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lukeprog comments on Review of Machery, 'Doing Without Concepts' - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'd recommend reading the first part of the BBS article, which is Machery's precis of his own book.
Having tried to read it, I get the idea that prototypes represent knowledge about a category of things in terms of typical properties of members of that categories (e.g. "dogs bark and pee on things"); whereas exemplars represent knowledge in terms of familiarity with individual members of the category (e.g. "dogs are like Fido and Lassie").
The description of theories seems substantially hazier:
I'm having difficulty figuring out what this means.
I think that's meant to encompass the sort of "necessary and sufficient" rules-based reasoning that was originally associated with concepts-in-general. Whereas prototypes and exemplars denote fuzzy categories, theories are usually more straightforward.
At least, that's how I read it. Certainly, I would say that some human reasoning is of that form.
Shweet, thanks!
Also, exhibit 1,381 of "AI researchers doing better philosophy than philosophers" is Chris Thornton's recent A Mathematical Theory of Conceptual Representation.
Many thanks, I've been looking for some carefully worked out ideas along this line of thought!