Parameterised frames and conceptual spaces
Final Report Abstract
The project set out to compare Conceptual Spaces (CS) and (parameterized) Frames, which are two competing theories about the structure of conceptual content. The two theories of concepts share a functional structure: their accounts of concepts are based on attributes, i.e., functions X that assign values out of a value space Val to given objects a: X(a)∈Val. For example, the attribute colour assigns a value in the value space Val = {red, green,...} to a given object: colour(myshirt) = red. Of course, there are also remarkable differences. Frames, on the one hand, consist of bundles of attributes with a recursive structure, which we do not find in CS. CS, on the other hand, associate value spaces with topological or geometric structures which we don't find in frames. While the comparison of frames and CS was only undertaken in the beginning of the project, we subsequently concentrated on the investigation of CS, thereby doing justice to the actuality of CS in the current philosophical landscape and the specific competences of our staff. A major focus of our research was on the naturalness theory of the CS approach. The idea here is that natural concepts and properties have certain geometric properties – most prominently that of convexity. Gärdenfors presents this approach as a solution to the perennial “New Riddle of Induction” raised by Nelson Goodman. The starting point for the discussion was a workshop organized by the PhD student Sebastian Scholz in May 2023 entitled “The Cognitive and Ontological Dimensions of Naturalness”. There is a certain discrepancy between the cognitive naturalness advocated by Gärdenfors and what is traditionally discussed in the metaphysics of science under this heading. Put simply, the metaphysics debate is about the “joints of nature” and CS is about the “joints of thought”. This raised the important question of the relationship between these two concepts of naturalness. The workshop resulted in a special issue of Philosophia, in which the diverse, partly interdisciplinary contributions of the international guests – including Gärdenfors himself – are published. The major findings can be briefly summarized as follows: There are good reasons to think that Gärdenfors’ cognitive naturalness indeed captures features such as cognitive efficiency and projectibility, which speaks in favour of CS. However, there are also doubts whether his account should be regarded a general theory of naturalness because it does not address the metaphysical issues that are commonly associated with that term. But although the CS account may not be a general theory of naturalness, it does seem to describe the conceptual structure of human reasoning rather well. Around the time of the workshop, Matías Osta-Vélez, who is a CS specialist, joined the team. A second workshop in Düsseldorf was organized in June 2024, this time by Osta-Veléz, Sebastian Scholz, and Maria Sekatskaya. It was the 6th official “Conceptual Spaces at Work” – workshop, again, featuring key individuals of the research community. Generally speaking, our research results speak for the versatility of CS. In this way our project contributed to exploring the potential as well as the limits of conceptual spaces.
Publications
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Criteria for naturalness in conceptual spaces. Synthese, 200(2).
Strößner, Corina
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Reasoning with Concepts: A Unifying Framework. Minds and Machines, 33(3), 451–485.
Gärdenfors, Peter & Osta-Vélez, Matías
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Conceptual Spaces: A Solution to Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction?. Philosophia, 52(4), 915-934.
Scholz, Sebastian
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Ecological Empiricism. Philosophia, 52(4), 959-978.
Vosgerau, Gottfried
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Generics as Expectations: Typicality and Diagnosticity. Ratio, 38(1), 16-26.
Gärdenfors, Peter & Osta‐Vélez, Matías
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Induction With and Without Natural Properties: a New Approach to the New Riddle of Induction. Philosophia, 52(4), 935-958.
Thorn, Paul D. & Schurz, Gerhard
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Language, Concepts, and the Nature of Inference. Philosophy of Language in Uruguay, 181-196. Lexington Books.
Osta-Vélez, Matías
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The Cognitive and Ontological Dimensions of Naturalness – Editor’s Introduction. Philosophia, 52(4), 845-848.
Scholz, Sebastian & Vosgerau, Gottfried
