Belindi wrote: ↑January 22nd, 2022, 7:51 am
Consul wrote:No, we can happily continue to talk about abstract concept-types (such as the concept <dog>) for the sake of convenience; but from my concretistic perspective we need to be aware that concept-types are fictional objects, and that what really exists instead are concrete tokens of them in people's minds.
But a concrete token in a mind is both subjective and dynamic. Thoughts are freely creative. A concrete token in minds, plural, is mediated through and crystallised by language and without language it could not exist.
The concept 'dog' varies from thinker to thinker according to what the thinker's intention is towards a dog. Anthony is a dog groomer and the dog in question usually tries to bite him when he baths it. Bill is a veterinary surgeon and the dog in question has an operable tumour. Gerard is the dog's affectionate owner and he dreads his companion's demise. Manuel is a small boy who knows only one dog, the family's Newfoundland who is large and keeps pulling Manuel out of the water.
There being different
attitudes toward dogs doesn't mean there being different
concepts of a dog. However, Timothy Williamson has drawn a distinction between
concepts and
conceptions:
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"A distinction is sometimes drawn between
concepts and
conceptions. A concept is more like a dictionary definition. For example, a dictionary may define the word 'vixen' as 'female fox', so the concept
vixen just is the concept
female fox (my dictionary also gives another definition for 'vixen', as 'quarrelsome woman', which would be another concept). By contrast, your conception of a vixen includes all the beliefs you would express using that word (in a given sense). Unlike the concept
vixen, my conception of a vixen includes my belief that a vixen lives under my garden shed. Dictionaries are for concepts, encyclopaedias for conceptions. If we distinguish concepts from conceptions like this, then conceptual questions are special, because they concern definitions. Clarifying one's concepts is defining one's terms.
One advantage of distinguishing concepts from conceptions is that it explains how knowledge can be communicated from one person to another and preserved over time. Conceptions are personal and fleeting, but definitions can be shared and stable. 'Vixen' has been defined as 'female fox' for many centuries and many millions of speakers of English."
(Williamson, Timothy.
Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. pp. 45-5)
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Anyway, if concepts are concrete mental representations of things, there is still the question of their relationship with mind and thought. Where there are mental representations, there are representational mental states, which are dispositional states of mind. Following Fodor&Lowe, I'd define a concept (qua mental entity) as the (relatively stable) individual mental ability and tendency to think about X or Xs (as such) in some way.
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"[H]aving concept X is having the ability to think about Xs (or better, that having concept X is being able to think about Xs 'as such')."
(Fodor, Jerry A.
Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 3)
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"As for the ontological status of concepts themselves, if they are, as I have been suggesting,
ways of thinking of entities, then it would seem that they are mental properties—for properties, quite generally, are appropriately thought of as being ways entities are, whether we are talking of properties as universals or properties as particulars (…). For example, redness is a way objects can be coloured and squareness is a way they can be shaped. A concept, then, is a way someone can be thinking of an entity. Understood as universals, concepts are mental attributes and understood as particulars they are mental modes. The objects that possess them are thinking subjects, that is,
persons."
(Lowe, E. J.
The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 85)
"But what, quite generally, are
concepts supposed to be? Of course, this in itself is a highly contentious question. Here I shall simply state one widely held view of the matter, which is that a concept is
a way of thinking of some thing or things (Lowe, 2006, pp. 85–6). Since thought is a mental process, this means, in effect, that concepts are
mental properties of a certain kind. For properties or qualities, quite generally, are
ways of being – ways things are (…). For example, roundness is a way of being shaped and redness is a way of being colored. By the same token, concepts, being ways of thinking of things, are ways of being and hence properties – and, more specifically,
mental properties, since thought is a mental process. So much for the ontology of concepts. But we speak of thinkers
grasping or
failing to grasp concepts. We may take this simply to be a matter of their being able, or not being able, to think of things in certain ways. Someone who grasps the concept of a
cat is able to think of certain things – in this case, certain living organisms – in a certain way. What way is that? Well, of course, such a person is able to think of certain living organisms as being
cats. And what does this involve? Well, among other things, it involves being able to think of these organisms as possessing certain characteristic properties, such as furriness and warmbloodedness, and – most importantly for present purposes – as satisfying a certain criterion of identity. We needn’t suppose, however, that a person who grasps the concept of a cat must be able to
articulate such a criterion in an explicit form, in line with the general form of a criterion of identity stated earlier. Indeed, it is notoriously difficult – even for philosophers – to formulate clear and uncontroversial criteria of identity for many kinds of things, even when we seem to have a good implicit grasp of such criteria that is manifested in our ability to make confident identity-judgments concerning things of those kinds."
(Lowe, E. J. "Individuation." In
A Companion to Metaphysics, 2nd ed., edited by Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz, 28-36. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. p. 28-9)
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