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On e of the main theories of this book is that perception and conception differ in content, representational format, and methods of processing. This chapter focuses on the differences in representation. It shows that perceptual and conceptual knowledge differ in important ways, and that it is necessary to distinguish them to understand how the mind develops. However, the interrelations between the two are many and intricate and still only partially understood.

This chapter reviews a number of perspectives on word meaning which acknowledge the variability in word meaning described in previous chapters. One of the main difficulties with all of the perspectives reviewed is that they fail to explicitly provide a level of conceptual (i.e., non-linguistic) knowledge representation to which the sense units they posit afford access. The chapter provides an informal illustration of how LCCM Theory overcomes this difficulty.

This chapter outlines the concept of action semantics and reviews existing literature dealing with functional mechanisms underlying conceptual knowledge and goal-directed behaviour. Recent findings indicate that that semantic information is selected in a flexible manner in accordance with the action intention of the actor where long-term conceptual associations may be overruled by current behavioural goals. These findings suggest that the theory of selection-for-action may be extended to include selection of semantic information that is relevant for the intended action and that the theory of selection-for-action may provide a useful framework for studying the associations between language, action, and perception.

This chapter presents some general conclusions about the cloud and about the phrase that “the most godly knowledge of God is that which is known by unknowing”. The author divides knowledge into two categories. The first is conceptual knowledge, that of discursive reasoning and logical thinking central to all scholastic thought. The second is contemplative knowledge, that which takes place at the deeper level of personality. The most important thing for the author is that knowledge should be penetrated by the grace of God. Divorced from concepts and reasoning, faith and love grow in strength and reach their perfection. The chapter concludes that his doctrine is an accurate and personal expression of Christian mystical theology.

This chapter suggests a description of causal inference based on Bayesian inference, which illustrates how children engage in causal learning. This description is meant at the computational level of analysis, which means that an obvious limitation of this approach is that it should not be taken for the actual algorithm by which children learn causal knowledge, nor should it be considered how the brain instantiates such inference. However, describing the way in which children learn causal knowledge provides insight into these questions.

This chapter considers the paradoxical statement that, on the one hand, God cannot be known, and on the other hand, He can be known by unknowing. It notes three things based on the doctrine of apophatic mystics: first, that Dionysius recognizes the validity of reason and theology; second, he asserts that reason and philosophy give very inadequate knowledge of God; third, his “unknowing” or ignorance means that one must abandon human, conceptual knowledge for the reception of the divine knowledge in times of prayer. Conceptual knowledge may only be abandoned if there are clear signs that the Good Shepherd is issuing an invitation to a higher level of knowledge.

After treating action as peripheral for decades, cognitive scientists increasingly appreciate the fundamental roles it plays throughout cognition. This chapter proposes that the central roles of action in human cognition depend on important processes that mediate between stimuli and responses. The unique features of human cognition reflect not only a remarkable potential for action, but also powerful abilities that mediate action in response to the environment. Sophisticated action results from sophisticated mediation, e.g., from mediating processes associated with representation, conceptualization, internal state attribution, affect, and self-regulation. Integrated with action systems, these mediating processes endow humans with unusually flexible and powerful means of shaping their physical and social environments. Without taking these mediating processes into account, it is difficult to explain human action as well as basic cognitive phenomena associated with memory, concepts, categorization, symbolic operations, language, problem solving, decision making, motivation, emotion, reward, self, mentalizing, and social cognition. Instead of reducing cognition to action, an alternative is to develop a viable theory that does justice to the importance of action in cognition, while integrating mediating processes that complement it.

This chapter sketches the reasons for taking Plato’s term episteme and related ‘knowledge’ terms to refer to an irreducible kind of knowledge that is not standardly included in lists of key types of knowledge, and for identifying corresponding irreducible senses of ‘being’ and ‘truth’. Second, it reviews existing ways of understanding Plato, exploring the difference between developmental and unitarian readings, and situating this work among them. Third, it considers the reasons why one might include a search for a definition as part of a philosophical enquiry, and examines when, if ever, such a search could be helpful, and why a successful definition might not be Plato’s main goal or a goal at all. Fourth, it examines the relation between knowledge and propositional utterances expressing knowledge. Finally, it sketches the plan for the rest of the book.

The chapter starts by telling a narrative to explain how and why the author came to reject the mistaken assumptions with which the research began, and how these initial assumptions had assumed false dichotomies familiar from existing work in the field. The chapter thereby explains why the results presented in Chapters 1–12 might seem unexpected. It draws together the chief philosophical lessons of those chapters, highlighting the fact that Plato is right about (i) how conceptual knowledge differs from both propositional knowledge and recognition of tokens, (ii) the different sense of ‘being’ involved in knowing ‘what it is’, about a type, (iii) the value of images and icons in the philosophical method, and (iv) the irrelevance of Socratic definitions and other bogus criteria for knowledge. Finally, it sketches some possible ways in which a further volume might apply the results to other dialogues.

The chapter suggests that Theaetetus’s second and third definitions of episteme fail because doxa, true or false, with or without an account, is always parasitic upon conceptual content. The latter is required for knowing ‘what it is’ in respect of types or concepts, which is the subject of the quest. Because Theaetetus does not understand that recognizing tokens differs from grasping types, he is unable to solve the problem that ensues from his attempts to reduce the episteme of types to some subset of the doxa of tokens. The jury example, popularly seen as an effective refutation of the second definition, is shoddy and underspecified. Plato uses it in the drama to highlight how Theaetetus (being very immature and too young for dialectic) has failed to understand the previous refutation, because he can only follow trial-and-error reasoning.

Infants begin life with several “core” systems of knowledge, each specialized for representing and reasoning about entities of different kinds. Three core systems have been widely discussed: one that deals with the causal and spatial relations among objects; another that concerns number; and a third that deals with agents, including their goals, attentional states, and the causal mechanisms that underlie their behavior. How did conceptual thinking evolve? What advantages did it bring? This chapter considers the evolution of conceptual knowledge about agents. It argues that the origin of human concepts of agents can be found in the predisposition of monkeys, apes, and perhaps many other animals to recognize members of their own species as individuals and group them into categories based on their behavior. In primates, conceptual thinking about agents has evolved because it helps individuals form stable, adaptive social relationships.

Growing evidence suggests that emotion perception is psychologically constructed when processes in the mind of the perceiver, such as emotion concept knowledge, impact how visual sensations are made meaningful as instances of different emotions. In this chapter, we propose three key psychological constructionist hypotheses about facial emotion perception: (1) facial muscle movements do not automatically communicate emotion, (2) conceptual knowledge that is supported by language is used to make meaning of facial muscle movements and construct perceptions of emotion, and (3) language enables perceivers to see emotion on faces by reactivating sensorimotor representations of prior experiences that shape perception of the present sensory array in a top-down manner. We discuss growing evidence in support of these psychological constructionist hypotheses of emotion perception.

The chapter summarizes the results of Part IV and explains and introduces the work on the Theaetetus in Chapters 10, 11, and 12. It explains what misguided assumptions undermine all Theaetetus’s attempts to define knowledge (focusing especially on the reductionist assumptions throughout the dialogue). Second, it examines the significance of the motif of the midwife, whose task is twofold: first to provide life-saving aids for each failing infant, and then to judge its viability once those aids are in place. The dialogue therefore manifests an alternating sequence of constructive work, to prop up failing theories, and destructive work to prove their non-viability. Third, it explains the importance of the search for ousia (being) and its relation to the quest for ‘what it is’ about a concept.