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dimension (see Brandom 1994). Concepts may be mis- takenly or correctly employed and any abstract rep- resentation of what concepts are must illuminate what is involved in their correct employment. As suggested above, part of the story must have to do with infer- ence. It may be that logical concepts are entirely indi- viduated by means of patterns of legitimate (in this case deductively valid) inference. It seems plausible that many predicative concepts will be implicated in inferential links of some kind or other. Some such concepts will in addition embody standards for legit- imate transitions from perception to belief.
5. Topics of Concern in the 1990s
Concepts form a focal point for overlapping theor- etical concerns of linguists, psychologists, and phil- osophers. A very basic topic for further enquiry concerns the abstract representation of concepts and the characterization of conceptual abilities in terms of these representations. Such enquiries will have to take account of empirical work by psychologists on predi- cative concepts indicating that many concepts are associated with typicality effects. (Rosch and Mervis 1975; Rosch 1978 are classic papers. For useful surveys, see Roth and Frisby 1986; Smith 1988.) In the case of a concept like that of furniture, for example, subjects will regularly count chairs as more typical instances than radios. It seems also that instances of a given sort are regarded as typical in proportion to the extent to which they have family resemblances to instances of other sorts. Further, some concepts relate to categories which are basic in that there is a high level of family resemblance between the diverse sorts of instances which they include. How precisely these findings bear on the theoretical representation of con- cepts remains to be seen.
A cardinal tenet of traditional empiricism is that all concepts are acquired. Fodor (1975) has argued that the very idea of acquiring a concept is paradoxical (see also Woodfield 1987). Certainly, one learns to associate concepts with linguistic expressions but, Fodor thinks, the most plausible account of how one does so assumes that one already possesses the con- cepts in question. This is one of the considerations which leads Fodor to posit a language of thought. The hypothesis of a language of thought is itself a
matter of lively debate stimulated by the development of connectionist models of the mind (see Cussins 1990).
The development of conceptual abilities in children is an area of fruitful interaction between psychologists and philosophers (see, for example, Carey 1985 and Keil 1989).
For further reviews of current issues, see numbers 1 and 2 of the journal Mind and Language, 4 (1989). These contain articles on concepts by psychologists, theoretical linguists, and philosophers.
See also: Analyticity; Family Resemblance. Bibliography
Brandom R B 1994 Making It Explicit. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Carey S 1985 Conceptual Change in Childhood. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Cussins A 1990 The connectionist construction of concepts. In: Boden M A The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Fodor J A 1975 The Language of Thought. Crowell, New Y ork
Keil F C 1989 Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Lakoff G 1987 Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Uni- versity of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Millar A 1991 Reasons and Experience. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Peacocke C 1992 A Study of Concepts. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Putnam H 1975 Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Rosch E 1978 Principles of categorization. In: Rosch E,
Lloyd B B (eds.) Cognition and Categorization. Erblaum,
Hillsdale, NJ
Rosch E, Mervis C B 1975 Family resemblances: Studies in
the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology
7:573-605
Roth I, Frisby J 1986 Perception and Representation: A Cog-
nitive Approach. Open University Press, Milton Keynes Smith E E 1988 Concepts and thought. In: Sternberg R J, Smith E E (eds.) The Psychology of Human Thought.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Wittgenstein L 1958 (trans. Anscombe G E M ) Philosophical
Investigations, 2nd edn. Blackwell, Oxford
Woodfield A 1987 On the very idea of acquiring a concept. In: Russell J (ed.) Philosophical Perspectives on Devel-
opmental Psychology. Blackwell, Oxford
While it might seem obvious to many that language is in some way or other conventional, or based on 'conventions,' the notion is remarkably difficult to
make precise and remains a matter of considerable controversy concerning, for example, the nature of linguisticconventions,howtheyariseinthefirstplace,
Convention P. Pagin
Convention
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