69. Peter Gärdenfors: Conceptual spaces, knowledge representation, and semantics

Apr 1, 2023

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Peter Gärdenfors is an Emeritus Professor at Lund University at the Department of Philosophy. His work is at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive, psychology, and linguistics. In this conversation, we discuss his book Conceptual spaces and many of the topics discussed therein (convexity, prototypes, metrics), whether the theory is falsifiable, how it can explain aspects of semantics and of how children learn, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:04: Where is the neuroscience (especially about spatial navigation) in Conceptual Spaces?
0:04:54: What are conceptual spaces?
0:14:53: How Peter went from decision theory to knowledge representation
0:20:25: Dimensions and metrics in conceptual spaces
0:35:29: Is the theory of conceptual spaces falsifiable?
0:38:41: Conceptual spaces of semantics
0:51:54: 3 levels of representation across evolution
0:55:41: The future of conceptual spaces
1:01:09: Something Peter wishes he'd learned sooner
1:04:31: A paper or book Peter thinks more people should read

Podcast links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Peter's links

Website: https://geni.us/gardenfors-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/gardenfors-scholar
Twitter: https://geni.us/gardenfors-twt

Ben's links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References

Bellmund, Gärdenfors, Moser & Doeller (2018). Navigating cognition: Spatial codes for human thinking. Science.
Gardenfors (2004). Conceptual spaces: The geometry of thought. MIT press.
Gardenfors (2014). The geometry of meaning: Semantics based on conceptual spaces. MIT press.
Marr (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. MIT press.
Zwarts & Gärdenfors (2016). Locative and directional prepositions in conceptual spaces: The role of polar convexity. Journal of Logic, Language and Information.

First episode of our discussion of Conceptual Spaces as part of this podcast's book club series: https://geni.us/bjks-concept-space-1