WiP - Fabrizio Cariani / The structure of multidimensional concepts
WiP - Fabrizio Cariani / The structure of multidimensional concepts
March 25 we are back from Spring Break, and Fabrizio Cariani presents Work in Progress by him, Eric and Ilaria on "The structure of multidimensional concepts," abstracted below.
Recent work in philosophy and cognitive science has brought renewed attention to multidimensional concepts and properties such as healthy, biodiverse, intelligent and democratic. In this paper, we take steps toward a comprehensive theory of them. Much of the existing literature treats multidimensionality piecemeal, isolating particular features. Most prominent among them is the fact that such concepts appear to involve forms of aggregation structurally akin to those studied in social choice theory. While these insights are illuminating, they stop short of explaining why multidimensional concepts exhibit the structural features they do. Our aim is to embed these familiar modules within a unified framework that accounts for their characteristic patterns in a principled way. With our account in place, we argue that influential proposed solutions to longstanding puzzles about multidimensional concepts cannot be sustained.