Seminars of Philosophy of Perception, Mind, and Language

Dipartimento di Filosofia “Piero Martinetti” — Università degli Studi di Milano

The Seminars of Philosophy of Perception, Mind, and Language

Alice and Humpty Dumpty The Seminars of Perception, Mind, and Language (former Seminars of Philosophy of Language and Mind) take place every year since 2001 at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Milan. The meetings aim at being an opportunity for people working in analytic philosophy to debate the latest directions of research.

The meetings are structured as a 45-50 minutes presentation, followed by an extensive discussion time. They are open to anyone interested in the topic, especially undergraduate and Ph.D. students. The language of the talks is either Italian or English.

Daniele Sgaravatti (Associate Fellow at Arché, University of St.Andrew)

  • Print

November 28 THU  — 14.30-16.30

Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)

Concepts, Conceptions and Indexicals

Abstract: In the first part of the talk, I will argue that there are two meanings of ‘concept’. Concepts in the intentional sense are essentially components of thoughts which refer to objects in the world. In the epistemic sense, a concept is the ability (which can be more or less reliable) to form categorization judgements. I will argue that the two notions should be distinguished, and that it is convenient to use the word ‘concept’ for the first notion, and the word ‘conception’ for the second. I will then look at a particular theory of concepts recently proposed by Sainsbury and Tye, originalism, which is compatible, and indeed sits well with, the distinction. The main idea of originalism is that concepts are individuated by their origin. The way Sainsbury and Tye develop the view entails the rejection of the idea that identity of content is necessary for identity of concepts. I will argue that a modified version of originalism, which includes this principle, is more plausible than Sainsbury and Tye’s view. The modified version of the view has the consequence that there are no indexical concepts, but this is not an objection, in the light of the distinction between concepts and conceptions.