Theory, most concepts-including most lexical concepts-are complex representations that are composed of structurally simpler representations.
What's more, it's nafural to construe their structure in accordance with the Containment Model, where the components of a complex concept are among its ProPer parts.lo Some of these components may themselves be complex, as in the case of BACFTELoR. But evenhrally one reaches a level of primitive representations, which are undeftned. Traditionally, these prir.nitive representations have been taken to be sensory or perceptual in character, along broadly empiricist lines. It is, of course, an oversimplification to speak of the Classical Theory of concepts, as though there were just a single, unitary theory to which all classical theorists subscribe. In redity, there is a diverse family of theories centered around the idea that
S. By -application" we mean a semantic relatioru that is, a concept encodes the conditions that are singly necessary and lointly sufficient for something to bi in its extension Another sense of the term is to indicate a psychologrcal process in whicJr an object is judged to fall under a concept. We'll try to avoid this ambigurty by always using "application" in the semantic sense, rrrless the context makes it very clear that the psychological sense is intended. Notice, then, that in the ftrst instance we have characterized the Classical tl,uory in semantic terms. This doesrt't meaR however, that the theory is devoid of psychological import See the discussion of concept acguisition and categorization, below. 9. Locket views about natural kind concepts are complicated by the fact that he took nafural kinds to have both a nominal and a real essence. For Locke, the real essence of a kind like gold isn't known, but the nominal essence ir, *d must be, in order to possess the corresporrding concept. Arguably, howevet he takes the nominal essence to give necessary and suffcient conditions for the application of a kind concepb since he holds that the nominal essence is deftned relative to the real essence in such a way that the two kack
one another.

10. It's naturat, but not mandatory. Alternatively, one could think of a classically shuctured concept as a node that stands in inferential relations to its deffning features. The advantage of the Containment Model is that it makes especially dear which associated concepts are its defining features and which are incidental.

s'r

arp,rpur il,am,aurnro^

luasard"n'ffi:ffiHrff#,1$iil,"J'il;;"":"#1ff1]['"1;l;if"?frtllT

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'(g-T,g'dd'6g6tlZtOD sellr/n derue3 ,,'e8en8us-I to qsfpuy per8o1

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pf

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,o

'suual pnldarrad ro &oeuas u1 'agpsod tolluelpde 4aql rot suolllpuot lueplttns pue fressaru 'dsa) qdaruot tsohl 1as s aporlp lsrn suoquluasardar Fgaru parnpuls a.re (qdaeuor JE lxq

tuoaq1

prFsal)

aLLI

r xog 'suorlplqoru pnuqsqns E! pue froa{I lprlssplJ aql lno qsag o1 sdlaq lI aruls 'slunolle asa{l /naller ,$npq ilp aM '(ItZ raldeqrJ 086I 'lB p 'V 't 'ropog aas) sluau -lnuwor tlssq EI urort flparp /vlou tPlt{r'lt Jo IIP 'uollEuluuapP aruararar Pue 'luaur lplua rpfpue 'uollprggsnf epualqda 'uo11uz1ro8a1er 'uo111qnbee ldaeuor ro slunoJre pagFrn SuJrago 'sarrnosar froleueldxa lryrarviod seq /fuoaql aql lpre8ar q81q qrns ul ppq uaaq froaql lprtsspl3 aql sprl fqm'r(Soloqrfsd ul so/6r aql pue '{qdosopqd ug s0g6l aql Ulun l,uaram snlels sll ol sa8ualpqe snolras ls4J aql pul/ ,r'([aurnlon brul ul U ralduqrl nil o1eld aas) ,qpbllue ol 1rpq alBP froaql aql to spadsy 'froaql lprlssul3 aql to ailpuFuopard prlrolsFl aql alulsrelo ol lpr.grtp aq ppo/t ll
'saltrradord frosuas Sulssardxa sarqpaJ Jo pasodruoe flaqerullp are strdaruoe

p{l /nall pppldula plqs aql pauopwqe a^sq slsFoaql prlsspp luarar fuu;41 :aar8esgp slsFoaql prlsselr qrltl&t uo lulod auo Fn[
qdacuor ro

s1

uoguau oI 'saruaragp rp{l ;o fueu urort Aellre spe4sq" l?rll lunoJts pazllBapl uB froaql Frlssel3 aql ilpr a/n lEqM 'arnlf,ruls lpuolllugap a sq sqdaruor
s1p8rery pue

aruarns-I

OI

Concepts and Cognitive

Science

11

In the case of many words, speciftcally in the case of the overwhelming maiority of scientiftc words, it is possible to specify their meaning by reduction to oih"t words ("constitution " definition). E.g- "'arthropodes' are animals with segmented bodies and jointed legs." ... In this way every word of the language is ieduced to other words and ftn"lly to the words which occur in the so-called "observation sentences" or "protocol sentences-"l2

In the face of repeated failures to analyze everyday concepts in terms of a purely sensory base, contemporary theorists have often relaxed the strong empiricist assumpti,on that all simple concepts must be sensory. I"I example-, Eve Clark (1973') sees the process of acquiring the meaning of a word like 'trother" as comPrising several stlges where semantic components get added to an initial rePresentation. In the earliest stage the representation consists of only two components: *Manr, -ADULr.

In

*necpnocar. is added.

subsequ"ni stages, -ADULT

is changed to tqourr, *slsuNc is added, and In this way, a representation for "brothey'' is gradually con-

structed from its constifuent representations, which collectively provide a definition of the word and distinguish it from related words, such as 'boy." Though these components may not be primitive Clark isn't comrnitted to the idea that further decomposition will always lead to purely sensory congepts. In fact, she says that many words, especially relational terms, require possibly irreducible features that encode "function"l, ,o.ial, or cultural factors" (p. 106). Similarly, the linguist and philosopher Ienold Katzwrites (J:972 [chapter 4 in this volume], P- 4O),

-chair- can be decomposed into a set of concepts which tTlhe English noun might be represented by the semantic markers in (a.10): (4.10)
oBIECT,

ftryscAL NoN-uvING,

ARTIFACT, FURNITURE, PoRTABIJ, SoMETIIING

wlrH

LEGS, SOMETHING WITH

A BACK, SOMETHING WITH A SEAT, SEAT FOR ONE.

He adds that these semantic markers-or features-reguire further analysis, but, like Clark, he isn't committed to a reduction that yields a purely sensory base. No doubt, a component-by-component model of concept acquisition is compellilg even when it is debached from its empiricist roots. The simplicity and Power of the model provides considerable motivation for pursuing the Classical Theory. Categorizntion The Classical Theory offers an equally compelling model of categorization (i.e., the application of a concept, in the psychological sose see note S). In fact, the model of categorization is just the ontogeny run backwards; that is, something is judged to fall under a concept iust in case it is judged to fall under the features that .o*pote the concept. So, something might be categorized as falling under the concept cHArR by noting that it has a seat, ba& legs, and so on. Categorization on this model is basically a process of checking to see if the features that are part of a concept are satisfted by ihe item being categorized. As wilh th-" g"t eral_model of .ot."pt acquisition, this model of categorization is powerful and infuitively appealing, and it's a natural extension of the Classical Theory.
fZ. Thnoughout we'll ignore certain differences between language and thought, allorring daims about words to stand in for daims about concepts. Carnay's account is about the semantics of linguistic items but otherwise is a useful and explicit version of the Classical'lheory.

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(err)
rrrory sa)uaraJul aql Jo ,QPIP^ aql to uolleuuldxa aru?s aql q?nul saa18 (Zt eD zp>l 's1sr(pue JaPun're1nu1s

aq ol 1no tunl (f) pue (g) snql'uo oj pup'oxluuvlarMl 'Nvm sldaruor eql salerqdr4 luql ernpruls Fuolltugap surl uoritrrrvs trdaruor aql lzril SupupP ,tq '(s) Sulssassu ul PFolvl

aql q {ool l,upaiu auo dqrvr st4eldxa froaql PlIssBI) aql 'fpn1s pcfolopos B -oP ol sstl auo JI sB lou s,ll 'uatu arp srolaqf,?q leql ,lolaql? q,, lo ttryrearu aql to iled sl ll lerll pe; a{l fq paaluBren8 ag ol sruaas lnq parror fpo lou q (S) ul aruaraJu! aqJ.
'trelu P q qlruS oS 'rolaq?Eq P q

qlnus

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,,'uplrl Palrruurun, 'flaureu '(I) u1 aseqd fa1 aql ;o Supreau ag ol 1ruq arerl ol sruaas aaluerenS q$ 'raAoaro;41 'aspuard ol sruaas usru B sl tllFu5 ptll uolsnPuor ag '(Z) $l$m '(r) uI aqt r({ plaltnrenS

pg

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q qlFus (z) tllltus (f)

:(u) Pus

(f) ul saruaraJul aql uaamlaq aruarafllp +rurgptls e sl alag dpanruul 'satuaraln leuaurouaqd rrluaras q e9"qf rgfpue Jo flalren e upldxa ol dl[qe sll {ppadsa t11fr1mty Wa nWtlnryuv Isrlssul) arn rot uorl?Anoru luuilodul raqlouv satuanlul
ro Jo sldaeuoe ,,pJparoaql,, aq1 Supnpyl-sldaeuor Pale-rllduroe -aJuaps rot uoll?rglpnf 1eql q lFsar ajl 'f,llaualqordun aQ -ol pa-soddns s! s?rqua-t a^H -Fiqra s,firuo" e rc! anparord uoperggan aql 'salpadord rfuosuas ssardxa ldaeuoe qr?a to sluaqllsuor alauFln aql leql PaumssP uauo s,ll atuls Puv JIa't^ sP PagsllBs
s1

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e JI

rrrpfa*i rq

aSeisBd. ra8rel e

lo "r"qpagsllBs a.rp quauodtuor Surugap sll raqlaq/u EqnanrrlapP fq ldaruor ual18 p rapun IpJ ol uall ue Suupl q peggsnf aq Ppor auo letll sl EaPI a{I .uollprggsnf cpuafslda;o froaql B se ltuld plnor ll alor aql pazlseqdura osle a Brl prlisu13 aql to salBrolp? pegqdosopd to raqumu V uouat{1lst I tynpldT

&6qf

slp8rery pus aouams'I

ZT

Concepts and Cognitive Science

to (4.t4)-(4.2I)

(4.14) (4.16)

There is a physical object in the room.

(4.1,51 There is something nonliving in the room.

There is an artifact in the room.

(4.T7) There is a piece of furniture in the room. (4.1S) There is something portable in the room. (4.19) There is something having legs in the room.

@.2q (4.2I)

There is something with a back in the room.

There is a seat for one person in the room.

According to Katz, all of these inferences are to be explained by reference to the concept cHArR and its definitioo given above as (4.10). The deftnition is supposed to be tnderstood in Kantian terms, by supposing that the one concept contains within it the other concepts that secure the inferences-ARTrFAcr, pHysrcAl o& rECr, and so on. The only difference then between (1) and (3), or (1) and the inferences from (4.13) to (4.14-4.2!'), is that the logical form of (f) is manifest, whereas the forms underlying the other inferences are hidden.r3
Refrmce Determination One of the most important properties of concepts is that they are semantically evaluable. A thought may be true or fdse, depending on how things are with that portion of the world which the thought is about. In like fashion, an item may fall under a concept or not, depending on the concept's referential properties. When someone categorizes something as a bir4 for example she may or may not be right. This is perhaps the most basic feature of what is called the normatioity of meafting. lust because she applies the concept srRp to the item (in the sense that she judges it to be a bird) doesn't mean that the concept truly applies to the item (in the sense that the item is in the extension of the concept nno). The referential properties of a concept are among its most essential properties. When one acquires the concept RoBrN, doing so crucially involves acquiring a concept that refers to robins. And when one draws an inference from RoBrN to n A BrRD, or rs AN Ar{rMAr, one draws an inference about robins. This isn't to say that reference is sufficient to distinguish behnreen concepts. rRrANcr,rrrR and rmnrrner refer to exactly the sirme dass of mathematical objects, yet they are different concepts for all that. And in Plato's time one might have believed that prEry and AcrrNG rN A wAy rHAr rs pLE^&srNG ro rHE GoDs are coextensive-perhaps even necessarily coextensive-but that doesn't make them the same concept. Thus Plato can sensibly ask whether an action is pious because it is pleasing to the gods or whether it is pleasing to the gods because it is pious (19SI). That concepts have referential properties is a truism, but an important truism. A clear desiderat"* on a theory of coniepts is that it should account for, or at least be
13. If (1) is considered to be a logicd truttr" then much the same point can be put by saying that the Classiel Theory explains the other inferences by reducing informal validity to logical necessity.

.augap ol pu?q fpuraqxa are sldaeuor pg sl 'taaairaog 'uolpas pasard aql ro tuaJuoJ aq1 'atuapadxa pailu4l rno uaag8 ,op erl s? q?nru sE l ouD! uH, a*r luorl qlp s! ruaJuo) s,flsruoq3 {996I) dlsuoqS uPoN ltq auztr aru"s aql ua !8 sl qrlq anss! us tilpr pasryuor aq l,uPpotls tualqord sppld [tt:l a^ l?tlM 'SI

pufl luapuadaptr;-pu.nu e sl p4q lou rc Jaqpqru spptl uo1lrupstp sp11 '8uor^ aru nor{ sar4lautos 'P4q e sl 8u1q1auos lsrn lyFll nof uaq,rn ry8p are nof saruparuos 'quau8pnl aqqt Pue arul uaart4ag aruara#lP aql q uo Flsu! ol lu?,r a { lEql uollrullslp q?rr arf,L '$aryor luasard aql q parqdqru are faql lnq tqdosolH{ u! sansq IEFra oquor pue dop oqul de1 sruatuot s,goptrape( 'il Sqzrynldaruor;o s[e,n rno to ,{puapuad -apq fprJgn splxa ppo^ aql qrlq^ o1 Sr4proris auo 's4s/tqdqau parro)tt! tt? ol PaH are suollou paFpr raldapl
raqlo pue gru1 pup aruaraJar 1afl $fuFll aq truql s1 uograloo ttt?tu s,ttoPua)P?f 'fiatunlo s$ll ul 91 6961l pu? (166I) gogra:1ret ,Qf ^8'a 'aag'aar8esro s&rqlo 1nq tunlerapfap rpaP " sl slt1l leg fes

-aqdaqrorssa,r',*,,,,0:""T;Tff"X"f, Jlff :ff

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aM

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frosuas to la^al aql ol nsop fue sn SuJrq a)po"I l(q palsa88ns auo aql sP qJns suoglu -Uap lprll realr uala l,usl ll '(196I 'V '[ topog {aumloa sFn ul 91 raldYqrl g6l''le la Suoqsuuy) paruasqo aAEq sroqlne lpralas sV'sluauoduroo rfuosuas 1dur1s olu! u/vroP ldaruor aql Suuearq 'slsl(leue aql aplduror ol Mor.l sttolaqo fiq flu sl ll 'flaleuniloJun
'Jlastunr ol lno a{pul ol alqs aq lnq loutrBr a{ ?ps uaaq sBq lPq/Yr luoJ' 'tPFlrvl lauo xaldulor sFIl oluJ sao8 treql 'aepl aldrurs repDgred frana to uolleraurnua alnulru arotu p ql!^ uIH alqnorl o|_tapeax fut ol ssausnolPel a lsuaJJo trE aq |nq lou Plnor ll puv $aaf[ a1du4s;o dn aperu sl lI let{l '^ aqs o1 q8noua sl PIes a Eq I lBt{M :aft7 s IIpr arn,'aapl xalduror 1urfl ;o qsfpuy aql q DqlrEJ fue o8 1ou Paau 1 rygl I '(ggt'd1 sppe ag

ro uogpuusrp fq raqla8ol 1nd suSF asoql 'V 'svdpl asog ;o suSrs a{l sPro^a asoql 'E 'raryadg aqt to pqru aql v saapl ulEra) 'z 'sPunos alPImHrY 'I

'raleadg aql to pu$r aql

q are 'ro; pusls daql *tH

aql lptfl aslmraqlo 'uoJ1e8au

se/uasap op

ppor{s sluauodruor srr lpq' to q4ills s saAJB 'ur rrrffir"it'HtrJJffrfi';1ffi"1 'sernlrlrls ppHdrua WFn aJrrpproJJp u! suual rtrosuas ro pnldarrad q paqJnor ag ol a Eq faql JI dppadsa ,ltq aruor ol lprrgtlp z(geuoqdarxa uaaord a^pq suolllu -ga6 'suopprsep ,tup l,uare fldrugs ara{l 'strdaruoJ lsolu rot 'letil s1 froaql prlsselJ aql lsule8e paplal uaaq seq 1eql rualqord tlspq lsoru aql sdeqra; s{ilelqotd 1oyld 'froaql lsrlsssl) aql FutpSu paspr .)|ro/r^ ol aPPru aq uaaq e^Bq |gql surslrllFr rrlBru aql to xls ls lool il,aM l,uPr /troaql lprlssBl) aql suollrerllp sno!^qo sll to aqgds q l?ql 1aa; fueru pue 'urslrllpr asualul ol papalqns ueaq seg froaql aql taaaaroq 'sreaf luarar uI 'uogeraP1suor snolras ol sasluord froaql lerlsselJ aql s" qrnul sp op tIEr lptll froa{l ,fuV suouu{ag uo4 pe4ey eql 'T'T
'Jaraod fropueldxa s,froaqg prIssBI) aql sagprn lpq^^ s! uoppuruualap atuararar to lunorru sll 'ldaruor E Jo a)uaraJar aql saunurapp letn arnpn4s puoglultap aql ,o suual u! paulpldxa ilp eJE uo os pus 'uoprzpoSaler 'uolltsmbre ldaruo) 'suollel$our

raqlo s,froaq; prlssplJ atfi {lFa saqsaru 1; fplp rvrotl sl lunorre sltn Jo padde aql 'saporua arnpruls sll lern suollrpuor a{l f;sqes lutll s8urql asoql 1sn[ sluasardar ldaruor ? 'sl lpr{I 'uollnuap sll f;spes lprll s8m4 asog ol srarar ldaruol e 'r(loaql p)lss"l) aql ol SurprorrV rr'sldaruor to salpadord Flluara;ar a{l 'tllp a[Qgedtuor
slptrery
puP

aruarnu'I

VI

Concepts and Cognitive

Science

15

concepts than the concept under analysis. Are the concepts snnercrn, AFFIRMATIoN, NEGArroN, or STANDTNG FoR really any closer to the sensory level than the concept uE.16 Even putting aside the empiricist shictures, however, there are few, if any, examples of deftnitions that are uncontroversial. Some of the most intensively sfudied concepts are those connected to the cenhal topics of philosophy. Following Plato, many philosophers have hied to provide definitions for concepts like xr'rowrnDcE, IUs

rrcq

BEAUTv. Though much of interest has come from these deftnitions have resulted. attempts, no convincing One of the more promising candidates has been the traditional account of KNot^rLEDGE as IUsrrFrED rRr,rE BEUEF. But even this account is now widely thought to be inadequate, in particular, because of Gettier examples (named after Edmund Gettier who ftrst put forward an example of this kind in his 1963 paper "Is |ustified True Belief Knowledge?"). Here is a sample Gettier case (Dancy 1985, p. 25):

cooDNEss, rRUrH,

and

Henry is watching the television on a fune afternoon. It is Wimbledon men's finals duy, and the television shows McEnroe beating Connors; the score is two sets to none and match point to McEnroe in the third. McEnroe wins the point. Henry believes justifiably that

I 2

I have just seen McEnroe win this year's Wimbledon ftnal.

and reasonably infers that

McEnroe is this year's Wimbledon champion.

Actually, however, the carireras at Wimbledon have ceased to function, and the television is showing a recordi.g of last year's matc}. But while it does so McEnroe is in the process of repeating last yeay's slaughter. So Henry's belief Z is true, and surely he is iustifred in believing 2. But we would hardly allow that
Henry knows 2.

Notice that the signiftcance of the example is that each condition in the proposed analysis of rNowr..EDGE is satisfted yet, intuitively, we all know that this isn't a case of knowledgu. Philosophers concemed with the nature of xr.rowrocn have responded in a variety of ways, usually by supplementing the analysis with further conditions (see D"ncy 1985 for discussion). One thing is clear, though: Despite a tremendous amount of activity over a long period of time no uncontroversial deftnition of
KNowLEDGT

has emerged.

Nor is the situation conftned to concepts of independent philosophical interest.

Ordinary concepts have resisted attempts at deftnition as well. Wittgenstein (1953/ 1955). famously argues that the concept cAME cannot be defrned. His argument consists of a series of plausible stabs at deftnition, followed by clear counterexamples (see the excerpt reprinted as chapter 6 in this volume). For instance, he considers and rejects the proposal that a game must be an activity that involves competition
(counterexample a card game such as patience or solitaire), or that a game must involve winning or losing (counterexample throwing a ball against a wall and
catching it).
seem to involve functional elements that can't be eliminated (e.g., chairs that they are designed or used to be sat upon). These predude a deftnition in purely sensory terms. Cf. Clark (1973), quoted above, and Miller and Iohnson-Laird (1976).

16. Arelated point is that many concepts

it may be essential to

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science !7

The Problem of Psychological Reality A related difficulty for the Classical Theory is that, even in cases where sample deftnitions of concepts are granted for the pu{pose of argument, defrnitional strucfure seems psychologically irrelevant. The problem is that definitional structure fails to turn up in a variety of experimental contexts where one would expect it to. In particular, the relative psychological complexity of lexical concepts doesn't seem to depend on their relative deftnitional complexity.le Consider the following example of an experiment by Walter Kintsch, which has been used to try to locate the effects of concepfual complexity in lexical concepts (reported in Kintsch !974, pp.230-2317.20 It is based on a phoneme-monitoring task originally developed by D. f. Foss, where subjects are given two concurrent tasks. They are asked to listen to a sentence for comprehension and at the same time for the occurrence of a given phoneme. When they hear the phoneme, they are to indicate its occurrence as quickly as they can, perhaps by pressing a button. To ensure that they continue to perform both tasks and that they don't just listen for the phoneme, subjects are asked to repeat the sentence or to produce a new sentence that is related to the given sentence in some sensible way. In Foss's original study, the critical phoneme occurred either directly after a high-frequency word or directly after a low-frequency word. He found that reaction time for identifying the phoneme corelated with the frequency of the preceding word. Phoneme detection was quicker after high-frequency words, slower after lowfrequency words (Foss 1969). The natural and by now standard explanation is that a greater processing load is introduced by low-frequency words, slowing subjects' response to the critical phoneme. Kintsc} adopted this method but changed the manipulated variable from word frequency to definitional complexity. He compared subjects' reaction times for identifying the same phoneme in the same position in pairs of sentences that were alike apart from this difference In one sentence the phoneme occured after a word that, under typical deftnitional accounts, is more complex than the corresponding word in the other sentence. The stimuli were controlled for frequency, and Kintsch used a variety of nouns and verbs, including the mainstay of definitional accounts, the causatives. For example, consider the following pair of sentences:

(1) (2)

The doctor was conoinced cnly by his visitor's pallor. The story was belieoed gnly by the most gullible listeners.2r

This ftrst test word ("convince") is, by hypothesis, more complex than the second ('telieve"), since on most accounts the ffrst is analyzed in terms of the second. That is, "convince" is thought to mean cause to belieoe, so that cohMNcE would have BEuEVE
as a constituent.

Kintsch found that in pairs of sentences like these the speed at which the critical phoneme is recognized is unaffected by which of the two test words precedes it. So
19. The reason the focus has been on lexical concepts is that there is little doubt that the psyehological complexity associated with a phrase exceeds the psychological complexity associated with one of its constituents. In other words, the psychological reality of deftnitions at the level of phnases isn t in dispute. 20. For related experiments and disctrssion, see I.A Fodor et al. (I9S0 [chapter 21 in this volumeD, and I. D.
Fodor et al (1975). 21. Italics indicate the words whose relative complexity is to be tested; underlines indicate the phoneme to
be detected.

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aruarne1 gI

Concepts and Cognitive

Science

19

spiders are artluopods one need only verify that spiders are animals, have jointed legs, segmented bodies, and so on. The theory that analytic statements are tautologies also helped the positivists in addressing a long-standing difficulty for empiricism, namely, how to account for the fact that people are capable of a priori knowledg" of factual matters even though, according to empiricism, all knowledge is rooted in experience. Mathematics and

logic in particular, have always been sfumbling blocJcs for empiricism. The positivists' solution was to claim that logical and mathematical statements are analytic. Since they also held that analyticities are tautologie+ they were able to claim that we can know a priori the truths of logic and mathematics because, in doing so, we don't really obtain knowledge of the rvorld (see, e.g., Ayer 194611952; Hahn 193311959). As is clear from this brief account of the role of analyticity in logical positivism, the positivists' program was driven by epistemological considerations. The problem was, assuming broadly empiricist principles, how to explain our a priori knowledg" and how to account for our ability to know and speak of scientific truths that aren't directly observable. Considering the vast range of scientiftc claims-that atoms are composed of protons, neuhons, and elechons, that the universe originated from a that all animals on Earth descended from cosmic explosion 10 to 2O billion years is clear that"Eo, positivists' program had huly enonnous the a common ancestor, etc.-it
scope and ambition.

Quine's attack on the notion of analyticity has several components. Perhaps the most influential strand in Quine's critique is his observation, following Pierre Duhem, that confirmation is inherently holistic, that, as he puts it, individual statements are never conftrmed in isolation. As a consequence, one can't say in advance of empirical inquiry what would conftrm a particularstatement. This is partly because cotrfitm"tion involves global properties, such as considerations of simplicity, conseryatism, overall coherence, and so on. But it's also because conftrmation takes place against the background of auxiliary hypotheses, and that, given the available evidencg one isn't forced to accept, or reiect, a partictrlar statement or theory so long as one is willing to make appropriate adjustments to the auxiliaries. On Quine's reading of science, no statement has an isolatable set of conftrmation conditions that can be established a priori, and, in principle there is no guarantee that any statement is immune to revision. Some examples may help to darifu these points and ground the discussion. Consider the case of Newton's theory of gravitatioo which was confirmed by a variety of disparate and (on a priori grounds) unexpected sources of evidence, suclr as obseryations of the moons of |upiter, the phases of Venus, and the ocean tides. Similarly, part of the conftrmation of Darwin's theory of evolution is owing to the development of plate tectonics, which allows for past geographical continuities between regions which today are separated by oceans. This sarne case illustrates the dependency of conftrmation on auxiliary hypotheses. Without plate tectonics, Darwin's theory would face inexplicable data. A more striking case of dependency on auxiliary hypotheses comes from an early iugument against the Copernican system that cited the absence of annual parallax of the fixed stars. Notice that for the argument to worh one has to assume that the stars are relatively close to the Earth. Change the assumption and there is no incompatibility between the Earth's movement and the failure to observe parallax. There are also more mundane cases where auxiliary hypotheses account for recdcitrant data for instance, when college sfudents attempt

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ranted. Its appeal may stem from payrng too much attention to a limited range of examples. It may be that the cases Putnam and others have discussed are simply misleading; perhaps the concepts for the kinds in science are special. This would still leave us with thousands of other concepts. Consider, for example, the concept KILL. What surrounding facts could force one to revise the belief that killings result in death? Take someone who is honest and sincerely claims that although he killed his father, his father isn't dead or dying. No matter what the surrounding facts, isn't the plausible thing to say that the person is using the words "kill" and "dead" with anomalous meanings? At any rate, one doesn't want to preiudge cases like this on the grounds that other cases allow for rvisions without changes in meaning. In the ftrst instance, Quine's critique of analyticity turns out to be a critique of the role of the Classical Theory in theories of justification, at least of the sort that the positivists imagined. To the extent that his arguments are relevant to the more genlrd issue of analyticity, thafs because the potential revisability of a statement shows that it isn't analytic; and many philosophers hold that this potential spans the entire language. Whether they are right, however, is an empirical question. So the issue of what analyticities there are turns on a variety of unresolved empirical matters.

In the t97ils Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam both against desniptioist views of the meaning of proper advanced important arguments names and nafural kind terms (Kripke 19721T980; Putnam t97O [chapter 7 in this volumel, 1975).23 (Roughly, a descriptivist view is one according to which, in order to be linguistically competent with a term, one must know a description that counts as the *"*ing of tL" i"rtr, and picks out its referent.) ff correct, these arguments would apparently undermine the Classical Theory, which is, in effect, descriptivism applied to concepts.2a lGipke and Putnam also sketched the outlines of an alternative positive account of the meaning of such terms, which, Iike their critical discussions, has been extremely influential in philosophy. Iftipke and Putnam offer at least three different types of arguments that are relevant to the evaluation of the Classical Theory. The frst is an argument from error. It seems that we can possess a concept in spite of being mistaken about the properties that we take its instances to have. Consider, for example, the concept of a disease, like *,reu-pox. People used to believe that diseases like smallpox were the effects of evil spirits or divine retribution. If any physical account was offered, it was that these diseases were the result of "bad blood." Today, however, we believe that such people were totally mistaken about the nature of smallpox and other diseases. Sayrng this, however, presupposes that their concept, sMAlrpox, was about the same disease that our concept is about. They were mistaken because the disease that their concept referred to-smallpox-is very different in nature than they had supposed. Presumably, then, their most fundamental beliefs about smallpox couldn't have been part of a definition of the concept. For if they had been, then these people wouldn't have been wrong about smallpox; rather they would have been thinking and speukit g
The Problem of lgnorance and
23. For arguments that similar considerations apply

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volume}.

concepts. For an interesting discussion of how these arguments relate to the psychology of concepts, see Rey (19S3 [chapter 12 in this

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true essence. They believe that humans were created by deity, and that they have " an eternal life. Others believe that human beings are nothing but complex collections of physical partides, that they are the result of wholly physical processes, and that they have short, frnite lives. And of course there are other views of humans as well.2s Such beliefs about humans are held with deep conviction and are just the sort that one would expect to form part of a classical definition of HTJMAN BETNG. But presumably, at least one of these groups of people is gravely mistakery notice that people from these different groups could-and do-argue about who is right. How, then, is the reference of a concept to be ftxed if not by * internalized definition? The Kripkefutnam alternative was originally put forward in the context of a theory of nafural langu ?ge, but the picfure can be extended to internal representations, with some adjustmentp. Their model is that a natural kind term exhibits a causal-historical relation to a kind and that the term refers to all and only members of the kind. In the present case, the assumption is that human bt ng constifutes a kind and that, having introduced the term and having used it in (causal-historical) corurection with humans, the term refers to all and only humans, regardless of what the people using it believe.26 This theory isn't without its problems, but for present pu{poses it pays to see how it conhasts with the Classical Theory.z7 One way to put the difference between the Kripke/Putnam account and the Classical Theory is that the Classical Theory looks to internal, psychological facts to account for reference, whereas the Kripke/Putnam account looks to external facts, especially facts about the nature of the paradigmatic examples to which a term has been historically applied. Thus much of the interest in Kripke's and Putnam's work is that it cdls into question the idea that we have internally represented necessary and sufficient conditions that determine the extension of
a concept.

Their arguments are similar in spirit to ones that came up in the discussion of analyticity. Here, too, classical theorists might question the scope of the objection. And, in fact, it does remain to be seen how far the Kripke/Putnam arguments for an extemalist semantics can be extended. Even among the most ardent supporters of
externalism, there is tremendous controversy whether the same treatment can extend beyond names and nafural kind terms.

The Problem of Conceptwl Fuzziness Another ditriculty often raised against the Classical Theory is that many concepts appear to be "htzzy" or inexact. For instance, Douglas Medin remarks that "the classical view implies a procedure for unambiguously determining category membership; that is, check for defining features." Yet, he adds, "there are nrunerous cases in which it is not clear whether an example belongs to a category" (Medin !989, p. t47O). Are caqpets furnihrre? One often buys carpet25. Tomention just one, ftmy people believe in reincarnation. Presumably, they take human beings to be something like transient stages of a life that includes stages in other organisms. It's also worth noting that past theoretical accounts of the nature of humans have been flawed. For example neither "featherless biped' nor "rational animal" is sufficiently restrictive. 26. Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny have done the most to develop the theory. See esp. Devitt (fggr) and Devitt and Sterelny (t9s7r. 27. \'he most serious of these problems has come to be known as the Qtn hoblcm, tllrtt is, how to account for the fact that a word or concept has a determinate reference, despite being causally related to multiple kinds. For example, what accounts for the fact that cer refers to cats and not to mammals, living things, or material objects? If the concept is causally related to cats, then it is automatically causally related to these other kinds too. For discussioru see Devitt and Sterelny (1987).

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tr,uaru
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aruamrl vZ,

Concepts and Cognitive Science

Table I.L

25

Typicality rating on a scale of (with I being highest) Apple

Plum
Pineapple
1.3

t-r

2.3 2.3 2.3 4.7 6.2

Shawberry Fig

Olive

Table 1.2 Bird

Flies Sings yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Chicken

no no
yes

yes

no no no
yes

lays eggs
Is small
Nests in trees
Eats insects

no
no no

no

properties occurred in many of the lists that went with a category, others occurred ler" frequently. What Rosch and Mervis found was that independent measures of

typicality predict the distribution of properties that occur in such lists. An exemplar is judged to be typical to the extent that its properties are held to be comlnon among
other exemplars of the same superordinate category.3o For instance, robins are taken to have many of the properties that other birds are taken to have, and coffespondingly, robins are judged to be highly typical birds, whereas chickens or vultures, which are judged to be signiftcantly less tlryical birds, are taken to have fewer properties in common with other birds (see table 1.2\.31 Importantly, typicality has a direct effect on categorization when speed is an issue. The finding has beery if subiects are asked to iudge whether an X is a y, that independent measures of typicality predict the speed of correct affirmatives. So subiects are quicker in their correct responses to "Is an apple a fruit?" than to "Is a pomegranate a fruit?" (Rosch 1973; Smith, Shoben, and Rips T974). What's more, error rates correlate with typicality. The more typical the probe relative to the target category, the fewer errors.32 The problem these results pose for the Classical Theory is that it has no natural model for why they should occur. Rather, the Classical Theory seems to predict that
30. In the literature nemplar is used to denote subordinate concepts or categories, where as instance is used to denote individual members of a given category. 31. Based on Smith (1995), table 1.3. 32. Typicality measures correlate with a variety of other phenomena as well. See Rosch (1975 [chapter 8 in
this volume}.

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il

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sarnleat to uo$nqlqslp aql Wpn seplaroe lt1rrcr1dfi fqm ;o uoq?u?1dxa ou set{ ltrnoeee aql ,tileu!{ 'os l,usl lsnl sql lnq 'qsg B lou $ utqor e p{l aSpnt ol uetll _tlsg lou sr ua{rlqr e lpql a8pnt ol 'sl lerll 'ra8uol a)pt ppotls lI '(71 ? lou q X ue) pBrel " pale8au B salloAul uogpzlroSaler aql araq saspr ul ssaf,ord o1 ra8uo1 qq Ppotls ^ ireldtuaxa prrddle 1eg sppard /llparroeul ppour aql 'oslv r'sauo prldrQ uetn sarnl -ea! aloru a Eq srelduraxa peldfle lpql asoddns ol uosear ou s! alaql 'aJuelsu! Jod 'Blpp raqlo Wyrn pruuor prrp suoqdumss? rorl pe a^lonur faql lstll sI slaPow PalPPr pup sqq tlllm alqnorl aql lng 'Sutssarord ;o sa8els arotu aq IIIl.vt 1a$ Taq? ol saJnlBet aroru $p,r 'llB rauv 'srorJa Sulssarord arou esnP) PuE azFoSaler o1 ra8uo1 a{Bl plnoqs sraqtuaru pudQ ssal uaql 'ssarord 8u1qrleu-amlpa; 'ppas 'aallsneqxa up sallonul uonr-z;yrcEa1er lprn aurnsse osle arvr pue 'sauo prld$ _uet{l sarnleat arolu a^pq sraqruau pe1dfi ssal letll aunsse e/n JI lpql 1sa88ns 4"W 'alduluxa uP sV '(196I uparu pue {lgrtrS) qpsar lQ{"rldf1 snopp^ qlp^ alqgudurof, arp lpql spPour lerls -sep ?lut u1 'are ara{l lprn alou upan se18no6 pue {lFuS pTBrvnPA 'froaql PllssPIJ ggs pnlrallalug a{t to MaIAraAo pguanlJul pue lueyodrur uB ul aqj urorj r(e ^e ldrqsraquaur froSaler rot suolllpuor lua!f,

-gps pup ,fupssaJau arups aql /qslles [p ztaql leql luaullJtrnuor s,froaql PJISSBI) aql u5rrr8-'saldruexa poo8 fgenba aq sreldruaxa 11e l,uppotls '11e raUV'are r(aq1 ,,alduruxa ue poo8 Moq,, to suual u! srelduraxa 8u11er to {sel IBIllul aql J9 asuas a{ey ol rvtotl rsalr uala pu s,ll 'fpuapgga arour pazuo8alpr aq ppoqs sre_ldluaxa ,,lsrlddl arotu,, ol uospar ou sl araql 'prlq e Supq ro, sarnleal parpbar aql to qrea sagsllss
1eql ry1q1

ll ieqi Supgualap ,o railsru

s1tll op pporls sprlq

E sl p4q s sp Sulqpuros Sulzuo8aler il PuV 'dlpnba (ltpo pup) tp ua{l 'suoplpuor lualrgtns Pu? ,fuPssarau to ps

auos

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Concepts and Cognitive Science

Box 2

27

Summary of Criticisms of the Classical Theory

1. Plato's Problem
There are few,

if

any, examples

of deftned concepts.

2. The Problem of Psydrological Reality

Lexical concepts show no effects of deftnitional structure in psychological experiments.

3. The Problem of Analyticity

Philosophical arguments against analyticity alrc work against the claim that concepts
have definitions.

4. The Problem of lgnorance and Error It is possible to have a concept in spite of massive ignorance and/or error, so concept
possession can't be a matter of knowing a definition.

5. The Problem of Conceptual Fuzziness The Classical Theory implies that concepts have determinate extensions and that categorization judgments should also yield determinate answers, yet concepts and
categorization both admit of a certain amount of indeterminacy.

5. The Problem of Typicality Effects

Typicality effects can't be accommodated by dassical models.

3, The kototqpe
3.7.

Theory of Concepts

The Emergence of PrototVpe Theory

During the T970s, a new view of concepts emerged, providing the ftrst serious alternative to the Classical Theory. This new view-which we will call the &ototype Theory-was developed, to a large extent, to accommodate the psychological data that had proved to be so damaging to the Classical Theory. It was the attractiveness of this new view, as much as anythit g else, that brought about the downfall of the
Classical Theory.

There is, of course, no single account to which all prototype theorists subscribe. What we are calling the Prototype Theory is an idealized version of a broad class of theories, which abstracts from many differences of detail. But once again putting qualiftcations to the side the core idea can be stated plainly. According to the Prototype Theory, most concepts-including most lexical concepts-:lre complex representations whose structure encodes a statistical analysis of the properties their members tend to have.34 Although the items in the extension of a concept tend to have these properties, for any given feabure and the property it expresses, there may be items in the extension of a concept that fail to instantiate the property. Thus the features of a concept aren't taken to be necessary as they were on the Classical Theory. In addition where the Classical Theory charactenzed sufficient conditions for concept application in terms of the satisfaction of all of a concept's features, on the Prototype Theory application is a matter of satisfying a sufficient number of features, where some may be weighted more signiftcantly than others. For instance, if BIr.D is composed of such features as FLrEs, srNct NEsrs IN TREEs, IAys EGcs, and so oo then on the
34. More likely they are structured and interconnected sets of features Malt and Smith llgk4).For examsize and communication might be linlced by the information that
small birds sing and large birds don't.

ple with the concept uno, feafures for

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q poorsrapun aq upr'rpnqs *"rr;tfJ1fi:il:ffii

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

29

a balance.36 On the one hand, a concept should encode a considerable amount of information about its instances and exemplars, but on the other, it shouldn't include so much that the concept becomes unwieldy. The solution offered by the Prototype Theory is that a concept should encode the distribution of statistically prominent
properties in a category. By representing statistically prominent properties, concepts with prototype structure generate many more inferences than do classical representations; they hade a few maximally reliable inferences for many highly reliable though fallible ones.37 The Prototype Theory also has an attractive model of concept acquisition-in fact, much the same model as the Classical Theory. In both cases, one acquires a concept

by

correspond to sensory properties. The main difference is that on the Prototype Theory, the features of a concept express statistically prominent properties. So on the Prototype Theory the mechanism of acquisition embodies a statistical procedure. It doesn't aim to monitor whether various properties always co-occur, but only whether they tend to. Of course, to the extent that the Prototype Theory inherits the empiricist program associated with the Classical Theory, it too faces the problem that most concepts resist analysis in sensory terms. The houble with empiricism, remember, isn't a commitment to deftnitions but a commitment to analyzing concepts in purely sensory terms. If uE was a problem for Lockg it's just as much a problem for prototype theorists. Assuming they can artictrlate some plausible candidate features, there is still no reason to think that all of these can be reduced to a sensory level. This is tme even for their stock examples of concepts fqr concrete kinds, concepts like BIRD or rRur.3s But, like the Classical Theory, the Prototype Theory can be relieved of its empiricist roots. When it is, its model of concept acquisition is at least as compelling as the Classical Theory's. Probably the most attractive aspect of the Prototype Theory is its treatment of categorization. Generally speaking, prototype theorists model categorization as a similarity comparison process that involves operations on two representations-one for the target category and one for an instance or an exemplar. (For ease of expression, we'll frame the discussion in terms of instances only, but the same points go for exemplars as well.) On these models, an instance is taken tg be a member of a category just in case the representation of the instance and the representation of the category are judged to be sufficiently similar. The advantage of this approach is that similarity-based categorization processes lay the groundwork for a natural explana36. Rosch, however, sharply distances herself fiom any psychological inteqpretation of this work (see Rosclr tgzlr. But as we are interested in the bearing of research in this hadition on theories of concepts construed as mental particulars, we will not discuss nonpsyclrological interpretations. 37. For Rosc.h, much of the interest in the efficiency of a conceptual system concems its hierarchical strucfure. "[Nlot all possible levels of categorization are equally good or usefu] rather, the most basic level of categorization will be the most indusive (abskact) Ievel at which the categories can rnirror the strucfure of athibutes perceived in the world- (1978, p. 30).According to Rosch and her colleagues the basic level in a conceptual system is deftned in terms of its informational potential relative to other levels in the hierarchy,
and its effects are widespread and can be independently measured. For instance, basic level concepts appear

assemblit S

its feafures. And, in both

cases,

it's often assumed that the feafures

early in cognitive and linguistic development, they have priority in perceptual categorization, and, in a hierarchy, they pick out the most abshact catqgories whose members are similar in shape. For discussion" see Rosch (1978, and Rosch et al. (1976'). 38. Look at most disctrssions and you'll find that the sample features for uno are things like vuxcs, FLrEs, EArs woruvrs, srNcs, and so on. Notice, though, that none of these is more "sensory" than srRD itself.

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

31

target are the ones that are judged to be more typical; the ones that are less similar to the target are the ones that are judged to be less typical. Typicality Conelates with Property Lists The reason the distribution of feafures in subjects' property lists predicts the typicality of an exemplar is that the
properties that are the most common on sucJr lists characterize the strucfure of the concept that is the target of the similarity-comparison process. Taking the example of rnp and its exemplars, the idea is that the properties that are commonly cited across categories such as robin, sp&rrout, hawk, oshich, and so on, are the very properties that correspond to the features of ilRD. Since noshr has many of the same features, robins are judged to be highly typical birds. osrRrcH, on the other hand, has few of these features, so ostriches are judged to be less typical birds. Graded Speed of fuick Categorization Judgrnents Assuming that the individual feafure comparisons in the similarity-comparison process take varying amounts of time the outcome of each comparison will affect the accumulator at different times. As a result, items that are represented to have more feafures in common with a target will be judged more q"i.kty to be members. A less thorough comparison is reguired before a sufficient number of shared feafures is registered. Categorization Enors Are Inoersely Conelated with Typicality For less typical exemplars, more feature comparisons will be needed before a sufficient number of shared features is reached, so there are more chances for error.

The accumulator model also explains certain aspects of concepfual fuzziness. Prototype theorists often cite fuzziness as a point in favor of their theory, while not saying mucJr about what the funiness of concepts consists in. One way of trnpacking the notion, however, is that judgments about whether something falls under a concept are indeterminate that is, the psycJrological mechanisms of categorization do not yield a judgment one way or the other. Fuzziness To predict fuzziness in this sense, the model need only be supplemented with the following qualiftcation: Where an exemplar isn't clearly similar enough to a target by prespecified margin the result is neither the judgment " that it falls under the target concept nor the judgment that it doesn't. From this brief survey of the data, one can see why the Prototype Thgory has been held in such high regard. Not only does it seem to be immune to some of the difficulties surrounding the Classical Theory, but it addresses a wide variety of empirical data as well. While there is virtually no doubt about the importance of these data, a number of problems have been raised for the theory, problems that are largely directed at its scope and interpretation. Some of these problems have been thought to be serious enough to warrant a radical reworking of the theory, or even its abandonment. We'll discuss four.
Box 3

The kototVpe Theory

Most concepts (esp. lexical concepts) are structured mental representations properties that obiects in their extension tend to possess.

that encode the

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

33

structure but that prototype stnrcture has no implications for whether subiects rePresent a category as being graded. In other words, the proposal is that typicality iudg-

ments reflect an underlying prototype; it's just that prototyPes needn't involve a commitment to graded membership. If typicality judgments aren't about degrees of membership, what are they about? We are not sure that there is a simple answer. Yet it's not unreasonable to think much of what's going on here relates back to properties that are rePresented as being highly indicative of a category. The difference between RoBw and osrRrcH, on this view, is that robins are represented as possessing more of the properties that, for one reason or anoth er, are taken to be the usual signs that something is a bird. But the usual signs needn't themselves be taken to be constih'rtive of the category. So long as one believes that they aren't, and that they merely provide evidence for whether something is a member of the category, the number of signs an item exhibits needn't determine a degree to which it instantiates the category. The distinction between properties that are represented as being evidential and those that are represented as being constitutive is especially pertinent when categorization takes place under pressures of time and limited resources. In a pinch, it makes sense to base a categorization judgment on the most salient and accessible properties-the very ones that are most likely to be merely evidential. The conclusion that many psychologists have drawn from this observation is that categorization can't be expected to be a univocal affair. Given the correlations between judged typicality and quick category judgments for both accuracy and speed, the Prototype Theory provides a compelling account of at least part of what goes on in categorization. But ionsidered ludgments of category membership seem to tell a different story. This has prompted a variety of theorists to put forw ard Dual Theories of concepts, where one iomponent (the "identification procedure") is responsible for quick categorization judgments and the other component (the "core") is called upon when cognitive resources aren't limited (Osherson and Smith I98t [chapter 1.1 in this volume]; Smith et al. 7984; Landau tg82).42 Such Dual Theories have often been thought to give the best of both worlds-the Prototype Theory's account of fast categorization and the Classical Theory's account of more thoughtful categorization, especially where the relevant properties are hidden or in some way less accessible. For instance, in discussing the merits of Dual Theories, Smith et al. (1954) are careful to insist that both the core and the identiftcation procedure are accessed in categorization processes. The difference between them, they claim, can be illustrated with the concept cENDER. "ldentiftcation properties might include style of clothing, hair, voice, etc., while core properties might involve having a particular kind of sexual organs. As this example suggests, our distinction centers on notions like salience, computability, and diagnosticity. . ." (p. 267).
42. The division of labor between the core and the identiftcation procedure hasn't been fully worked out

in the literafure. For instancg in the text we adopt the interpretation according to which the difference
between cores and identification procedures is just a matter of how they enter into categorization processes. fuiother difference thafs often cited is that cores are the primary, or perhaps the only, component that enters into the compositional principles that determine the semantics of complex concepts on the basis of their constituents. But it is at least open to question whether the components responsible for making considered judgments of category membership are also the ones that compositionally generate the semantics of complex concepts. We discuss this issue further below.

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

35

room for the possibility of a concept being misapplied, and this is just too high a price to pay.a3 Notice that Dual Theories might help somewhat, if it's assumed that conceptual cores are involved in categorization. The core would provide ]ane with a definition of 5NAKE that would have the final word on whether something falls under the concept by providing a more substantial procedure for deciding whether something is a snake. Then her mistake could be credited to the deployment of an identification procedure; what would make it a mistake is that the outcome of the identiftcation procedure fails to matcl the outcome of the core. Presumably, were lane to deploy the core, she'd be in a position to recogni2e her own error. But as we've already noted, Dual Theories aren't much of an advance, since they reintroduce the difftculties that
face the Classical Theory.

Another mark against the present form of a Dual Theory is that it inherits the difficulties associated with a verificationist semantics. For instance, people's procedures

for deciding whether something falls under a concept are subject to change as they acquire new information, new theories, and (sometimes) new technologies. Yet this doesn't mean that the concept's identity automatically changes. To rehnrn to the example of a disease, when two people differ on the symptoms they associate with measles, they would appear to be in disagreemenb that is, they appear to be arguing about the best evidence for deciding whether measles is present. But if the identity of MEASLEs is given by the procedures under which one decides whether it is instantiated, then we'd have to say that the two couldn't genuinely disagree about the symptoms associated with measles. At best, they would be talking at cross PurPoses, one about one ailment, the other about another. The same goes for a single Person over time. She couldn't come to change her mind about the best indications of measles, since in adopting a new procedure of veriftcation she'd thereby come to deploy a new concept. We take it that these difficulties offer good prima facie grounds for shying away from a 'veriftcationist version of the Dual Theory.
The Missing PrototVpes koblem The strongest evidence in favor of the Prototlrye Theory is that subjects find it natural to rate exemplars and instances in terms of how representative they are of a given category and the fact that these ratings correlate with a range of psychological phenomena. But although this is true of many concepts, it is by no means true of all concepts. Many concepts aren't associated with typicality judgments, and for many concepts, people fail to represent any central tendencies at all. As ferry Fodor has put it (lgSt, pp. 296-297): There may be prototlryical cities (London Athens, Rome, New York); there may even be prototypical American cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles), but there are surely no prototypical Ameican cities situated on tlu hst Coast iust a little south of Tennessee. Similarly, there may be prototypical grandmothers (Mary Worth) and there may be prototypical properties of grandmothers (good, old Mary Worth). But there are surely no prototypical properties of, say, Chaucer's grand43. Note that nothing turns on the example b"ing a natural kind (where ifs plausible that science is the best arbiter of category membership). The point is iust that, wherever there is representation, there is the potential for misrepresentation An account that doesn't permit misrepresentation simply isn't an adequate theory of concepts.

qul.od ropod .(966I) ropog aas 'suoplruFuot u?apog a lolu! 1erfl sldaruor Jo uolssroslP aruos rod '9t 'eapl sqn8glul pf an8ea lsqflauos B-,,alpJplu!,, ool are faql asneca{ aJqtn4s adeolord :ppl IEur rrusnt pue 'rumo 'mlxs a1q qdacuor lptll pa88ns (196I) ttlFrs PUP uosraqsg '??

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

37

ing Dual Theory fails to preserve the spirit of the Prototype Theory. It looks like whafs essential to a concept, on this view, is the classical cor; with the prototype
being (in many cases) merely an added option. In short, the Dual Theory is beginning to sotrnd more and more like a supplemented version of the Classical Theory.

The objection that many concepts lack prototype structure is standardly presented as an issue about compositionality, since most of the concepts that lack prototypes important feature of the conare patently complex. Compositionality is certainly ceptual system, as it provides the best explanation for one of the most important and shiking features of human thought-its productivity. Important as compositionality is, however, it's not really needed for the present objection. The force of the Missing Prototypes Problem is simply that many concepts lack prototype structure and that it's often possible to possess a concept without thereby knowing a prototype. The implications of this objection aren't always given their full due. Edward Smith, for example, suggests that the Prototype Theory isn't intended to be a general theory of concepts. He says that some classes, such as objects that weryh fortV pounds, ue arbitrary and that "the inductive potential of a class may determine whether it is treated as a category" (1995,p.7). The representation oBIEcrs rllAr wEIGH FoRrY PotrNDs, however, is a perfectly fine concept, which one can readily use to pick out a property. For any of a variety of puqposes, one might seek to find an object that weighs forty pounds, categorize it as such, and reason in accordance with the coresponding concept. In any event, though there is nothing wrong with the idea that concepts divide info groups requiring different theoretical treatments, we still require an account of the concepts that aren't covered by the Prototype Theory. Given that there seem to be indefinitely many such concepts, the question arises whether prototypes are central and important enough to concepts generally to be considered part of their nahrre. Perhaps it is more appropriate to say that many lexical concepts have prototypes associated with them but that these prototypes aren't in any way constitutive of the concepts. that aims to mitigate the damage caused by the Missing Another Prototlryes Problem-is (once again) to appeal to a Dual Theory. The idea might be that for sorne concepts it is possible to have the concept without having both components. So for these concepts, not knowing a prototype is ftne. The advantage of this sort of Dual Theory would appear to be that it allows for a univocal treatment of all concepts; one needn't appeal to a completely distinct theory for those concepts that lack prototypes. Yet it's hardly clear that this is much of a Bain since the result-

option

The koblem of Compositionality One of the most serious and widely discussed obiections to the Prototype Theory is the charge that it's unable to account for the phenomenon of compositionality. This difficulty seems especially pressing in light of the importance of compositionality in accounting for our ability to entertain an unbounded number of concepts. To the extent that anyone can foresee an explanation of this ability, it's that the concepfual system is compositional.a6 Early discussions of compositionality in the literafure on Prototlrye Theory were concerned with explaining how graded extensions could be combined. Thus these discussions were based on the assumption that most categories are graded in the
46. Which isnlt to say that the details have been completely worked out or that there is no controversy about the content of the principle of compositionality. For discussio& see Grandy (1990b).

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

39

Though difficulties like these may seem to be decisive against hwzy set theory's model of compositionality, we should note that tuzzy set theory doesn't provide the only model of compositionality that is compatible with the Protokype Theory.5o Still, compositionality has proven to be a notable stumbling block for protot5ryes. The general objection that Prototype Theory cannot provide an adequate account of concepfual combination has been pushed most vigorously by Ierry Fodor. In this context, Fodor has argued both that many complex concepts simply don't have Prototypes and that, when they do, their prototypes aren't always a function of the prototypes of their constituents. We've already dealt with the first sort of case, under the heading of the Problem of Missing Prototypes. To get a feel for the second, consider the concept pnr FrsH. The prototype for pEr FIsH is a set of feafures that picks out something like-a goldfish. Prototypical pet ftsh are small, brightly colored, and they live in fish bowls (or small tanks). How does the prototype for rer rsH relate to the prototypes of its constifuents, namely, pff and Rsn?sl Presumably, the features that consti-

tute the prototypes for pEr pick out dogs and cats as the most rePresentative examples of pets-features such as FuRRy, AFFEcTToNATE, TAIL-WAGGING, and so on. The protobype for FrsH, on the other hand, picks out something more like a hout or a bass-flatures such as cRAy, r.JNDoMEsncATED, MEDtuM-stzED, and so on. Thus prototypical pet fish make rather poor examples both of pets and of fish. As a result, ifs difficult to see how the prototype of the complex concept could be a function of the
prototypes of its constituents.

One of the most interesting attempts to deal with the composition of complex prototypes is Smith, Osherson, Rips, and Keane's (198S [chapter 17 in this volumeJ) Selective Modiftcation Model. According to this model, conceptual combinations that consist of an adjectival concept (e.g. RED, RotrND) and a nominal concept (e.g., arpLE, FRUrr) in the form Adi + N are formed by u process where the adjectival concept modiftes certain aspects of the nominal concept's structure. The nominal concept is
taken to decompose into a set of features organized around a number of attributes. Each athibute is weighted for diagnosticity, and instead of having default values, each value is assigned a certain number of 'totes," indicating its probabiliLy. For simplicity, Smith et al. consider only adiectival concepts assumed to have a single attribute (see ftgure 1.1). The way concepfual combination works is that the adjectival concept selects the corresponding attribute in the nominal concept's representation, increases its diagnosticity, and shifts all of the votes within the scope of the attribute to the value that the adjectival concept picks out. For instance, in the combination nnp AppLE, the attribute coloR is selected in the representation Apptn, its diagnosticity is increased, and the votes for all of the color features iue shifted to nrn (see ftgure I.2).

Smith et al. subjected this model to the following sort of experimental test. By asking subjects to list properties of selected items, they obtained an independent measure of the attributes and values of a range of fruit and vegetable concepts. They took the number of listings of a given feafure to be a measure of its salience (i.e., its number of votes), and they measured an attribute's diagnosticity by determining how useful it is in distinguishing fruits and vegetables, This allowed them to generate
50. Indeed, Osherson and Smith have proposed an dtemative model of their own, which we will discuss
shortly. See also Hampton (1991.). 51. We take it that the empirical claims made here about the prototypes of various conceph are extremely plausible in tight of other finding+ but the daims are not based on actual experimmtd results. Accordingly, the arguments ultimately stand in need of empirical conftrmation

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than other spoons and used for cooking, not eating.)s3 It doesn't even cover the case we started with, namely, Prr F-tsH. Smith et al. suggest some ways in which the model might attempt to cope with these difficulties. One borrows an idea from |ames Hampton (1'9ST), who notes that the prototypes for some complex contepts may be sensitive to real-world knowledge. For instance your prototype for wooDEN spooN may be more a result of experience with wooden spoons than your having constructed the concept from compositional principles. In Smith et al.'s hands, this suggestion emerges as a twostage model. In the first stage, a prototyp" is constructed on a purely comPglitional basis, in accordance with the original mechanism of the Selective Modiftcation Model in the secon4 the prototype is subject to changes as world knowledge is brought into play. In principle a more complicated model like this_ is capable of dealing with i f^i, number of the difficult examples we've mentioned. For instance, wooDrr.r snooN needn't be so houblesome anymore. Perhaps people do construct a prototype in which iust the r'aarnnraL coMposmoN attribute for spoon is altered. Later, in the slcond stage the athibute szr is altered as experiCnce teaches that wooden spoons are typically larger than metal spoons. Perhaps pEr FtsH can be acconunodated by u two-stage model as well. The strongest objection to Hampton's suggestion is owing to Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. They emphasize that one can't allow experience to fix the prototype of a .o*pl"* concept without admitting that such prototypes are essentially idioms. But, they argue, if prototypes are idioms, then the Prototype Theory offers a wholly
inadequate account of concepts (1996, p. 267):

Prototypes aren't compositional; they work like idioms. Concept+ however, must be compositional; nothing else could explain why they are productive. So
concepts aren't prototypes.

In addition, they argue that the two-stage model is implausible since as concepts get more complex (and we are less likely to have real-world knowledge about them), we don't default to a compositionally determined prototype. As an exiunple, they point to
the concept rur
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no one his real-world knowledg" for a concept like this-knowledge that might interfere with the effects of the Selective Modification Model-no one has a compositionally determined prototype either. Concepts like these simply lack prototypes. Notice that the second of these objections is no more than a repetition of the Missing Prototypes Problem. The reply here will be much the same as it was there.sa
consider MAr.E Nr,rRsE. Male nurses aren't taken to be iust like other nurses, only male. Among other things, they wear different sorts of uniforms-slacks, not dresses. Thus the combination can't iust-be a matter of the modifter affecting the sox attribute in lrun.se, shifUng all the votes to the value MA;..E. For some discussion of the significance of context effects in concepfud combination see Medin

j3. For another example,

54. Actually, we aren't so sure that highly modiffed concepts inevitably lack prototypes. For many cases it seems likely that people will have a sketchy idea of how to rank exemplars or instances for typicality. Take While we arert't prepared to say too much about these unusual ftsh, we do Fodor and lepori's "*"*ple know they hive to be fairly large if they are going to swallow people (who but a Person owns a ftsh?). Among other things, this knowledge implies that goldfish are going to be extremely Poor exemplarl *d that white sharks may be better. To the extent that one can make such ludgments, this counts as evidence for a schematic prototype. If ifs idiomatie that's just to say that there are other ways to construct an idiomatic prototype than by having experience with members of the corresPonding category. In this anse, the idiom could derive from a reasoning process that incoqporates information from the dassical core
and general background knowledge.

and Shoben (198S).

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Concepts and Cognitive

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43

with the core of a concept apparently doing so much work, the Dual theory beings to look more like a supplemented version of the Classical Theory. We should end this discussion, however, by emphasizing that the issues surrounding comPositionality are extremely complicated and that there is much more to be said. We'll refurn to these issues in what we hope will be a new and illuminating context, when we exarnine some of the problems associated with Conceptual Atomism (sec. 6.2). The Prototype theory continues to be one of the dominant theories of concepts in psychology and cogr,itive science. This is understandable, given its ability to- explain a wide range of psychological data. We've seen, however, that in the face of a nurnber of problems related to concept possession and reference determination, prototype theoriJts are apt to fall back on the idea that concepts have classical cores. The result is that the Prototype Theory may inherit some of the difficulties that motivated it in the first place. This rnay be so, regardless of how strong the evidence is that concepts have prototype shrrcfure.
Box 4

Summary

af Criticisms of the Prototype Theory

1. The Problem of Prototypical Primes

Typicality effects don't argue for prototype structure, since even welldefined concepts exhibit typicality effects. 2. The Problem of Ignorance and Eror Ignorance and error is as much a problem for the Prototype Theory as it is for the Classical'llheory. Indeed, the problem is considerably worse for the Prototype Theory, since concepts with prototype structure fail to cover highly atlpical instances and
incorrectly include non-instances.

3. The Miseing Proto$ryes Problem

Many concepts lack prototypes.

4. The Problem of Compositionality

The Prototype Theory does not have an adequate account of compositionality, since the prototypes of cornplex concepts aren't generally a function of the prototypes of their constituent concepts.

4. The Theory-Theory of Concepts

4.7. Tlwories, Fsplanations, and Conceptual Stntcture In the past ten years or so, an increasing number of psychologists have gravitated to a view in which cognition generally is assimilated to scientific reasoning. The analogy to science has many strands. One is to distance the theory of categorization from early empiricist models, where categorization consisted of nothing more than a process of checking an instance against a list of sensory properties. Another is to liken concepts to theoretical terms, so that philosophical heatments of theoreticd terms can be recruited in psycholory. Yet another is to provide a characterization and explanation of conceptual c}ange along the lines of theory change in science. Within the boundaries of these explanatory goals lies the Tlvory-Theory of Concepts.sT
the terminology here is somewhat unforfunate, since 'Theory-Theory" is also used in reference to a speciftc account of how people are able to athibute mental states to one another. The view is that they have an intemalized theory of mind. See, e.8., Wellman (1990).
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don't want to have to settle this dispute here, so we'll opt for a more permissive understanding of theories. For our purposes, the point to focus on is that a concepfs identity is determined by its role within a theory. Now there would be little to argue about if the claim were merely that concepts are embeddei in explanatory schemas of sorts. Few would deny this. The interesting daim is that a concept's identity is constifuted by its role in an explanatory schema. To put this claim in a way that brings out its relation to other theories of concepts, we can say that according to the Theory-Theory concepts are structured mental representations and that their structure consists in their relations to other concepts specifted by their embedding theories. Notice that put this way the Theory-Theory can't appeal to the Containment Model of conceptual structure. For any two conqepts that participate in the same mental theory, the struchre of each will include the otheu but if the ftrst contains the second, the second can't contain the ftrst. What this shows is that the Theory-Theory is partial to the Inferential Model of structure. Concepts are individuated in virfue of the inferences they license based on their role in the theories that embed them. When it comes to concept application, the Theory-Theory appeals to the structure of a concept, just as the Classical Theory and the Prototype Theory do. Generally, psychologists haven't been explicit about how the mechanism works, but their remarks about how they view scientiftc terms places them squarely in a hadition that is familiar from the philosophy of science (see, e.8., Kuhn- t962; Sellars t956; and Lewis tg7l, t972). On this account the meaning of a theoretical term is determined by its role in a scientific theory. This can be given as a de{inite description that characterizes the role that the term plays in the theory.6o Then the referent of the term is' whatever unique entity or kind satisftes the description.6r One advantage of the Theory-Theory is in the'models of categorization that it encourages. Many psyc-hologists have expressed dissatisfaction with earlier theories of concepts on the grotrnds that they tail to incorporate people's tendency toward essentialist thinking-a view that Douglas Medin and Andrew Ortony (1959') have dubbed psychological essentialism. According to psychological essentialism, people are apt to view category membership for some kinds as being less a matter of an instance's exhibiting certain observable properties than the item's having an appropriate internal structure or some other hidden property. For instancg we all recognize ihe humor in the Warner Brothers cartoons involving Pepe LePew. In these sketches, a delicate and innocent black female cat is subjected to the inappropriate attention of a gregarious male skunk when she accidentally ftnds herself covered head to toe by " stripe of whitg n3in1. The joke of course, is that she isn't a skunk, even lhough to all appeiuances she looks like one. As most people see it, what makes something a skunk isn't the black coat and white marhtrgs, but rather having the right biological history,
or the right genetic make-up. Ifs not just adults who think this. Prompted by an interest in the development of essentialist thinkitrg, a number of psychologists have investigated its emergence in
60. See kwis's pape$, in partiarlar, for an account based on the work of Frank Ramsey (192911990) which shows how one can provide definite descriptions for theoretical terms when their meanings iue interdeftned.

61. An altemative actounb which theory-theorists generally haven't explore4 is to say that much of the content of a concept is given by its role in cognition but that its referent is determined independently, perhaps by a causal relation that concepts bear to items in the world. Cf. trnro-factor conceptual role theories in
philosophy, such as Block (r9s6l.

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Alison Gopnik puts it, "scientists and children both employ the same particularly powerful and flexible set of cognitive devices. These devices enable scientists and children to develop genuinely new knowledge about the world around them" (1996, p. 486; see also Gopnik and Meltzoff r997).In other words, cognitive development and theory change (in science) are to be understood as two facets of the very same
phenomenon. In sum, the Theory-Theory appears to have a number of important advantages. By holding that concepts :ue individuated by their roles in mentd theories, theorytheorists can tie their account of concepts to a realistic theory of categorization-one that respects people's tendency toward essentialist thinking. They also can address a variety bf developmental concerns, characteriang cognitive development in terms of the principles relating to theory change in science. Despite these attractions, however, the Theory-Theory isn't without problems. Some shouldn't be too surprising, since they've cropped up before in other guises. Yet the Theory-Theory also raises some new and interesting challenges for theorizing about concepts.

Box 5

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Concepts are representations whose structure consists specified by a mentd theory.

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as

4.2. Problems for the Theory-Theory The Problem of Ignorance and Enor Lefs start with the Problem of Ignorance and Error. Does it affect the Theory-Theory too? [t certainly does, and in several ways. For starters, we've seen that theory-theorists typically allow that people can have rather sketchy theories, where the "essence placeholdey'' for a concept includes relatively little information. Notice, however, that once this is granted, most concepts are going to encode inadequate information to pick out a correct and determinate extension. If people don't represent an essence for birds, apart from some thin ideas about genetic endowment, then the siune goes for dogs, and bears, and antelopes. In each case, the theory in which the concept is embedded looks about the same. People have the idea that these creatures have some property in virfue of which they fall into their respective categories, but they don't have much to say about what the property is. How, then, will these concepts come to pick out their respective extensions? When we faced a comparable problem in the context of the Prototype Theory, the natural solution was to rely on a Dual Theory that posited classical cores. If prototypes don't determine reference (because of the Problem of Ignorance and Error), then perhaps that isn't their job; perhaps they should be relegated to identification procedures. Within the context of the Theory-Theory, however, the analogous move is something of a strain. As we've noted, the Theory-Theory is generally understood to be about considered acts of categorization and hence is itself most naturally conshrued as giving the structure of conceptual cores. In any event, it's not likely that appealing to the Classical Theory can help, since it too faces the Problem of lgnorance and Error.

A lack of represented information isn't the only difficulty for the Theory-Theory. In other cases, the problem is that people represent incorrect information. A simple

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beliefs. The dternative suggestion is that people need only have similar concepts. That is, the suggestion is to concede that differences in belief yield distinct concepts but to maintain that two concepts might be similar enough in content that they would be subsumed by the sarne psychological generalizations. Suppose, for instance, that your theory of animals says that animals are entirely physical entities while your friend's theory of animals says that some animals (Perh"pt humans) have nonphysical souls. This might mean that you don't both- Possess the same concept eNna,rl. Still, by hypothesis, you both possess concepts with similar contents, and t[ough shictly speaking they aren't the same, they are similar enough to say that they are both animal-concepts. Let's call the'problem of explaining how the content of a concept can remain invariant across changes in belief, or how two people with different blhef systems can have concepts with the same or similar coniu"t, the koblem of Stability. The suggestion that is implicit in many psychological discussions is that strict content stability is a misguided goal. Really what matters is content similarity. As Smith et al. (I9s4) put it, "[T]here is another sense of stability, which can be equated with similarity of mental contents (e.g., inteqpersonal stability' in this sense t"fets to situations where two people can be judged to have similar mental contents) ..." (p. 26e). As tempting as this strategy may be, it's not as easy to maintain as one might have thought. The diffiarlby is that the notion of content similarity is usually unpacked in a way that presupposes a prior notion of content identity (Fodor and Lepore T992). Consider, for instance, Smith et al.'s explanation. They proPose that two concepts are similar in content when they have a sufficient number of the same feafures. Moreover, they point out that subiects tend to cite the same properties in expelments where they are asked to list characteristics of a category. Following Rosch and others, they take this to be evidence that people's concepts, by and large, do incoqporate the same feafures.
The consequence is supposed to be that people's concepts are highly similar in content. But notice the structure of the argument. Feafures are themselves contentful rePresentations; they are just more concepts. Smith et al.'s reasoning, then, is that two concepts are similar in content when their structure implicates a sufficient number of with the same content. But if these other concepts have to share the same cot "epts content, then that's to say that the notion of content similarity is building upon the notion of content identity; the very notion that content similarity is supposed to replace is hidden in the explanation of how two concepts could be similar in content.

al.'s proposal is hardly idiosyncratic. Content similarity is generally understood in terms of overlapping sets of features. But again feature sets ian't overlap unless they have a certain number of the same features, that i9, representations with the same content. And if they have representations with the same content, then one might as well admit that concepts have to have the same content (not similar content), despite differences in belief. This brings us full circle. The scope of this problem hasn't been absorbed in the cognitive science community, so perhaps it pays to consider another proposed solution. Here's one owing to Lance Ripr (f-ggS). He suggests that we think of concepts as being individuated along fu; dimensions, One is a mental theory; the other, a formally specified mental symbol. So the concept Doc is a formally individuated mental representation taken together with a colleition of contentful states that incorporate salient information about dogs. Rips likens his model to a Dual Theory of concepts, but one that incorporates neithei a classical core nor a prototype-based identiftcation procedure. The advantage of the model is supposed to be that without postulating deftnitions for

Wh"t" more, Smith et

,4

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

51

The "Mysteries of Science" Prohlem Not all theory-theorists daim that cognitive development mimics patterns in the history of science but among those that do, another problem is specifying the mechanism responsible for cognitive development. Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff take up this burden by claiming that the very same mechanism is responsible for both scientiftc theory change and cognitive development. Yet this raises a serious difficulty: The appeal to science isn't informative if the mechanisms of theory change in science are themselves poorly understood. Unfortunately, this is exactly the situation that we seem to be in. Gopnik and Meltzoff do their best to characterize in broad terms how one theory comes to give way to another in science. Some of their observations seem right. For instance, theories are often protected from recalcitrant data by ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses, and these eventually give way when an intense period of investigation uncovers more recalcitrant data alongside a superior alternative theory. But how do scientists arrive at their new theories? Gopnik and Meltzoff have little more to say than that this is the "mysterious logic of discovery" (1997, p.40). And what is distinctive about the transition from one theory to another? Here they emphasize the role of evidence and experimentation. It too is "mysterious, but that it plays a role seems plain" Q. aO). We don't doubt that experimentation is at the heart of science but without articulated accounts of how transitions between scientific theories take place it simply doesn't help to claim that scientific and cognitive development :ue one and the same. Saying that two mysterious processes are really two facets of a single process is suggestive, but it hardly dispels either mystery. In other words, it's simply misleading to cite as an advantage of the Theory-Theory that it solves the problem of cognitive development when the mechanism that is supposed to do all the work is as intractable as the problem it's supposed to explain. Like the other theories we've discussed so far, the Theory-Theory has substantial motivation and a number of serious cJrallenges. Though it does well in explaining certain types of categorization iudgments, it has trouble in allowing for stability within the conceptual system and in accounting for the referential properties of concepts. This isn't to say that there is no analogy between concepts and theoretical terms. But it does call into question whether the Theory-Theory can provide an adequate account of the nature of concepts.
Box 6

Summary of Criticisms of the Theory-Theory 1. The Problem of lgnorance and Emor It is possible to have a concept in spite of its buirg tied up with a deftcient or erroneous
mental theory.

2. The Problem of Stability

The content of a concept can't remain invariant across changes in its mental theory.

3. The 'Mysteries of Science" Problem

The mechanisms that are responsible for the emergence of new scientiftc theories and for the shift from one theory to another are poorly understood.

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Concepts and Cognitive

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might hold, for example, that the structure of the concept nep embodies the condition that something can't be red without being colored. What makes this a partial deftni tion is that this much structure encodes only a necessary condition an4 at any rate, doesn't specify a sufficient condition for something's falling under the concept. Though the appeal to partial definitions may be viewed bV some as something of a cop-out, the situation isn't that lexical semanticists are iust trying to put a happy face on Plato's Problem. Rather, neoclassical theorists begin with a variety of interesting linguistic phenomenon and argue that only concepts with neoclassical strucfure can explain this data. It may help to work through an example. Consider Iackendoff's explanation of causative constructions-a fairly standard treatment in the field of lexical semantics. Iackendoff's starting point is the observation that causatives exhibit a pronounced distributional pattern (T959 [chapter 13 in this volume],
P. 50).

(16) a. rkilledy+ydied b. rlifted y+ yrose

c. d.

rBavezto y + yreceivedz x persuaded y that P + y came to believe that

Now these inferences could all be treated as having nothing to do with one another. But they are strikingly similar, and this suggests that they have a conrmon explanation. |ackendoff's suggestion is that the meaning of a causative implicates a proprietary e'rent and that, under this assumption, the pattern of inferences can be explained by introducing a single rule that covers all these cases, namely,

(TT)

Xcause Eto occur

+ Eoccur

For instance, the proper analysis of (f6d) is supposed to be r cause [y calne to believe that PJ. This analysis, taken in conjunction with the inference rule (I7) implies y me to believe that P. In the present context, however, this is just to say that the concept pERsuADE has structure. cAUsE ro BELTEvE gives a partial definition of pERsuADE. There may be more to persuading someone that P than causing them to believe P,6E but at least this provides a necessary condition for the application of pERsuADE. Moreover, this necessary condition is one that is evidenced in the distributional pattem of English illustrated by (16a)-(16d). The causatives are just one example of how the Neoclassical Theory frnds support in Iinguistic phenomena. Neoclassical structure has also been invoked to explain a variety of data connected with polysemy, syntactic altemations, and lexical acquisition.6e In philosophy, too, neoclassical strucfure is taken to have explanatory support. Some of the data at stake include people's intuitions about the application of a concept. Georges.Rey, for example, claims that Quine's arguments against the analyticsynthetic distinction are flawed and holds, as a consequence, that

it is an open

question how we .ue to understand what he calls the analytic data. The analytic data
68. For example, suppose you fall down the stairs when you are walking just a bit too fast. This might lead an observer to believe that one should approach the stairs with caution. Yet, intuitively, you didn't persuade the observer of this; you merely caused him to believe it. 69. On polysemy, see |ackendoff (rgA9) on syntactic alternations and lexical acquisition, see Pinker (19E9). For a useful collection that shows the scope of contemporary lexical semantics, see Levin and Pinker (rggrb).

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q1o8rz61 pue

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aruarrul

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Concepts and Cognitive

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55

They are interested, instead, in grammatically relevant aspects of word meaning. For instance, when Steven Pinker claims that his "deftnitions" aren't intended to capture all of a verb's meaning, we take it that his point is that he isn't aiming to provide a complete characterization of the concept that the verb encodes. Understandably, given his interest in nafural language, his focus is on those aspects of conceptual
stmcture that are manifested in grammatical processes. His slots for "bits of [realworld knowled gel" are a gesture toward the larger proiect outside of the study of grammar, yet this is a project that Pinker is under no obligation to pursue. Iane Grimshaw is perhaps even dearer on this point. For example, she states that the words "do'and 'tat," or "melt" and "freeze," are qrnon5rmous. She doesn't mean
senses of the term, they have the same content. The point is rather that they have the same content insofar as content has grammatical influence. "Linguistically speaking pairs like these are synonyms, because they have the same structure. The differences between them are not visible to the language" (unpublished

by this that, in all

ffis., p. 2). These remarks indicate a circumscribed yet sensible research program. Grimshaw is concerned with conceptual structure, but only from the point of view of its effects on gramrnar. Grammatically relevant structure she calls semantic shucture; the rest she calls semantic content. "semantic strucfure has linguistic life semantic content does not" (p. Z). Still, those of us who are interested in the nature of concepts can't be so indifferent to the Problem of Completers. Either partial deftnitions are fleshed out or they are not. If they are, then the problems associated with the Classical Theory return. If they are not, then we are left without an account of how concepts apply to their instances. What makes it the case that Doc applies to all and only dogs? The fact that the concept incorporates the feature ANIrvrArE may place a constraint on an explanation-Doc can only apply to animates-but it is a constraint that is far too weak to answer the
question.
The Problem of lgnorance and

Error

Because so many neoclassical theorists shy away

from defending comprehensive theories of concepts, it's hard to say whether their theories are subject to the Problem of Ignorance and Error-a problem that we've seen crops up for just about everyone else. Among those neoclassical theorists who expect to complete their partial deftnitions, it's likely that they would have as much trouble with ignorance and error as classical theorists have. This is one respect in which the Neoclassical theory may be on the same footing as its predecessor. In both cases, there is the strong danger that the structure of a concept will encode insufficient information, or erroneous information, and so won't be able to fix the concept's
reference.

Still, some neoclassical theorists may have views on reference determination that aren't readily assimilated to the Classical Theory. R"y |ackendoff's work in this area stands out. For while his theory is sensitive to grammatical indices of conceptual structure, it doesn't stop short with what Grimshaw calls semantic strucfure. |ackendoff's theory is about the nafure of concepts. What's more, the shuCfure that he takes concepts to have, in addition to their necessary conditions, isn't just a tluowback to the Classical Theory. He has a number of interesting suggestions about other aspects of conceptual structure. We won't be able to review all of his innovations, but one seems especially pertinent. IacJcendoff asks the question of how to distinguish between the lexical entries

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

57

particular fteld. For instance, concepts with a feature indicating the field "spatial localion and motion" may license one body of inferences, while a feature indicating the field "scJreduling of activities" may license another. Such differences are suPPosed to account for distributional patterns where lexical items that have similar meanings nonetheless permit distinct and characteristic inferences. Ray Jackend off, for example, argues for the existence of semantic field feafures on the basis of the following evidence, labeled according to four proposed fields (Jack-

endoff 1989, p.

37):

a. b. c.

i. ii. iii. i. ii. iii. ii.

Spatial locatian and mation The bird went from the ground to the tree. The bird is in the tree. Harry kept the bird in the cage.
Passession

The inheritance went to PhiliP. The money is Philip's. Susan kept the money.
of properties

'lsription i. The light went/changed from green to red.

Harry went from elated to depressed.
The light is red.

d.

iii. i. ii. iii.

Harry is depressed. Sam kept the crowed happy. Scheduling of actioities The meeting was cJranged from Tuesday to Mond"y.
The meeting is on Monday. Let's keep the trip on Saturday.

The intuition that is the basis of laclendoff's argument is that "go," "be," and "keep" are polysemous whereby, in a given semantic field, each verb has a different though similar meaning to the one it has in any other semantic field. "The go sentences each express a change of some sort, and their respective terminal states are described by thi correspondin g be sentences. The keep sentences all denote the causation of a state that endures over a period of time. One has the sense, then that this variety of uses is not accidental" (1989, p. 37).lackendoff's suggestion is that these infuitions ought to be taken seriously and that the way to do this is by introducing two degrees of freedom. First, the similarities of meaning can be capfured under the assumPtion that the similar items are associated with partially identical representations. Second, the differences in meaning can be captured under the assumption that their associated representations differ with respect to a constituent that picks out a semantic fteld. ttiis constituent may then interact with inference rules that explain why a single word licenses different inferences depending on its context. To take an exarnple, Jackendoff's representation for the "keep" verbs all share this
much strucfure:

(1)

lEvent

CAUSE ([rr,ing x],

[s.,"r,t

STAY ([ ], I

DD]

The way we are to understand the notation is that the word 'teep" expresses a function (labeled "CAUSE") that takes two .rguments (one labeled "Thing," the other

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Concepts and Cognitive

Science

59

As we see it, Jackendoff should take hold of the second horn. He should admit that,

in principle, a word can retain aspects of its meaning across semantic ftelds without having neoclassical structure. That is, just as cAUsE retains its meaning, so might "keep." But iust because this is the case in principle doesn't mean that the best explanation requires that one withhold the postulation of neoclassical strucfure. If one has an explanatory reason to invoke neoclassical structure in some cases (but not all), then the postulation of such stmcfure isn't the least bit gratuitous. Nor need it lead to a regress. The reason for saying that "keep" has structure needn't be applicable at all levels of representation. Maybe it simply isn't valid once one gets to the level of the concept cAUsE. In short, polysemy doesn't require neoclassical structure, but there may still be an explanatory advantage to posfulating the structure. It remains for Jackendoff to demonstrate this explanatory advantage. The main point, however, is that there is no a priori reason to think that there isn't one. In general, the merits of postulating neodassical shucfure depend upon the explanations that prove the most tenable for a variety of data-not just evidence of polysemy, but also data concerning slmtactic phenomena, lexical acquisition, and our intuitions about the constitutive relations among concepts.Ta We see no reason why neoclassical structure shouldn't be implicated to explain these things, but iust because it is doesn't mean we've been given a full account of the nature of concepts. How partial definitions are to be filled in and how their application is to be determined
remain to be seen.

Box 8

Summary of Criticisms of the Neoclassical Theory

1. The Problem of Completers

If partial deftnitions are tumed into full definitions, then the Neoclassical Theory has all the problems that are associated with the Classical Theory. If, instea4 they are left
incomplete, then the Neoclassical Theory has no account of reference determination.

2. The Problem of lgnorance and Emor Supplementing neoclassical structure with 3-D models won't help in accounting for
reference determination.

3. The Regresa Problem for Seurantic Fields

Neoclassical structure can't explain how a word retains aspects of its meaning across different semantic fields. Either its conceptual constituerrts must themselves have neodassical structure, and so on, or else no structure is needed at all.

6.

Conceptual Atomism Concepts Without Shucture

6.7.

All of the theories that we've covered so far disagree about the strucfure of concepts, but that most concepts have strucfure-especially lexical concepts-is an assump74. We've postponed the discussion of the latter until sec. 6.2, where we contrast neoclassical and atomistic accounts of the analytic data.

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09

Concepts and Cognitive

Science

61.

so for understandable reasons-it looks like a cow. Nonetheless, ifs a horse; you've misapplied your concept. That's to be expected in conditions like these since under the conditions we are envisioning, the horse acfually looks like a cow. The result is that your concept cow is the reliable effect of at least two causes: cows and horses. [f, however, there is nothing more to content than information, we would not have a case of error here at all, but rather a veridical application of a concept expressing the disjunctive property cou, or harse. In philosophical circles, this issue has come to be known as the Disjunction Problem. Information-based semanticists have explored a number of ways to overcome the Disjunction Problem. Fodor's solution is to claim that certain informational relations are more basic than others and that this difference is what counts. His theory has two parts:

(1) A concept-cow, for example-stands in a lawful relation, L, to the property it expresses, namely, cour. (2) Other lawful relations involving cow , Lt-Ln, are aslmrmetrically dependent upon the lawful relation between cow and cow. That is, L1-Ln wouldn't hold but that L does, and not the other way around.
Thus the critical difference between the cowfcow law and the horsefcow law is that although both are reliable the first is the more fundamental: It would obtain even if the horsefcow dependence did not, whereas the horsefcow dependence would not obtain without the cowfcow dependence. That's why cow expresses the property cout and not, as it might be, cow or horse.76 Notice that an advantage of the Asymmetric Dependence Theory is that it implies that no representation that is associated with a concept is essential to its having the content that it does. In principle, one might even have the concept cow without having the concept ANTMAL. AII that is required is that there be some mechanism or other that secures the right mind-world relations. As a result, Concepfual Atomism is able to sidestep some of the most persistent difftculties that confront other theories. For instance, there needn't be a problem about ignorance and error. So long as cow is appropriately connected with cow (the properry), it doesn't matter what you believe about cows. For muclr the same reason, there needn't be a problem about stability. So long as cow continues to stand in the siune mind-world relation, variations in surrounding beliefs can have no effect on its content.TT
76. We should emphasize that Conceptual Atomism shouldn't be conflated with any partiorlar theory of reference determination and its way of dealing with the Disjunction Problem. Ruth Millikan, e.g., makes use of a theory that is similar to Fodorrs but which requires certain historical facts as well. "A substance concept causally originates from the substance that it denotes. It is a concept of A, rather than B, not because the thinker will always succeed in reidentifyttg A, never confusing it with B, but because A is what the thinker has bem conceptually, hence physically, hacking and picking up information aboub and because the concept has been tuned to its present accuracy by causal interaction with either the members of A's speciftc domain or with.rt itself, during the evolutionary history of the species or ttuough the leaming history of the individual" (199s [cJrapter 23 'ryr this volumeL p. 63; see also Millikan l9&4r. For a useful overview of theories of mental content, see Crane (1995').

77. To the extent that the mind-world relation is supported by varying sets of beliefs, these can be thought of as forming an equivalence class. Each set is semantically the same as all the others since they all converge on the sirme mind-world relatiory it's this relation however, and not the specific belief contents, that determine a concepfs content.

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Concepts and Cognitive

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cept to reflect this contingensy, namely, MALE pARENT (: rarrnn). Notice that, in this way, the learning of FATHER takes place only on the condition that the agent previously possesses the concepts MAL"E and panevr. Turning to the component concepts, MALE and pARENr, we can now ask the same question about how they are acquired. Perhaps they too decompose into simpler concepts and are acquired in much the same way as we are supposing FATHER is acquired. Yet clearly this process has to stop. Eventually decomposition comes to an end, and at that point we simply can't explain acquisition in terms of a constructive process. Since this is the only explanation of how a concept is learne4 there is no explanation of how primitive concepts can be learned. Thus they must be innate. In one form or another, this argument has led many people to be weary of Conceptual Atomism. After all, accepting the innateness of cer.,,,rcv and c.rnsuREroR is no small matter. Forfunately, Fodor's ilgument isn't sound, though not primarily for the reasons that are usually cited. What's really wrong with Fodor's position is that with his focus on conceptual structure, he fails to pose the issue of conceptual acquisition in its most fundamental terms. If to possess a concept is to possess a contentful representation, the issue of acquisition is how given the correct theory of mental content, one can come to be in a state in which the conditions that the theory specifies obtain. To answer this question one needs to look at the acquisition process from the vantage point of a developed theory of content. One of the reasons atomistic theories may have appeared to prohibit leaming is precisely because they have rarely been articulated to the point where one can ask how a mind comes to satisfy their constraints. Ironically, now that Fodor has provided a detailed atomistic theory, we can see by relation to the theory how an unstructured concept might be learned. To explain acquisition on the Asymmetric Dependence Theory one needs an account of how the mind-world dependencies that are constitutive of content come to obtain. The key to the explanation is the notion of a sustaining mechanism. A sustaining mechanism is a mechanism that supports a mind-world dependency relation. For some concepts there will be sustaining mechanisms in terms of neurologically specifted hansducers, but the majority of concepts require sustaining mechanisms that take the form of inferential processes. The idea is that although speciftc inferences implicating a concept aren't constitutive of the concept's content, they nonetheless contribute to the explanation of why the concept is tokened in a variety of contexts. Since having a concept involves having an appropriate sustaining mechanism, a psychological model of concept acquisition is to be directed at the question of how various sustaining mechanisms are acquired. Margolis (199S [chapter Zlinthis volume]) examines this question in detail and catalogs a number of distinct types of sustaini.g mec}anisms. An interesting result of this work is that a typical sustaining mechanism for nafural kind concepts implicates a kind syndrome-the sort of information that

Let's put aside the question of whether nonatomic theories of lexical concepts are defensible. What is the reasoning behind the rest of Fodo/s argument? Briefly, Fodor sees only one way that cognitive science can explain the learning of a concept. This is by postulating a mechanism whereby a new complex concept is assembled from its constituents. To take a simple example, suppose that the concept FATHER is the concept of a male parent and that the concept has the strucfure MALE pARENr, that is, it is literally composed of the concepts MALE and p,rnnr.n (and whatever logico-syntactic concepts may be involved). In this case, one can imagine that the acquisition of rerHsn proceeds by noticing that some parents are male and by constnrcting a complex con-

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Concepts and Cognitive

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remarns outside of the strucfure of s,{cHEron simply because it's not part of the defini-

tion of secrfrron Like any other theorist, the atomist holds that people associate a considerable amount of information with any concept they possess. The only difference is that whereas other theorists say that much of the information is collateral (and that only a small part is constifutive of the concept itself ), atomists say that all of it is collateral. Thus for concepfual atomists a lexical concept can be unstructured while retaining its linlqs to the representational resoruces that explain how it finctions. We take it that a move like this is implicit in most discussions of Conceptual Atomism. For instance, in spite of Fodoy's defense of the idea that lexical concepts are
primitive, he fully acknowledges the importance of prototlpe structure. He writes (t98T, p. 293)z

Now, what is striking about prototypes as opposed to deftnitions is that,

whereas the evidence for the psychological reality of the latter is, as we've seen, exiguou+ there is abundant evidence for the psychological reality of the former. Eleanor Rosch ... and her colleagues, in particular, have provided shiking demonstrations that the prototype strucfure of a concept determines much of the variance in a wide variety of experimental tasks, chronometric and otherwise.... Insofar as theses get established in cognitive psycholory, I think we can take the reality of prototype strucfures as read.

In other words, Fodor endorses the existence of prototype structure and its explanatory signiftcance, yet he denies that this structure is part of the nature of concepts; for him it's entirely collateral.sl For Fodor, prototypes are related to their concepts in much the way that a classical theorist would say that rruEr.ro is related to secHrron. If there is any difference, it's just that prototypes involve cognitive relations that have
more reliable and pervasive effects.
The koblem of the Analytic Data As we noted earlier, one re:rson that philosophers cite for thinking that concepts have partial deftnitions is that this provides an explanation of the analytic data. People can feel the pull of a proposed deftnition or a counterexample and, more generally, they are able to form iudgments about the constifutive conditions for satisfiiing a concept. George Rey (1,993) has marshaled an argument. against Conceptual Atomism based on this data. His claim is that quite apart from the question of whether there are any analytic truths, people certainly have intuitions about what's analytic. One explanation of these intuitions is that they reflect constifutive relations among the concepts at stake. So barring an altemative atomistic explanation, we have simultaneously an argument against Conceptual Atomism and an argument for the Neoclassical Theory. Rey's position is that no plausible atomistic altemative exists. One atomistic proposal Rey considers is that infuitions of analyticity reflect the way that a concept is introduced. For instance, one might try to maintain that we learn a concept like BAcHELon by being told that bachelors are unmarried men. This explanation is inadequate, however, as it fails to address a range of cases where there

8I. More precisely, he denies that protobypes are part of the semantic structure of concepts. Since he seen$ to assume that there is nothing more to the strucfure of a concept than its semantic shucfure, he doesn't distinguish between the two daims. Wdve seen, however, that some theorists do distinguish them (e.g- dual theorists), so one has to be careful. We'll return to the guestion of how to think about conceptual strucfure in sec. 7.

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extent to which they hold our convictions. The examples involving BAcHELoR are about as ftrm as they come. But other cases are less secure. Is it analytic that cats are animals? Here our own intuitions waver, and the controversies surrounding this case seem to suggest that other people's intuitions are less secure as well. Our account of the analytic data predicts this variability. Part of the variability traces back to the clause that the constitutive relation has to seem obvious; surely some things are less obvious than others. But another part traces back to the clause that the belief is entrenched. We need only add that not all such beliefs are equally entrenched. Those that are highly entrenched will give rise to ftrrn intuitions of analyticity; those that are less enhenched will give rise to shikier intuitions. As far as we can tell, Rey has no comparable explanation. Since he relies upon acfual analytic cormections among concepts, they would seem to be all on a par. So at this point in the debate, Conceptual Atomism may have an advantage over the Neoclassical Theory.
The koblem of Compositionality In a sense, an atomistic theory of concepts such as Fodor's doesn't have any problem with conceptual combination. Yet this is only because, as the theory is posed, it is restricted to lexical concepts. Suppose, however, that we treat Fodor's theory of reference determination as a comprehensive theory of concepts, in the same way that we initidly treated the Prototype Theory. Then his theory appears to have difficulties that will seem all too familiar. Consider, for examplq a concept we discussed in connection with the Proto-

type Theory, an example that's owing to Fodor himself-cRANDMoTHERs Mosr oF IV{ARRIED ro DENnsrs. It is hardly likely that this concept stands in a lawful dependency relation with the property of being a grandmother most of whose grandchildren are married to dentists. Nor is it likely that any other dependency relations that it might stand in are asyrnmetrically dependent on this one
wHosE GRANDCFIILDREN ARE

(Laurence 1993).83 Earlier (in sec. 3.2) we quoted Fodor and Lepore arguing against Prototlpe Theory in the following way:

7. Prototypes aren't compositional.

2. Concepts are compositional. 3. So concepts aren't prototlryes.

But asymmetric dependence relations are in exactly the same position. The asymmetric dependence relations of complex concepts aren't a function of the asymmetric dependence relations of their constituents. Thus one could adopt an argument against the Asymmetric Dependence Theory that runs parallel to Fodor
and Lepore's argument against the Prototype Theory:
1,. Representations

in asymmetric dependence relations aren't compositional.

2. Concepts are compositional. 3. So concepts aren't representations in asynrmetric dependence relations.

Fodor, of course, is aware of the difficulties surrounding complex concepts. His own way out has two parts. The ftrst we've already noted: He stipulates that his theory applies to lexical concepts only. The second, which is just as important, is that he appeals to a different theory to account for complex concepts. This move on his part
83. Fodor's theory also has special difficulties with any complex concept that by definition picks out items that can't be detected,, e.g., r.JNDErEcrABrE srAR BtRl{.

-([aurqo slqt

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Concepts and Cognitive

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The Problem of E*ptV and Coertensioe Concepts Conceptual Atomism implies that the

of a lexical concept isn't determined by its strucfure. This view contrasts with all the other theories we've looked at, in that on all the other theories, lexical concepts have shructure and it's their strucfure that determines their reference. One way of putting the difference is that other theories of concepts are descriptivisb an item fatls under a concept just in case it satisfies the description that is encoded by
reference

the concept's shucfure. We've seen that the advantage of a nondescriptivist theory is that it is better equipped to handle diffictrlties such as the Problem of Stability; but descriptivist theories have their advantages too. One is a point that will be familiar from our disctrssion of Frege. If all there is to the content of a concept is its reference, then there is no way to distinguish coreferential concepts. Descriptivist theories have no trouble here, since they distinguish coreferential concepts in terms of their differing strucfures; the structure of a concept acts as its mode of presentation. In contrast, atomic theories have considerable trouble with coreferential concepts. To see the significance of this issue, consider a case where two concepts are coextensive as a matter of necessity. Take for instance, the concepts rRIAt{cutAR and rnrI-ATERAL. Since every geometrical object that instantiates the one must instantiate the other, it's hard to see how to pull apart the properties triangular and trilateral. Supposing that there is a law connecting triangular with TRIANGUI-AR, there must also be a law cont ecting hilateral with rruANcur.r,n. But surely the latter isn't asyrnmehically dependent on the former. If hilateral obiects didn't cause tokenings of TRIANGUI R, how could hi"t g,rlar objects cause tokenings of TRLANGUTnn?s6 To take another exarnple, suppose, as many philosophers do, that the properties water and HzO are identilal. How, then, can the Asymmetric Dependence Theory distinguish between the concepts wArER and Hzo? Both would be nomically dependent upon the very same property. These considerations are dl the more vivid if we consider the large stock of empry concepts that we all possess, concepts such as LrNlconr.r and nr. All of these concepts are correlated with the same thing, namely, nothing. Yet they are clearly distinct from one another. Another sort of example may be of special interest to psychologists. Many species besides humans are selectively sensitive to stimuli in a way that argues that they should be credited with concepts. At the same time, it seems that the concepts they have are not always the same as our own, even when they apparently have the same extension. For instancg Richard Herrnstein and his colleagues have conducted a range of experiments where pigeons have proven to be highly skilled at sorting photographs into those that depict trees from those that do not (Herrnstein 1979, IgS4). The photographs were taken from a variety of perspectives-some showing dose-ups of the ends of a few branches, some showing tree-covered shores from a substantial distance, and so on. Conhasting photographs depicted close-ups of celery stalks and the like. Despite the vast differences runong the photographs of trees and the existence of the treelike items in the nontree photographs, pigeons are able to sort them with considerable accuracy. Whafs more, they are able to do much the siune for a number of other categories, including human, fith, flower, and automobile.It looks as though they are cadsally responsive to groupings of objects that are very nearly coextensive with salient categories of human cognition. At the same time it
56. Cf. also pairs of concepts such as Bny and seu. Every event in which something is bought is also an event in which something is sold How can Asymmetric Dependence distinguish the two?

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Concepts and Cognitive

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Not surprisingly, Fodor is reluctant to supplement his Asyrnmetric Dependence Theory with inferential roles. His alternative suggestion is that coextensive concepts can be distinguished in terms of their formal properties. Like words, concepts are objects with formal and semantic properties. So just as the words "trilateral" and "triangular" are to be distinguished by their spelling or their orthography (as well as their content), the concepts rRr.ANGr,Ju,R and TRTLATERAT are to be distinguished by whatever properties account for their being of distinct formal types. lA/hether this proposal works remains to be seen. It's an interesting suggestion, however, since it pulls apart several strands in the Fregean response to coextensive concepts. In the Fregean tradition, coextensive concepts are handled by saying that they have different modes of presentations. But the notion of a mode of presentation is generally ut derstood in terms of its relevance for semantic phenomena. Don't forget: Frege said that a mode of presentation is contained within the sense of an expression and determines its reference. Another way of looking at Fodor's treatment of coextensive concepts is that he too, wants to say that coextensive concepts differ with respect to their modes of presentation. Fodor would only add that modes of presentation needn't be part of the content of a concept; they needn't even determine a concept's reference. They simply give us a means for dealing with Frege's puzzle.In this way, Fodor may be able to maintain the view that lexical concepts are primitive while avoiding some of the pitfalls that go with purely referential theories of content. This completes our survey of theories of concepts. While our discussion is by no means exhaustive, we have tried to touch on the advantages and the problems associated with the major theories of concepts that are currently under debate.88 As we've left things, no theory stands out as providing the best comprehensive account of concepts. One reason for this may be that there are different ways for a theory of concepts to contribute to an understanding of their nature. We'll take up this question in the next section.
Box
1O

Summary of Criticisms of Conceptual Atomism

1. The Problem of Radical Nativism

Under Concepfual Atomism, most lexical concepts turn out to be innate, induding such unlikely candidates as xyLopHoNE and cennunsroR. 2. The Problem of F,xplanatory Impotence If lexical concepts are primitive they can't explain psychological phenomena such as categorization.

3. The Problem of the Anatytic Data

Concepfual Atomism lacks an adequate explanation analyticity.

of why people have intuitions of

4. The Problem of Compositionalit5r

Atomistic theories of concepts have as much ditriorlty with bonceph,ral combination
the Prototype Theory.
as

5. The Problem of Empty and Coextensive Concepts

If concepts are atoms and the content of a concept is iust its reference, then coextensive
concepts can't be distinguished. As a resulb all empty concepts have the same contmt.

S8. An important exception is the Exemplar Theory. See, e.g., the excerpt from Smith and Medin (19EI
[chapter 9 in this volumel) and Estes (1994).

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This challenge-to single out those relations among concepts identity-is especially difftcult when one is concemed with nonsemantic components. Without the constraint that a concept's structure must contribute to its content, there rnay be no principled way to draw th" lit One sug". gestion-though admittedly a sketchy one-is that a concept's structure has to be robust and theoretically signiftcant. We aren't sure what to say in general terms about when a structure is theoretically significant. As a guideline, however, we'd suggest cases where it's universal, or nearly universal or where its appearance is a matter of psyc}ological necessity. To the extent that prototypes are good candidates for nonsemantic structurg this is because their deployment in fast categorization does appear to be psychologically necessary, and because particular prototypes ftgure in robust explanations of a variety of data. So maybe the claim that concepts have nonsemantic
and
rues?Ee

that ar constitutive of their

structure can be made to stick.

Yet another view of concepfual strucfure is that a concept may have components that are relevant to its semantics but not to its reference. In much this spirit, Hilary Putnam suggests that a word's meaning includes a prototype-like structure even though it plays no part in the determination of the word's reference (Putnam !97Ot,

p. t48):

with the word "tiger" a theorV; not the actual theory we believe about tigers, which is very complex, but an oversimplified theory which describes a do to speak, tiger stereotype. lt describes . . . a normal member of the natural kind. It is not necessary that we believe this theory, though in the case of "tiger" we do. But it is necessary that we be aware that this theory is associated with the word: if our stereotype of tiger ever eJranges, then the word "tige{' will have changed its meaning.
[TJhere is somehow associated

This claim easily translates into a view about concepts. The suggestion is that a concept can have structure that is partly constitutive of its content even if the structure isn't implicated in an account of the concept's reference. The thing we want to emphasize is that this is a different position than the Fregean view that there is more to the meaning of a concept than its reference. After all, it was part of the Fregean program that sense determines reference. In contrast, the present suggestion is that in addition to a reference, concepts have another aspect to their content, but one that doesn't determine their reference.eo Finally, a fourth way of understanding conceptual structure is in terms of the sustaining mechanisms that support a reference-determining relation, such as as)nnmetric dependence. On this view, one concept may be part of anothey's strucfure if the ftrst is part of a theoretically signiftcant sustaining mechanism associated with the second. Again, what counts as theoretically significant is a hard question. But as before, it's plausible enough to include ones that are universal (or nearly universal), or ones that appear to be a matter of psychological necessity. This might be where Jackendoff's J-D representations find their place. Perhaps they are part of the structure of obiect concepts. Though they have problems determining reference, there is no reason why
89. Notice that it can't simply be a matter of distinguishing which is "psychologically real"-a suggestion 'that is implicit in some writings on the Dual Theory (see, e.g., Landau 1952). Both are psychologically real in that the conceptual relations have psychological effects. Surely, if you ask someone whether birds are
smarter than rocks, she'd say they are. 90. In philosophy, some h'vo-factor conceptual role theories may fall in this category.

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Concepts and Cognitive

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descriptivist theories, including the Classical Theory and the Theory-Theory, since these face the Problem of Ignorance and Error. Utlimate Arbiters of Categorizntion Atomic cores do not S.re a satisfactory account of our most considered judgments about category membership, so they aren't suiled to be the ultimate arbiterb of categorization. Arguably, however, classical cores and cores with theory structure can do no better. Given the implications of conftrmation holism, it may be that nothing short of the
entire belief system can act as the ultimate arbiter of categorization.

At best, the

Theory-Theory might allow for the claim that reflective category judgments implicate theoretical knowledg", including knowledge that implicitly involves a commitment to essentialism. And, of course this information couldn't be part of an atomic core. But Conceptual Atomism can explain these judgments by appeal to the same theoretical beliefs, claiming they are merely associated with the concept in question or, altematively, claiming that they are part of the nonsemantic strucfure of the concept, alongside its prototype. The fact that the information specifted by suc} beliefs appears to be of great theoretical signiftcance argues for the atomist taking the latter view.e3 Stability Since Conceptual Atomism is not a descriptivist account, the concepts it covers are largely unaffected by changes in the beliefs that are associated with them. In conhast, the Classical Theory can't provide stability until it first overcomes the Problem of Ignorance and Error, and the Theory-Theory is notoriously poor at providing stability.

In short, atomistic cores are the best of the lot. To the extent that a version of the Dual Theory is to be preferred, ifs one that brings together atomic cores with prototlpes and perhaps some theory structure too, all united by a nondescriptivist account

At the beginning of our discussion, we took pains to emof concepts has had a rich history of interdisciplinary interaction. Also, all along we've been careful to tease apart the different explanatory
phasize that the study goals that have accompanied the major theories. The integration of these goals yields four general ways of construing the nafure of a concept. In our view, each deserves to be explored in considerable detail. No doubt, this will require frrther cooperation across the disciplinary boundaries of cognitive science.

of reference. This brings us full circle.

8. Appendir: More on OntoloW

We suspect that some philosophers may be unsatisfied with our brief discussion of the ontology of concepts, since there are other reasons than Frege's for claiming that concepts can't be mental representations. Christopher Peacocke and Georges Rey may be more representative of contemporary theorists who hold that concepts are
93. We should note that the question of whether people's knowledge in a given domain is organized around a theory is distinct from the question of whether that theory determines the content of the concepts involved. Theory-theorists usually assume that the daim about content comes for free orrce ifs established that people have intemdly represented theories. But it doesrt't (see Margolis 1995). For instance, one could easily maintain that an intemal theory of belief zubserves commonsense psychological reasoning, while also maintaining that this theory fails to determine the contents for BETJEF, DEsrRE, etc Instead their contents may be determined, for example, in accordance with an information-based semantics.

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Concepts and Cognitive

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these two should be treated as the same concept would seem to be an open theoretical question, not one to be settled by fiat. For instance, one would face the question of whether inferential roles are constihutive of cc,ncepts and, to the extent that they are, the question of which inferential roles are relevant to conceptual identity. Given the tremendous controversy surrounding both of these issues, it makes no sense to assume from the outset that any partiorlar difference in inferential role is irrelevant to the issue of conceptual identity. What about Rey's second :ugument, that a given type of representation might be used to express different concepts by different individuals?es Here too the point can be granted without abandomng the claim that concepts are mental representations. If a given type of representation, M, can be used to express different t1ryes of concepts, then of course we cannot identify these different concepts with M. But nothing stops us from identifying each of the different types of concepts (e.g.; pARrs and rneNce) with other typings of mentd representations, each of which can be instantiated by instances of M. For example, M might be a representation that is typed in terms of its orthographic or imagistic properties (or some other nonsemantic property). At the same time, M will represent one thing or anothea depending upon various other facts about it-facts about its relations to other mental representations, or perhaps facts about its causal or nomic relations to things in the world. Which concept a given instance of M expresses will then depend not just on its being a token of M but also on its t1rying in virtue of these other facts. In other words, concepts can still be rnental representations, so long as the conditions for typing representation tokens arert't confined to a highly limited set of formal properties. As before, though, it's hardly clear that representationalists have to be so concessive. That is, it isn't obvious that as a matter of. psychological fact, a given type of representation can be used to express different concepts by different individuals. For all we know, one's image of Paris might not be suited to serve as a concept of France, even if it seems on a given occurence that it does. Why trust introspection in such cases? Perhaps whafs really going on is that one consciously entertains an image of Paris and this occasions a (distinct) mental representation of France.e6 In short, Peacocke's and Rey's arguments don't work. We haven't been given sufficient reason to think that corrcepts can't be mental representations, even if we accept the assumptions they ask us to make. Granting the psychological reality of mental representations, the implications are clear: Nothing is lost by saying that concepts are mental representations.ez
References

Antony, L. (t,gl7r. Naturalized Epistemology and the Study of language. In A. Shimony and D. Nails
Gds.), Naturalistic Epistemology (pp. Z.3S-257). DordrecJrt: D. Reidel.

95. Or, for that matter, that a single individual might use the sarne type of representation to express different concepts at different times. 96. That sai4 it does seem likely that for at least some tlpings of mental representations, representations so typed should be capable of instantiating more than one oncept. For example, sometimes mental representations may acquire new rireanings and thereby become different concepts. But even then there is no reason to say that the concepts-old and new-arenit mental representations. g7. We would like to thank Peter Camrtherg Richard Grandy, IeanY.,azea Daniel Oshersoru Sarah Sawyer, Scott Sfurgeou and lonathan Sutton for their comments on this c.hapter.

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Science

79

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