Shifting Concepts: The Philosophy and Psychology of Conceptual Variability

by Teresa Marques (Editor), Åsa Wikforss (Editor)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly
difficult to defend.

This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[saml · Rating 2 out of 5]

slightly odd bundle of papers. the first half is on conceptual variation, and the second on conceptual change, but the first half is also in large part about colour and the second about race. so this made for a rather funny introduction to these subjects for me. my favourite was the haslanger, though i also really liked the cohnitz & haukioja