Concepts as Regulative Ideals - Laura Schroeter

What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as same saying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoughts. The key question, then, is what psychological and social facts could play these roles? Elsewhere, we have argued for a specific relational model of concept identity, the connectedness model (e.g. Schroeter 2012, Schroeter and Schroeter 2014, 2015). Our aim in this paper is to further explain the motivations behind that account, to address worries about transitivity and vagueness, and to contrast our approach with closely related accounts of concept identity developed by François Recanati and Simon Prosser. What’s distinctive of our approach is that we seek to vindicate the first-person epistemic perspective of concept users. Concepts, on our account, play a crucial normative role in setting regulative ideals for the representational practices in which individual subjects participate. This focus on the normative role of concepts – as opposed to a purely causal explanatory role –motivates our approach to concept identity and our toleration of vagueness and borderline cases.

Date & time

Thu 07 Mar 2024, 2:00pm to 3:30pm

Location

Level 1 Auditorium (1.28), RSSS Building 146 Ellery Cres. Acton 2601, ACT

Speakers

Laura Schroeter

Contacts

Michael Barnes

SHARE

Updated:  4 March 2024/Responsible Officer:  Head of School/Page Contact:  CASS Marketing & Communications