![]() ![]() Chapter 3 examines Churchland's and Gärdenfors's view that concepts are regions of a hyperdimensional mental space. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the views that, in different ways, tie together concepts and perception: first, the Lockean view that concepts are abstracted from perceptions, then the Kantian view that concepts are rules of synthesis of perceptions. In the critical part (Chapters 1 to 4), Gauker sharply scrutinizes the views about concepts he believes are mistaken, occasionally rescuing an insight from the ruins his criticisms are supposed to leave behind. ![]() Words and Images is divided into a critical and a constructive part. Many more topics are broached in passing, including the alleged ambiguity of "concept" in psychology and philosophy (contra Machery (2009), this term is used unambiguously to refer to the constituents of judgments), the myth of folk psychology (it is not true that we predict and explain behavior by ascribing beliefs and desires), the proper interpretation of Kant's opaque theory of concepts, the non-conceptual nature of perceptual content, and the nature of meaning (strictly speaking, words don't have any meaning, although we use the word "meaning" to prescribe how words should be used), and the views of many philosophers (Sellars, McDowell, Prinz, Gärdenfors, etc.) and psychologists (Rosch, Mandler, Barsalou, Tversky, etc.) are critically discussed. Christopher Gauker's new book is a rich and innovative study of the nature of conceptual thought, its relation to language, the relation between concepts and perception, and the place of imagistic thinking in cognition.
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