Conceptual Change

Section A: "Rationality and Conceptual Diversity" of Toulmin's "Human Understanding" is an introduction to the debate on conceptual change.

Section B: The reading of Keil's works, the second part of this course, was to get some understanding about the birth and development of biological knowledge in young children.

Toulmin S. 1972. Human Understanding. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. (Section A "Rationality and Conceptual Diversity")

Keil F. C. (1989) Concepts, Kinds, and Cognitive Development. Cambridge, Massachusetts: A Bradford Book (Chap. 1-3 and 8)

Simons, D J and Keil F. C. 1995 An Abstract to Concrete Shift in the Development of Biological Thought: the Insides Story. Cognition 56:129-163

Guthiel, G., Vera, A. and Keil, F. C. 1998. Do House Flies Think? Patterns of Induction and Biological Beliefs in Development. Cognition 66:33-49

Keil, F. C., Smith, W. C., Simons, D. J. and Levin, D. T. 1998. Two Dogmas of Conceptual Empiricism: Implications for Models of the Structure of Knowledge. Cognition 65: 103-135

Evaluation: Regular assessment. All the sessions were done by the graduate students who initiated the discussion issue after issue with occasional clarifications and inputs from the instructor.