Similarity Space Theories and the Problem of Concept Acquisition

Similarity Space Theories and the Problem of Concept Acquisition This page intentionally left blank SIMILARITY SPACE THEORIES AND THE PROBLEM OF CONCEPT ACQUISITION PhD Thesis in Philosophy 2019 José Vicente Hernández Conde University of the Basque Country Supervisor Professor Agustín Vicente Benito (cc)2019 JOSE VICENTE HERNANDEZ CONDE (cc by-nc-nd 4.0) This page intentionally left blank For Julia and Julia This page intentionally left blank Declaration I hereby declare that this dissertation is my own original work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. I also declare that no part of this thesis has been previously submitted, either in the same or different form, for the award of any other degree at this or any other university. José Vicente Hernández Conde This page intentionally left blank Summary Abstract One of the main problems of concept empiricism is to explain the acquisition of the most basic constituents of concepts, without resorting to preexisting innate elements. The aim of this thesis is to show that the best nativist arguments against the acquisition of (primitive) concepts rest on the assumption that the constituents of concepts should be available beforehand, as an input of the acquisition process. However, I will claim that there is no obligation to accept such a (precedence) assumption. In fact, I will describe a model where the constituents of a concept result from the same learning process by vir- tue of which that concept is acquired. My proposal is based on a similarity space theory of concepts articulated by means of prototypes. I also prove that: (A) in this type of ap- proach, two distinct notions of concept should be distinguished –which may be identi- fied with two different facets in their life cycle (i.e., storage and instantiation)–; and that (B) a proposal like this brings together virtues both from the invariantist and from the contextualist views. I argue as well that, if concepts are context-dependent, as claimed by contextualism, then instantiated concepts lack minimal persistence and, consequently, cannot be a representation of their associated categories. Resumen Uno de los principales problemas a los que se enfrenta el empirismo es el de explicar cómo se adquieren los elementos más básicos de los conceptos, sin recurrir para ello a elementos innatos preexistentes. El propósito de esta tesis es mostrar que los mejores argumentos nativistas en contra de la posibilidad de aprender conceptos (primitivos) dependen de la asunción de que los constituyentes de los conceptos deben estar dispo- Summary nibles de antemano, como entrada de los procesos de adquisición. No obstante, mostraré que nada obliga a aceptar esa asunción (de precedencia). De hecho, presentaré un modelo en donde los elementos constitutivos de un concepto resultan del mismo proceso de aprendizaje en virtud del cual ese concepto se adquiere. Mi propuesta está basada en una teoría de espacios de similaridad articulada mediante prototipos. Además pruebo: (A) que dos nociones distintas de concepto deben distinguirse en este tipo de aproximación, a saber, conceptos como almacenamiento y conceptos como instanciación; y (B) que una propuesta como ésta reúne virtudes tanto del ámbito invariantista como del contextualis- ta. Argumento también que, si los conceptos son dependientes del contexto –según sos- tiene el contextualismo–, entonces los conceptos instanciados carecen de persistencia mí- nima y, por ello, no pueden ser una representación de sus categorías asociadas. x Publications Articles in Journals Forthcoming. Estimating the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Review of Philosophy and Psychology (first-authored by Florian Cova, co-authored by the XPhi Replicability Project). Forthcoming. Articulating context dependence. (Accepted for publication as part of a Special Issue; publisher still unknown.) 2017. A case against convexity in conceptual spaces. Synthese 194: 4011-4037. 2017. Life cycle of a concept in the ad hoc cognition framework. Theoria. An In- ternational Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 32: 271-292. Conference Proceedings 2018. Cuando los conceptos son no-persistentes y no-representacionales. In C. Saborido, S. Oms and J. González de Prado, eds., Proceedings of the IX Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Madrid: UNED, 226-229. 2015. Characterization of antonyms in conceptual spaces. In J. Díez, M. García- Carpintero, J. Martínez and S. Oms, eds., Proceedings of the VIII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Barcelona: Uni- versity of Barcelona, 128-133. This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments First of all, my greatest debt in writing this thesis is owed to my supervisor, Agustín Vi- cente, whose encouragement, intellectual guidance and unwavering support through difficult circumstances has been steady throughout all these years. His mentorship was crucial everywhere in the lengthy process of defining the research project and carrying it to completion. Besides, his detailed and patient readings of my work, and his insightful criticisms of many of my ideas, have greatly improved this thesis. He has taught me how to do proper research, and his dedication has allowed focusing my efforts with countless suggestions that have led to deepen and refine varied aspects of my thought. Agustín has been the supervisor that most graduate students can only dream of, and I feel truly priv- ileged to have worked under his direction. At this point, I wish to declare my indebtedness to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Valladolid, because many ideas in this dissertation are, one way or another, a result of the years spent there. Special thanks are due to my teachers Cristina Corredor, Juan Barba, María Caamaño and Maximiliano Fartos. They were always kind and patient enough to talk with me about any issue, and their useful suggestions, and warm and inspiring stances have extended up until now. I am indebted to Cristina Corredor, whose advice led me to decide to carry out my PhD under the supervision of Agustín Vicente. Thanks to Juan Barba as well, for sharing so many fascinating discussions, whose enlightening view on logic has steadily stimulated me. My gratitude goes also to María Caamaño and Maximiliano Fartos, whose voices have been a source of guidance and perspective all through these years. I would also wish to express my gratitude to the University of the Basque Country, which awarded me with a FPI scholarship in the year 2013, and provided the financial support for my stays as visiting scholar at the Universities of Salzburg and Pittsburgh. I Acknowledgments am indebted to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness as well, which – through the research projects FFI2011-30074-C02-02 and FFI2014-52196-P– provided funding for attending to numerous conferences and workshops around Europe. In the spring and summer of 2015 I spent three months as a visiting researcher at the University of Salzburg. Big thanks to Christopher Gauker for accepting my visit and allowing me to participate in all the activities of the Philosophy Department. I am pro- foundly grateful to Chris for the helpful discussions on my views, and useful advice on how to express them. His insightful feedback on my ideas made a substantial contri- bution to my PhD project. During this stay, my work also profited from conversations with Johannes Brandl and Julien Murzi. I must also mention Alexander Hieke, whose warm welcome and hospitality contributed hugely to the stimulating and enjoyable experience that was the time expended in Salzburg. My second stay abroad, in the fall of 2016, was in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I owe a great thanks to Edouard Machery, my host advisor, for his guidance and making my visit possible. I am in huge debt to him for reading and giving detailed comments on several drafts of my papers, and for the fruitful discussions which brought up some important issues of my work. His endless energy and excellence were a continuous inspiration to me. During those days in Pittsburg, I also benefited from the superlative intellectual environment of the Center for the Philosophy of Science, and from conversations with Anil Gupta, Kareem Khalifa, and Anjan Chakravartty. In that period I was fortunate to begin the collaboration with the XPhi Replicability Project as well, which has been a particularly valuable experience. During this time, I have had the opportunity to present the ideas put forward in this doctoral thesis in many venues, where I have benefited from the comments, questions and criticisms of the audience members in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Nijmegen, Cam- bridge, Warsaw, Södertörn, Düsseldorf, Munich and Osnabrück. The talks and discussions with numerous philosophers in those meetings contributed greatly to improve the ideas in this dissertation. I wish to thank them all as well. Last but not least, I would like to mention the many people I have met at the Uni- versity of the Basque Country throughout this time. I am thankful to the members of the different reading groups organized around Agustín Vicente, for the insightful talks and discussions. Many thanks go to Andoni Ibarra, for his unceasing encouragements and help with numerous bureaucratic issues. Thanks also to Dora Martínez, without whose assistance in paperwork things would have been much more tedious. Finally, I am very grateful to my family, particularly to my mother and brother, Eu- sebia and Juan, and to my uncle Luciano, for their company and continuous support. Gracias. And, most importantly, I dedicate this PhD thesis to my wife, Julia, a loving companion of extraordinary patience and kindness. She was always comprehensive and supportive through the breakdowns and stressful times in the realization of this work.

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