Abstract for Sandeep Prasada's talk

Representation of principled connections in common sense conception
Sandeep Prasada (CUNY Graduate Center)
March 8, 2005 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

Previous research suggests that we represent principled connections between the kind of thing something is and some of its properties (e.g., between being a dog and having four-legs), but not other properties (e.g., between being a dog and being brown). Properties that have a principled connection to a kind are referred to as ?gk-properties?h, those that do not are referred to as ?gt-properties?h. This distinction is relevant to a number of linguistic phenomena including whether it is possible to interpret indefinite singulars generically (e.g., A dog is four-legged/#A plate is round). Principled connections have been shown to have an explanatory dimension (we think individual dogs have four legs because they are dogs), a normative dimension (we think dogs should have four legs), and a statistical dimension (we expect all or most dogs to have four legs). In this talk, we report 6 experiments that suggest that these characteristics of principled connections result from our conceptual systems (i) representing k-properties as aspects of being a given kind of thing, and (ii) making a distinction between what we understand to be true in principle and what we take to be true in fact.