Andrew Pessin

This study focuses on concepts and, ultimately, their possible implementation in brains. Especially salient is analysis of Jerry Fodor's work. The view of concepts found therein is one where many of both are "simple": to be ascribed or to token most concepts doesn't require being ascribed or tokening any other concepts, and most symbols lack "parts" which are themselves symbols. This is, I think, a very popular, and mistaken, view. ;In chapter 1, I argue that Fodor's theory of content is, contra its goals, neither naturalistic nor atomistic. A deep mistake undermines both, viz. that there's no way to individuate a mental symbol non-semantically. This leads to chapter 2, where I explore the much neglected notion of Mentalese syntax. I argue that there are three possible principles of syntactic type individuation, and that these turn out not only to be incompatible but also inadequate for a "language of thought." I conclude that the idea of simple mental symbols is in trouble. ;This then allows me to argue in chapter 3 that we don't have to fear intentional holism , which sanctions the prevalence of complex concepts. I next sketch, in chapter 4, the sort of complex symbols needed to implement complex concepts. The chapter's bulk consists in an empirical argument for the complexity view via seven domains of current cognitive science, including concept context dependency, typicality effects, association, and reasoning. ;Chapter 5 concludes by exploring connectionism. I argue that, despite problems, connectionism seems on the right track in a way that Fodor's computationalism isn't. For example, it's more explicitly brain-like; in dropping the idea of mental computation over symbols it's free from the syntax problems of chapter 2; and, most important, it's highly compatible with the complexity view, which best characterized the cognitive processes of chapter 4