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Single Idea 18589

[filed under theme 18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / b. Concepts are linguistic ]

Full Idea

Behaviourists identified concepts with a mere disposition to associate category members with a given name.

Gist of Idea

For behaviourists concepts are dispositions to link category members to names

Source

Edouard Machery (Doing Without Concepts [2009], 4.1.1)

Book Ref

Machery,Edouard: 'Doing Without Concepts' [OUP 2009], p.78

A Reaction

This is one reason why the word 'disposition' triggers alarm bells in the immediately post-behaviourist generation of philosophers. The proposal is far too linguistic in character.

The 5 ideas with the same theme [claim that without language there are no concepts]:

4973 As I understand it, a concept is the meaning of a grammatical predicate [Frege]
8651 A concept is a possible predicate of a singular judgement [Frege]
11104 Concepts are language [Quine]
4882 Concepts are things we (unlike dogs) can think about, because we have language [Dennett]
18589 For behaviourists concepts are dispositions to link category members to names [Machery]