Spring 2020 Colloquium Series - 7 February
Hayley Clatterbuck (University of Wisconsin-Madison) :: Learning Incommensurate Concepts
Friday, February 7 2020
Abstract: Jerry Fodor famously argued that it is impossible to learn new concepts that cannot be defined in terms of those concepts with which one began. Hence, it follows that concepts such as avocado or electron cannot be learned. More generally, a long tradition of philosophical arguments have purported to show that there cannot be rational transitions between incommensurable sets of concepts. Given the data of radical concept change in both science and cognitive development, explaining how such concepts can be learned has been an important area of research. I argue that several prominent responses to Fodor's problem are promising but incomplete. I buttress these responses by showing how modern machine learning algorithms manage to learn incommensurate concepts and draw lessons for understanding the structure of human concepts and how they can be learned.
Location: WMC 3510
Date and time: Friday Feb. 7, 3:30PM - 5:00PM
Talks are held at the Burnaby Campus in room WMC 3510 from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., unless otherwise indicated. They are free and open to the public.