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What are natural concepts? A design perspective
Author(s) -
Douven Igor,
Gärdenfors Peter
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12240
Subject(s) - natural (archaeology) , perspective (graphical) , space (punctuation) , similarity (geometry) , epistemology , cognitive science , computer science , core (optical fiber) , natural kind , sociology , artificial intelligence , psychology , identity (music) , philosophy , geography , telecommunications , archaeology , aesthetics , image (mathematics) , operating system
Conceptual spaces have become an increasingly popular modeling tool in cognitive psychology. The core idea of the conceptual spaces approach is that concepts can be represented as regions in similarity spaces. While it is generally acknowledged that not every region in such a space represents a natural concept, it is still an open question what distinguishes those regions that represent natural concepts from those that do not. The central claim of this paper is that natural concepts are represented by the cells of an optimally designed similarity space.