Chapter 1 Concepts and Cognitive Science

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 andopen 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