Universal preferences for natural concepts
Project Description
Everybody agrees that concepts are ‘what we do our thinking with’. But then, what exactly are concepts? And why do we have the concepts we do have, rather than other possible concepts? An attempt to answer this question leads to the thought that there might be some concepts which are in some sense ‘natural’, which is why we choose to ‘do our thinking’ with those concepts, while other (possible) concepts are not (quite as) natural, which might explain why we choose not to ‘do our thinking with’ them. Indeed, our joint investigation as outlined here will start from the assumption that the claim that there are such ‘natural concepts’ is of explanatory value, and the core question around which our research activities will be centred is the question as to how precisely we should understand the suggestion that there are concepts which should, in some sense, count as ‘natural’.
The research initiative proposes to approach this question from our three cooperating disciplines: philosophy, linguistics and artificial intelligence. Each of these disciplines takes a specific perspective on concepts. While philosophers investigate the role of concepts in human reasoning, linguists investigate concepts through the filter of human languages, whereas AI aims to simulate human behavior but also draws attention to possible limitations and idiosyncrasies in human thinking and reasoning. We want to bring these perspectives together and have already formulated potential research questions in our respective research areas, which proves the viability of our research programme. We now aim to broaden the range of the research group, to include further interested parties (see above) and to develop the initiative into a full application for a Research Unit (RU), to be submitted to the DFG. To upscale the present initiative, we apply for start-up financing for preparing a full proposal for the FG. Specifically, apart from support by student assistants, the initiative will need three kinds of measures:
- An international conference that brings together scholars from AI, linguistics and philosophy in order to test our ideas and align them optimally with national and international research agendas.
- Guest visitors for extended face-to-face contact in the preparation of the application for the research unit.
- Two 50 % TVL positions, to be filled with junior researchers with complementary backgrounds,in order to foster the exchange between disciplines, to assist us in coordinating further collaborators, as listed above, to coordinate guest stays and workshop visitors, and to assist us in the preparation of the proposal.
Spokespersons
- Regine Eckardt
- Thomas Müller
- Maribel Romero
Prospective PIs (non-exclusive)
Dr. Carolin Antos (Philosophy, Konstanz)
Dr. Dorothea Debus (Philosophy, Konstanz)
Dr. Regine Eckardt (Linguistics, Konstanz)
Dr. Diego Frassinelli, (Computer Science, Konstanz)
Dr. Leon Horsten (Philosophy, Konstanz)
Dr. Theo Marinis (Linguistics, Konstanz)
Dr. Thomas Müller (Philosophy, Konstanz)
Dr. Maribel Romero (Linguistics, Konstanz)
Dr. Julian Schlöder (Logic and Linguistics, Amsterdam)
We are happy welcome two new postdoctoral researchers in our group, starting spring 2021: