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lukeprog comments on Concepts Don't Work That Way - Less Wrong
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Remember that I don't reject conceptual analysis in general, but only the flavor of analysis that assumes the classical view of concepts. I do this for the simple reason that the classical view of concepts if false. This is really not controversial.
Not in this post, which is already too long. If you want a discussion of attempts to fix the classical view, see the source I pointed to: Murphy (2002).
That would be fine. Then that would be philosophy for machines or philosophy for post-humans or something like that, not philosophy for humans.
I don't think I understand what you're saying with the musical instruments example.
If it is, it doesn't seem to me to be false by virtue of not corresponding to how the brain stores concepts. The notion of knowledge as justified true belief can be rejected by appealing to examples that (as far as I can tell) you could come up with even in ignorance of modern cognitive science in general, and typicality effects in particular.
You can reject the proposition "concepts are represented in the human brain in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions" without necessarily rejecting the proposition "it is useful to talk about concepts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions". You've shown convincing reasons to reject the first proposition, and you've shown some counterexamples to the second proposition, but you also seem to be implying that if we accept the first then the second never holds, and that can't be right.
In fact, it is useful in some cases to talk about concepts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (for instance mathematical concepts tend to have this structure).
The examples you give (of typicality effects and so on) are examples of concrete, everyday concepts (bird, fruit, fish, furniture), when really the argument you want to make against the classical view of concepts is about much more abstract concepts (knowledge, truth, justice).
Maybe that doesn't really make sense. Allow me to retract that.
Ah. I can see how you might infer this from my post, but I definitely do not endorse that if we accept the first than the second never holds.
It is useful in many cases to talk about concepts in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. I use stipulative definitions like this all the time. But stipulated definitions aren't the aim of "classical view" conceptual analysis.
Like I said, my post is already too long, and I provided references if you're interested to read more studies on typicality effects.