Concepts & Categories
Concepts
“Concepts are the glue that holds our mental world together” (Murphy, 2002, p1).
This topic will explore attempts to model the structure of human concepts. This will involve engaging with a historical debate and distinction between more “statistical” and more “rule-based” models and their implications but also thinking about how our concepts relate to how we categorize things but also how we think and generate new ideas.
Categories
Plato famously characterised humans as seeking to ‘carve nature at its joints’ (Phaedrus). The rough idea is that we find ways to classify and group the things in our experience in ways that somehow respect their natural clustering and separation.
This topic looks at cognitive models that have tried to capture how and why we partition the world in the ways we do.
Primary Readings
Everyone should read these and be prepared to discuss.
- Murphy, G. (2004). The big book of concepts. MIT press. Chapters 2-3.
