Cognitive Ontology
Taxonomic Practices in the Mind-Brain Sciences

This book examines taxonomic practices in cognitive science and uncovers crosscutting relationships among categories in psychology and neuroscience.

Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Author)

9781009223669, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2023

220 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

'Cognitive Ontology works out a detailed metaphysics of psychological kinds and demonstrates its fruitfulness through a series of lucidly argued empirical studies. Few works can match its combined scope and insight. It promises to substantially broaden the terrain on which debates over cognitive ontology are staged.' Daniel Weiskopf, Georgia State University

The search for the 'furniture of the mind' has acquired added impetus with the rise of new technologies to study the brain and identify its main structures and processes. Philosophers and scientists are increasingly concerned to understand the ways in which psychological functions relate to brain structures. Meanwhile, the taxonomic practices of cognitive scientists are coming under increased scrutiny, as researchers ask which of them identify the real kinds of cognition and which are mere vestiges of folk psychology. Muhammad Ali Khalidi present a naturalistic account of 'real kinds' to validate some central taxonomic categories in the cognitive domain, including concepts, episodic memory, innateness, domain specificity, and cognitive bias. He argues that cognitive kinds are often individuated relationally, with reference to the environment and etiology of the thinking subject, whereas neural kinds tend to be individuated intrinsically, resulting in crosscutting relationships among cognitive and neural categories.

1. Cognitive Kinds
2. Concepts
3. Innateness
4. Domain Specificity
5. Episodic Memory
6. Language-Thought Processes
7. Cognitive Heuristics and Biases (co-written with Joshua Mugg)
8. Body Dysmorphic Disorder (co-written with Amy MacKinnon)
9. Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Cognitivism, cognitive theory [JMAQ], Philosophy of mind [HPM]