Conceptos: enfoques filosóficos y psicológicos

FEDERICO CASTELLANO

Córdoba

Jornada; Jornadas de la Escuela de Filosofía; 2015

CIFFyH - UNC

Philosophers and psychologists have always tried to provide a suitable explanation of what concepts are. Most philosophers identify concepts with abilities peculiar to cognitive agents. Psychologists, in contrast, identify concepts with token representations located in the head. In this paper, I argue that concepts should be understood neither in terms of mental representations nor in term of abilities. Concepts, I argue, are objective entities whose fundamental property is to be normative. Accordingly, I will suggest that the best alternative to understand what concepts are is to identify them with abstract rules. To support this, I will follow Ginsborg?s Kantian conception of concepts. However, unlike Ginsborg, I will provide an alternative explanation as to the cognitive relationship between concepts and natural creatures. In doing so, a naturalized approach to the normativity of concepts will be proposed.