Nicholas Shea: Concepts as an Interface ^Featured

On Tuesday, 8th of October 2024, at 10:30, we will have a Philosophy of Cognitive Science seminar featuring our guest, Professor Nicholas Shea. We will discuss Chapter 5 (‘Concepts as an Interface’) of his new book. The book is available in open access here: 
https://philpapers.org/rec/SHECAT-11

The abstract of the book follows below. We assume that all participants have read the chapter before the meeting, and no presentations are planned.

The seminar is held in-person in Staszic Palace, Nowy Świat 72, Warsaw, floor 1, room 154. 

We will strive to make a Google Meet connection work. For access, email Przemysław Nowakowski: przemyslaw.nowakowski@ifispan.edu.pl

The room is not equipped with proper microphones, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Concepts at the Interface
Nicholas Shea
2024 Oxford University Press
https://philpapers.org/rec/SHECAT-11

Abstract

Research on concepts has concentrated on the way people apply concepts online, when presented with a stimulus. Just as important, however, is the use of concepts offline, when planning what to do or thinking about what is the case. There is strong evidence that inferences driven by conceptual thought draw heavily on special-purpose resources: sensory, motoric, affective, and evaluative. At the same time, concepts afford general-purpose recombination and support domain-general reasoning processes—phenomena that have long been the focus of philosophers. There is a growing consensus that a theory of concepts must encompass both kinds of process. This book shows how concepts are able to act as an interface between general-purpose reasoning and special-purpose systems. Concept-driven thinking can take advantage of the complementary costs and benefits of each. The book lays out an empirically-based account of the different ways in which thinking with concepts takes us to new conclusions and underpins planning, decision-making, and action. It also spells out three useful implications of the account. First, it allows us to reconstruct the commonplace idea that thinking draws on the meaning of a concept. Second, it offers an insight into how human cognition avoids the frame problem and the complementary, less discussed, ‘if-then problem’ for nested processing dispositions. Third, it shows that metacognition can apply to concepts and concept-driven thinking in various ways. The framework developed in the book elucidates what it is that makes concept-driven thinking an especially powerful cognitive resource.

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