Matthew West wrote:
> A mental concept is (I would argue) a representation of some thing.
> Presumably, a shared mental concept are mental concepts of different people
> that represent the same thing, so it is the location of the thing that is
> relevant, because that is how you know that the mental concepts are shared
> representations. (01)
I cannot make any sense of what Matthew wrote.
I understand a 'concept' to be an intension -- a collection of properties that
may be simultaneously possessed by any number of individual things, including
none, although some concepts are clearly intended to be unitary, or at least
temporally unitary.
And I understand the idea of a "mental representation" of the concept to be how
a person holds that concept in his head, which technically gets into
biophysical cognitive science (or theology, I suppose).
I have no idea how this relates to location of things, even if the concept be
of a single individual thing, real or fictitious. It seems to me that location
is only relevant when it is, or is implicated in, one of the properties that
distinguishes instances of the concept. For example, it seems to me that the
concepts "bank manager" and "Marilyn Monroe" can be shared very well without
regard to spatial location in any way, and only the latter may be related to
temporal location. (02)
I conclude from this that Matthew and I speak significantly different dialects
of technical English, and I must assume that I am not part of the intended
audience. (03)
-Ed (04)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Engineering Laboratory -- Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Office: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Mobile: +1 240-672-5800
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