TY - JOUR
T1 - Toward a Theory of Concept Mastery
T2 - The Recognition View
AU - Rabin, Gabriel Oak
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to Denis Buehler, Tyler Burge, David Chalmers, Mark Greenberg, Tamar Weber, two anonymous referees, and audiences at the American University in Beirut, The Australian National University, the University of St Andrews, the University of Oslo, the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, the 2015 Midsummer Philosophy Conference at the University of Edinburgh, the 2014 Meeting of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and the UCLA Albritton Society for helpful comments and criticism. Thanks also to Debbie Roberts and Kateryna Samoilova for very helpful commentaries at the 2015 Midsummer Conference.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - Agents can think using concepts they do not fully understand. This paper investigates the question “Under what conditions does a thinker fully understand, or have mastery of, a concept?” I lay out a gauntlet of problems and desiderata with which any theory of concept mastery must cope. I use these considerations to argue against three views of concept mastery, according to which mastery is a matter of holding certain beliefs, being disposed to make certain inferences, or having certain intuitions. None of these attitudes is either necessary or sufficient for mastery. I propose and respond to objections to my own recognition view of the conditions under which a thinker has mastery of a concept.
AB - Agents can think using concepts they do not fully understand. This paper investigates the question “Under what conditions does a thinker fully understand, or have mastery of, a concept?” I lay out a gauntlet of problems and desiderata with which any theory of concept mastery must cope. I use these considerations to argue against three views of concept mastery, according to which mastery is a matter of holding certain beliefs, being disposed to make certain inferences, or having certain intuitions. None of these attitudes is either necessary or sufficient for mastery. I propose and respond to objections to my own recognition view of the conditions under which a thinker has mastery of a concept.
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U2 - 10.1007/s10670-018-0040-6
DO - 10.1007/s10670-018-0040-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051540501
SN - 0165-0106
VL - 85
SP - 627
EP - 648
JO - Erkenntnis
JF - Erkenntnis
IS - 3
ER -