Learning incommensurate concepts.

A central task of developmental psychology and philosophy of science is to show how humans learn radically new concepts. Famously, Fodor has argued that such learning is impossible if concepts have definitional structure and all learning is hypothesis testing. We present several learning processes t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 205; no. 3; pp. 1 - 37
Autores principales: Clatterbuck, Hayley, Gentry, Hunter
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Mar2025
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:A central task of developmental psychology and philosophy of science is to show how humans learn radically new concepts. Famously, Fodor has argued that such learning is impossible if concepts have definitional structure and all learning is hypothesis testing. We present several learning processes that can generate novel concepts. They yield transformations of the fundamental feature space, generating new similarity structures which can underlie conceptual change. This framework provides a tractable, empiricist-friendly account that unifies and shores up various strands of the neo-Quinean approach to conceptual development.