The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Conceptual change and development on multiple time scales: From incremental evolution to origins

På svenska

Author

  • Joel Parthemore

Summary, in English

In the context of the relationship between signs and concepts, this paper tackles head on some of the ongoing controversies over conceptual development and change – including the claim by some that concepts are not open to revision at all – taking the position that concepts pull apart from language and that concepts can be discussed on at least four levels: that of individual agent, community, society, and language. More controversially, it claims that concepts are not just inherently open to revision but that they, and the frameworks of which they form part, are in a state of continuous if generally incremental change: a position that derives directly from the enactive tradition in philosophy. Concepts, to be effective as concepts, must strike a careful balance between being stable enough to apply across suitably many contexts and flexible enough to adapt to each new context. The paper’s distinctive contribution is a comparison and contrast of conceptual development and change on four time scales: that of the day-to-day life of an individual conceptual agent, the day-to-day life of society, the lifetime of an individual agent, and the lifetime of society and the human species itself. It concludes that the relationship between concepts and experience (individual or collective) is one of circular and not linear causality.

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

193-218

Publication/Series

Sign Systems Studies

Volume

42

Issue

2-3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Tartu University Press

Topic

  • Languages and Literature

Keywords

  • radical re-conceptualization
  • paradigm shift
  • conceptual abilities
  • concepts
  • circular causality
  • enactivism

Status

Published

Project

  • Centre for Cognitive Semiotics (RJ)

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1406-4243