By Edouard Machery
Philosophy and psychology of concepts
Subject
Themes
Traditional philosophy and psychology treat concepts as fundamental building blocks of thought, bodies of knowledge stored in long-term memory that enable categorisation, reasoning, and understanding. Psychologists have developed sophisticated theories describing concepts as prototypes (typical examples), exemplars (specific instances), or theories (explanatory frameworks). These theoretical approaches emerged from decades of empirical research on how people categorise objects, draw inferences, and combine ideas. Most researchers assume concepts share common properties and function uniformly across cognitive tasks.
Traditional philosophy and psychology treat concepts as fundamental building blocks of thought, bodies of knowledge stored in long-term memory that enable categorisation, reasoning, and understanding. Psychologists have developed sophisticated theories describing concepts as prototypes (typical…
Edouard Machery's eliminativist proposal represents a radical intervention in cognitive science, challenging assumptions that have structured concept research for decades. Published in 2009, the work appeared at a moment when prototype and exemplar theories enjoyed widespread acceptance whilst…
Psychology and philosophy have long assumed concepts constitute a natural kind with shared properties enabling generalisation and explanation. Researchers sought unified theories describing what all concepts have in common, how they function uniformly across tasks, and what singular format stores…
Traditional theories of cognitive competences assumed single, unified processes underwrite abilities like categorisation, induction, and reasoning. Visual recognition, it was thought, proceeds through one mechanism extracting features and matching them to stored representations. Inductive inference…
Scientific progress occasionally requires abandoning theoretical terms that once appeared indispensable. Phlogiston, caloric, and vital force all played central roles in scientific theories before being eliminated from mature sciences. These eliminations did not deny observed phenomena, but rather…
Philosophers and psychologists both theorise about concepts using identical terminology whilst pursuing fundamentally different questions. This terminological overlap obscures deep differences in explanatory targets, theoretical goals, and methodological approaches. Philosophical analyses of…
Decades of psychological research demonstrate that people employ multiple distinct types of knowledge when categorising, reasoning, and learning. Experimental paradigms isolate specific cognitive processes, revealing that prototypes, exemplars, and theories all contribute to conceptual abilities.…
The psychology of concepts thrives whilst philosophical concept research stagnates, creating an apparent paradox. Psychologists develop sophisticated theories explaining categorisation, induction, and reasoning through empirical investigation. Philosophers criticise these psychological theories for…
The Heterogeneity Hypothesis challenges the received view that concepts constitute a unified natural kind with shared properties across all instances. Instead, it proposes five interconnected tenets establishing that concepts divide into heterogeneous types with little in common beyond referring to…
Three major paradigms dominate contemporary concept research, each proposing fundamentally different knowledge structures and processing mechanisms. The classical theory of concepts as definitions collapsed under empirical pressure, replaced by prototype, exemplar, and theory approaches that better…
Recognising that prototypes, exemplars, and theories coexist raises questions about their organisation and interaction. Do multiple processes operate independently, compete for control, or integrate hierarchically? Multi-process theories attempt to specify how different knowledge types coordinate…
Extensive categorisation research provides the strongest empirical foundation for the Heterogeneity Hypothesis. Decades of experiments using diverse methodologies converge on the conclusion that prototypes, exemplars, and theories all contribute to how people classify objects into categories. The…
Evidence for conceptual heterogeneity extends beyond categorisation to inductive reasoning, concept combination, and neuropsychological findings. These diverse research areas provide converging support for the Heterogeneity Hypothesis through independent methodologies targeting different cognitive…
Scientific eliminativism provides a framework for justified theoretical term elimination. When a term's extension fails to constitute a natural kind, scientific progress requires abandoning it in favour of more precise vocabulary. Concepts meet the criteria for elimination because the class divides…
The eliminativist conclusion transforms how psychology theorises about knowledge and cognition. Rather than seeking unified theories of concepts applicable across all instances, researchers should develop specific theories of prototypes, exemplars, and theories as distinct knowledge types. This…
Traditional philosophy and psychology treat concepts as fundamental building blocks of thought, bodies of knowledge stored in long-term memory that enable categorisation, reasoning, and understanding. Psychologists have developed sophisticated theories describing concepts as prototypes (typical examples), exemplars (specific instances), or theories (explanatory frameworks). These theoretical approaches emerged from decades of empirical research on how people categorise objects, draw inferences, and combine ideas. Most researchers assume concepts share common properties and function uniformly across cognitive tasks.