Beyond Concepts
Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10688587 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mikio Akagi (0000-0003-0996-487X, John V. Roach Honors College, Texas Christian University, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue | 278 |
| Pages | 199-201 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pq/pqz013 |
| OpenAlex | W2924357304 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 2 |
In her latest book, Ruth Garrett Millikan articulates a contemporary, naturalist account of the conditions for the possibility of knowledge (with a nod to Kant for the question, but of course her approach is quite different). The book is not organized around a collection of central arguments, but around the exposition of a system—a theory of animal cognition based on the recognition of signs through mechanisms called ‘unitrackers’ and ‘unicepts’, a theory of signs, and a view of kinds that supports these theories. Since it would not be possible to outline Millikan's system in a satisfying way here, I will try to describe its flavour while highlighting the breadth of topics that Millikan addresses. Millikan's discussion is organized around three main sub-questions: What must the world be like in order for knowledge to be possible? What capacities must animals have in order to know about the world? And how is information about the world transmitted, such that animals can interpret it? Millikan addresses the first question in Chapter One, in which she argues that the world is ‘clumpy’ (p. 11). That is, if objects are considered in a many-dimensional space of all possible properties, most objects will be clustered with other objects having the same or similar properties and most regions of the space will be empty since many combinations of properties are unrealized. The clumpy world makes induction possible, and it informs Millikan's views on kinds and individuals.
Art · Epistemology · Exposition (narrative) · Linguistics · Literature · Natural (archaeology) · Naturalism · Order (exchange) · Space (punctuation) · Action Observation and Synchronization · Computer Science · History · Language and cultural evolution · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |