Compositionality and the Modelling of Complex Concepts

The nature of complex concepts has important implications for the computational modelling of the mind, as well as for the cognitive science of concepts. This paper outlines the way in which RVC – a Relational View of Concepts – accommodates a range of complex concepts, cases which have been argued to be non-compositional. RVC attempts to integrate a number of psychological, linguistic and psycholinguistic considerations with the situation-theoretic view that information-carrying relations hold only relative to background situations. The central tenet of RVC is that the content of concepts varies systematically with perspective. The analysis of complex concepts indicates that compositionality too should be considered to be sensitive to perspective. Such a view accords with concepts and mental states being situated and the implications for theories of concepts and for computational models of the mind are discussed.

[1]  C. Pollard,et al.  Center for the Study of Language and Information , 2022 .

[2]  T. Gelder,et al.  It's about time: an overview of the dynamical approach to cognition , 1996 .

[3]  James L. McClelland,et al.  PDP models and general issues in cognitive science , 1986 .

[4]  Saul A. Kripke,et al.  SPEAKER'S REFERENCE and SEMANTIC REFERENCE , 1977 .

[5]  P. Smolensky.  On the proper treatment of connectionism , 1988, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[6]  Robert F. Hadley.  Systematicity revisited : reply to Christiansen and Chater and Niklasson and van Gelder , 1994 .

[7]  Herbert H. Clark,et al.  Making sense of nonce sense , 1983 .

[8]  Tim van Gelder,et al.  Compositionality: A Connectionist Variation on a Classical Theme , 1990, Cogn. Sci..

[9]  Pamela A. Downing.  On the Creation and Use of English Compound Nouns. , 1977 .

[10]  J. Fodor,et al.  Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis , 1988, Cognition.

[11]  Karl E. Zimmer,et al.  Some General Observations about Nominal Compounds. Working Papers on Language Universals, No. 5. , 1971 .

[12]  Adrian Cussins,et al.  The Connectionist Construction of Concepts , 1990, The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.

[13]  Jon Barwise,et al.  Information Flow: The Logic of Distributed Systems , 1997 .

[14]  D. Medin,et al.  The role of theories in conceptual coherence. , 1985, Psychological review.

[15]  J. Fodor,et al.  The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology , 1984 .

[16]  Judith N. Levi,et al.  The syntax and semantics of complex nominals , 1978 .

[17]  Nick Braisby,et al.  Stable concepts and context-sensitive classification , 1993 .

[18]  Jerome A. Niles,et al.  The Context of Comprehension , 1981 .

[19]  J. Fodor.  Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind , 1988 .

[20]  E. Rosch.  Cognitive Representations of Semantic Categories. , 1975 .

[21]  N. Cocchiarella,et al.  Situations and Attitudes. , 1986 .

[22]  K. Fine.  Vagueness, truth and logic , 1975, Synthese.

[23]  Christopher Peacocke.  What Are Concepts?1 , 1989 .

[24]  Morten H. Christiansen,et al.  Generalization and connectionist language learning , 1994 .

[25]  Jeffrey L. Elman,et al.  Finding Structure in Time , 1990, Cogn. Sci..

[26]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Referring as a collaborative process , 1986, Cognition.

[27]  H. Kamp,et al.  Prototype theory and compositionality , 1995, Cognition.

[28]  Benjamin Cohen,et al.  Models of Concepts , 1984, Cogn. Sci..

[29]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Combining prototypes: A selective modification model. , 1988 .

[30]  J. Fodor,et al.  A Theory of Content and Other Essays. , 1992 .

[31]  João Branquinho.  Sense and Meaning , 2005 .

[32]  J. Fodor,et al.  Concepts: a potboiler , 1994, Cognition.

[33]  Jon Barwise,et al.  The situation in logic II : conditions and conditional information , 1985 .

[34]  Lance J. Rips,et al.  Combining Prototypes: A Selective Modification Model , 1988, Cogn. Sci..

[35]  Lars Niklasson,et al.  Can Connectionist Models Exhibit Non-Classical Structure Sensitivity? , 2019, Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

[36]  Robert F. Port,et al.  Beyond Symbolic: Prolegomena to a Kama-Sutra of Compositionality1 , 1993 .

[37]  Lance J. Rips,et al.  The Current Status of Research on Concept Combination , 1995 .

[38]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  On the adequacy of prototype theory as a theory of concepts , 1981, Cognition.

[39]  Robert F. Hadley.  Systematicity in Connectionist Language Learning , 1994 .

[40]  Bradley Franks,et al.  Sense Generation: A "Quasi-Classical" Approach to Concepts and Concept Combination , 1995, Cogn. Sci..

[41]  Nick Braisby,et al.  Partiality and coherence in concept combination , 1992 .

[42]  Gregory L. Murphy,et al.  Comprehending Complex Concepts , 1988, Cogn. Sci..

[43]  G. McCulloch,et al.  The Varieties of Reference. , 1984 .

[44]  Ernest Lepore,et al.  Holism: A Shopper's Guide , 1992 .

[45]  P. Smolensky.  THE CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE OF CONNECTIONIST MENTAL STATES: A REPLY TO FODOR AND PYLYSHYN , 2010 .

[46]  K. Jon Barwise,et al.  Information and circumstance , 1986, Notre Dame J. Formal Log..

[47]  Lotfi A. Zadeh,et al.  Fuzzy Sets , 1996, Inf. Control..