Dynamic Conceptual Semantics: A Logico-Philosophical Investigation into Concept Formation and Understanding

Presented in this book is a theory of concept formation and understanding that does not make use of a notion of an innate mental language as a means of concept representation. Instead, experiental concepts are treated semantically as stabilising structuring of growing sets of data, which are sets of experienced satisfaction situations for expressions, and theoretical concepts are based on coherent sets of general sentences held true. A theory of understanding new situations and expressions by integrating new data into established sets of data salva stability, or by extending the conceptual structure in a metaphorical or metonymical way is discussed.