Concepts
Currently, I have well-worked out ideas about the psychology of one group of concepts: natural kind concepts, that is, concepts of biological species, chemical substances, and perhaps some other categories. I also have some views about artifact concepts and concepts of animal kinds, which I tentatively group together under the heading teleokinds.
My interest in the psychology of concepts stems principally from a desire to put psychology back into philosophy, as described under the heading philosophical applications of cognitive science.
Published Work
- The Naive Aspect of Essentialist Theories. Cognition 74, 149–175, 2000.
- Only Causation Matters: Reply to Ahn et al.. Cognition 82, 71–76, 2001. (Discussion of the previous article.)