Concept empiricism: a methodological critique.
Thanks to Barsalou's, Damasio's, Glenberg's, Prinz' and others' work, neo-empiricism is gaining a deserved recognition in the psychology and philosophy of concepts. I argue, however, that neo-empiricists have underestimated the difficulty of providing evidence against the amodal approach to concepts and higher cognition. I highlight three key problems: the difficulty of sorting out amodal predictions from neo-empiricist predictions, the difficulty of finding experimental tasks that are not best solved by imagery and the difficulty of generalizing findings concerning a given cognitive process in a given context to other cognitive processes or other contexts. Finally, solutions to these three problems are considered.
Machery
Edouard
E
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. machery@pitt.edu
D036262:Empirical Research; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D011582:Psychological Theory; D013561:Symbolism