Abstract
Thagard (1992) presented a framework for conceptual change in science based on conceptual systems. Thagard challenged belief revision theorists, claiming that traditional belief-revision systems are able to model only the two most conservative types of changes in his framework, but not the more radical ones. The main aim of this work is to take up Thagard’s challenge, presenting a belief-revision-like system able to mirror radical types of conceptual change. We will do that with a conceptual revision system, i.e. a belief-revision-like system that takes conceptual structures as units of revisions. We will show how our conceptual revision and contraction operations satisfy analogous of the AGM postulates at the conceptual level and are able to mimic Thagard’s radical types of conceptual change.
Highlights
Thagard [36] developed a fine-grained cognitivist model of scientific theory change centered around transformations in conceptual systems
Starting from Thagard’s model of scientific conceptual change, we saw his taxonomy of nine degrees of conceptual change and his claim that belief revision theories can only account for the first two of them
We presented our system of conceptual revision, i.e. a belief-revision-like system for conceptual structures
Summary
Thagard [36] developed a fine-grained cognitivist model of scientific theory change centered around transformations in conceptual systems. Scientific revolutions involve major transformations in part-links and in kind-links inside a conceptual system Thagard defended his concept-based model and the autonomy of conceptual change arguing that these revolutionary changes cannot be modeled by beliefrevision theories. Thagard’s challenge claims that strong kinds of conceptual change are irreducible to belief-revision types of changes, because the formers involve holistic recombinations of links and nodes in a given conceptual system that cannot be modeled by any piece-meal belief-revision operation. This irreducibility shows for Thagard how frame-based representation of knowledge, despite being expressively equivalent to first-order logic, is procedurally different [33, 34]. We will draw some general conclusion on the results and limitations of the present article and we will sketch some directions for future work
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