{"pk":25558,"title":"What is the Role of Conceptual Analysis in Cognitive Science?","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Cognitive scientists sometimes find themselves embroiled\nin debates over the precise definitions of high-level\nconcepts in their fields – COGNITION, EMOTION, SENSE, and\nso on. The idea behind these debates seems to be that\nachieving a precise definition of these concepts will be a\nboon to scientific inquiry. We argue that these efforts of\nconceptual analysis would benefit from greater appreciation\nof the importance of such high-level concepts in supporting\nassociation or semantic priming, as opposed to deduction.\nIn this associative role, they provide the basis for making\nconnections between related concepts, connections that can\nthen be explored by empirical methods, which in turn yield\nmore precise, but often quite novel, concepts. In\ncombination with well-established work in cognitive\npsychology on the non-classical structure of natural\nconcepts, this perspective suggests that researchers should\nbe cautious about investing substantial time and energy in\nattempts to precisely define concepts like COGNITION.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"concepts & categories; philosophical\nissues; philosophy of science"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0t69w0wq","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Liam","middle_name":"C","last_name":"Kacanagh","name_suffix":"","institution":"UCSD","department":""},{"first_name":"Christopher","middle_name":"L","last_name":"Suhler","name_suffix":"","institution":"UCSD","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25558/galley/15182/download/"}]}