How is it possible to store concepts and propositions in minds and brains?
Summary
What does it mean to know something? In the history of science, this question has been addressed from a variety of perspectives, often informed by philosophical positions with strikingly different presuppositions. The remarkable developments in psychology, computation, and neuroscience elicit optimism that substantive progress might soon be made. Yet we can barely describe – much less explain – how we know individual concepts like ‘dog’ or ‘calamity.’ And propositional knowledge, like ‘flying planes can be dangerous,’ is completely mysterious. In fact, it is difficult to articulate how we know anything at all. In part, this has to do with the puzzling fact that we know so little about how information of any form is stored in nervous systems. Beyond descriptive hypotheses, we lack a deep understanding of how memory systems really work, enthusiastic and widely promulgated claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
Broad distinctions, such as the notions of episodic memory and semantic memory, organize research efforts to account for knowledge of events and facts, using the infrastructure provided by psychology and neuroscience. Because concepts and propositions are the basis of much of our experience and underpin virtually all of our inferences, accounts of how we store and operate with concepts and propositions is foundational to understand minds/brains.
Is our approach to memory bankrupt? Many questions are not answerable at all. Is storing concepts different from storing propositions? And how do we store anything at all in a mind/brain? Brains must store and compute with individual concepts and propositions. How can this be done? We come to have knowledge of kinds (e.g. DOG) and instances of kinds (e.g. LASSIE) (i.e. types and tokens), as well as compositionally structured propositions (e.g. DOGS ARE FOUR LEGGED). How can we crack the underlying codes? Stakeholders include the fields of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and computer science.
