Biol Philos (2010) 25:269–277

DOI 10.1007/s10539-009-9186-6

BOOK REVIEW

How to cut a concept? Review of doing without concepts

by Edouard Machery

Hugo Mercier

Received: 8 September 2009 / Accepted: 1 October 2009 / Published online: 11 October 2009

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract As the title ‘‘Doing without Concepts’’ suggests Edouard Machery

argues that psychologists should stop using the notion of concept because: (1) the
only interesting generalizations about concepts can be drawn at the level of types of
concepts (prototypes, exemplars and theories) and not the level of concept in
general; and (2) competences such as categorization or induction can rely on these
different types of concepts (there is not a one to one correspondence between type of
concept and competence). I try to make the point that these two elements are not
wholly compatible. If several types of concepts are used to perform a given com-
petence (point (2)), then they have to be well regulated (e.g. which type is activated
when, which type wins in case of conflict). These regulatory mechanisms can then
be the basis for interesting generalizations (against point (1)). On the other hand, it
is possible that point (1) applies to competences as well: that there are no interesting
generalizations to be drawn about categorization in general. In which case different
types of categorization are likely to be underlain by different types of concepts
(against point (2)). Even though the arguments laid out in the book are forceful and
well supported by empirical evidence, a more positive thesis might have been both
more successful rhetorically and more interesting scientifically.

Keywords Concepts
Multi-process theories
Philosophy and psychology

In this provocative book Edouard Machery, a philosopher with a strong psycho-

logical bent, tries to persuade psychologists that they should throw away the notion

H. Mercier (&)
Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program, University of Pennsylvania, 313 Cohen Hall,
249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
e-mail: hmercier@sas.upenn.edu
URL: http://hugo.mercier.googlepages.com/

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of concept. Concepts have played a central role in cognitive and in developmental

psychology, and a great many psychologists routinely use the notion, so this claim is
bound to be resisted by most. But even if his arguments do not carry the day, they
are worth examining in detail because they offer an interesting take on the
psychological literature on concepts.
The outline of the argument (the Heterogeneity Hypothesis) is given in the
introduction (p. 4), and can be summarized with the following points: (1) evidence
suggests that for each category an individual has several concepts, (2) besides referring
to the same category, these concepts have very little in common, (3) prototypes,
exemplars and theories are such concepts, (4) these concepts are used in distinct
cognitive processes and (5), because of this (particularly (2)), ‘‘the notion of concept
ought to be eliminated from the theoretical vocabulary of psychology’’. This
constitutes the core of the ‘‘Heterogeneity Hypothesis’’. In other words, the notions of
concept developed within different psychological theories have so little in common
that it is not warranted to group them into a general category of ‘concepts’. Instead, one
should use the different subcategories in a more specific manner (such as ‘exemplar
concept’, ‘prototype concept’ or ‘theory concept’). But before laying out his argument,
the author establishes some preliminary notions in the first two chapters.
The main goal of the first chapter is to make explicit what it is that psychologists
generally talk about when they talk about concepts (p. 12):
A concept of x is a body of knowledge about x that is stored in long-term memory
and that is used by default in the processes underlying most, if not all, higher
cognitive competences when these processes result in judgments about x.
So, for instance, there is supposed to be some knowledge that is related to dogs that
is automatically activated every time one categorizes an object as a dog, performs
an inference about dogs or hears the word ‘dog’. By contrast with this body of
default knowledge, other pieces of knowledge about dogs can also be accessed from
long-term memory in specific contexts, but they are not activated automatically, and
so are not part of the concept ‘dog’.
The author not only ascribes this view to psychologists but he also defends it, in
particular against theories that suggest that concepts are constructed on the fly every
time they are required, and that concepts therefore only exist in working memory
(theories most fully developed by Barsalou, see, e.g., Barsalou 1993). It might
seems strange, for someone who is going to argue that we should get rid of the
notion of concept, to defend a rather strict definition against people who would like
it to be more flexible. There is no contradiction here however because Machery is
going to keep the strict definition of concept and apply it to the different
subcategories of concepts. Still, it is possible that his arguments would carry less
weight if concepts were defined in a less rigid manner. Without going all the way to
a theory à la Barsalou, it seems that the boundary between the content of the concept
itself (the default knowledge) and whatever other pieces of knowledge can be
accessed on demand is somewhat artificial. It would be more natural to have a scale.
Moreover, the notions of default and automaticity are fraught with problems, and
recent experiments have shown that even processes that used to be poster boys for
automaticity are actually under attentional control (see for instance Joseph et al.

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1997; Rees et al. 1997). All of this contributes to bring questions of regulation—
what parts of a concept will be activated in a given setting, how are these parts
interrelated, etc.—to center stage, a point to which I will return.
In the second chapter, Machery discusses the complicated relationship between
the philosophy and the psychology of concepts. He argues convincingly that most of
the disappointments philosophers have had with the work of psychologists stem
from a misunderstanding. As he puts it, the definition of concept most commonly
encountered in philosophy of the following (p. 32):
Having a concept of x is being able to have propositional attitudes about x as x.
It is then plain that this definition does not coincide with that generally used by
psychologists, thereby explaining why the psychology of concepts has often not
been adequately evaluated or used by philosophers. Not only does the author not
dismiss psychological theories, but he seems to give them the upper hand (‘‘The
abysmal record of the attempts to subordinate science to philosophy ought to give us
pause’’, p. 39). As a psychologist, there is nothing I would like to add.
It is in the third chapter that the book’s core argument starts. The Heterogeneity
Hypothesis is defined more precisely and contrasted with competing theories
regarding the organization of concepts. Before getting into the details of this
hypothesis it might be useful to quickly explain what the main theories of concepts are
(as the author does in the fourth chapter). According to the prototype theory of
concepts people statistically abstract prototypes from all the instances of the objects
they encounter and they use these prototypes for categorization, inference, etc.
According to the exemplar theory on the other hand, people store precise examples of
the objects belonging to the different categories and use these (and not a statistical
abstraction) when categorizing or performing inferences. So, for instance, while
prototype theorists would have you use an ‘averaged’ dog, exemplar theorists would
have you use a salient exemplar of that category. Finally, the theory theory, developed
with significant inputs from developmental psychology, argues that people use naı̈ve
theories to construct concepts. Such theories can belong to a specific domain (theories
of people, of other agents, of inanimate objects) or be more general in scope (such as
theories of causality). For instance, many experiments have demonstrated that
sometimes people use the causal properties of objects to categorize them.
Before these theories were developed the so-called ‘classical theory of concepts’
was (approximately) the only game in town. Its basic idea is that concepts can be
reduced to their definition. Machery, following Wittgenstein and many others,
rightly points out that such a model cannot apply to the vast majority of concepts,
for which a good definition is not forthcoming. The definition theory of concepts has
undergone a small revival recently, and people have taken interest in the way we can
learn concepts through the application of communicated explicit rules (such as ‘‘an
uncle is the brother of a father or a mother’’). The author tries to minimize the
importance of such learning because ‘‘there is no dedicated cognitive system’’ for
such a task and it ‘‘says little about concept acquisition in the real world’’ (p. 83). I
think it is possible to agree with the first point without granting the second. For
instance, there probably isn’t a dedicated (i.e. evolved) cognitive system for natural
numbers, at least above four (the subitizing range), but that doesn’t mean that the

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study of (the psychology of) natural numbers has no relevance to the real world. If
we use this example to extend dedicated to ‘developed (as opposed to evolved) to
serve a given function’, it is possible to find examples of dedicated mechanisms for
concepts. It is very likely that we learn natural numbers in a very different manner
than we learn other concepts, such as ‘dog’, and rely much more on explicit rules. If
this is the case, then a concept that is of central interest to psychologists falls outside
of Machery’s scope. More generally, quite a few concepts are ‘reflective’ in this
way: they ‘‘are introduced by explicit theories which specify their meaning and the
inferences that can be drawn on their basis’’ (Sperber 1997, p. 79). Concepts such as
‘dharma’ or ‘prime number’ would fall in this category. Even if it is the case that we
are not endowed with mechanisms specifically designed to form such concepts, and
that they form a minority of our concepts (two points I would happily grant), they
can nonetheless play a hugely important role in our lives, and a theory of concepts
has to have something to say about them. Moreover, given that these concepts are
maybe the most distinctive type of concept, they could be used to strengthen the
Heterogeneity Hypothesis, to which we come back presently.
Except for the most hardcore partisans of the different theories of concepts,
psychologists are happy to grant that concepts can be multi-faceted. However, there
is several ways to conceptualize this possibility; the Heterogeneity Hypothesis only
being one of them. Thus, partisans of ‘‘scope pluralism’’ (p. 57) posit that different
types of categories (substances and objects for instance) are represented by concepts
that have little in common, but that they can all feed into the same higher order
competences (such as induction or categorization). Taking an opposite stance, it is
possible to argue for a kind of ‘‘competence pluralism’’ (p. 59) according to which
for each category we possess different concepts, each subserving a specific higher
order competence (thus, we would have one concept of ‘dog’ for categorization, one
for induction, etc.). The Heterogeneity Hypothesis can be conceived as a blend
between these two positions: not only do we have different concepts for the same
category, but these different concepts can all be used by various higher order
competences. This is where the different theories of concepts come into play: for
each category, we can have a ‘prototype-concept’, an ‘exemplar-concept’ and a
‘theory-concept’, each of which can be used in categorization or in induction for
instance. More precisely, Machery claims that each type of concept serves a
different process that underlies the same competences.
The distinction between ‘process’ and ‘competence’ is spelled out at the
beginning of the fifth chapter. A cognitive competence is ‘‘characterized by what it
is a competence for—what it brings about, its function’’ (p. 122). By contrast, a
cognitive process is ‘‘a specific way of bringing about what a cognitive competence
is a competence for’’ (p. 122). So the competence of, say, categorization is supposed
to be underlain by distinct categorization processes, each using a different type of
concept. Because there is not a one-to-one correspondence between process and
competence such a theory is a ‘‘multi-process theory’’ by contrast with the ‘‘unified
view of cognition’’ according to which ‘‘the default situation is that a cognitive
competence is underwritten by a single cognitive process’’ (p. 125). In order to
establish the plausibility of multi-process theories, Machery reviews several of these
theories. The first two examples belong to the same family: explicit versus implicit

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cognition on the one hand and dual process theories on the other. Theories dividing
the mind (or a more specific competence) into two broad categories of processes are
now widespread in psychology (see, e.g., Evans and Frankish 2009). The gist of
these theories is that there is a useful distinction to be made between intuitions, or
implicit processes (that are fast, effortless and unconscious) and reasoning, or
explicit processes (that are slow, effortful and conscious).
‘‘Dual process’’ however is somewhat of a misnomer because these theories often
posit many more than two processes. More specifically, most now agree that many
mechanisms underlie our intuitions. Not all of these mechanisms are performing for
the same competence (unless it is ‘improving fitness through information
processing’ or some such uselessly broad competence), and therefore it is not clear
that they really fall under the umbrella of multi-process theories as defined here.
Generally, intuitions are seen as being constituted by all the inferences that are
performed unconsciously, such as those used in linguistic understanding (including
pragmatics), object recognition, navigation through space, naı̈ve mathematics and
hundreds of others. Perhaps each of these competences is served by several
processes, but that claim is not made by dual process theories in general. Moreover,
dual process theories also tend to ascribe to reasoning a different function (making it
a different competence). And indeed I believe that a good way forward for dual
process theories is to ascribe an even more specific competence to reasoning (see
Mercier and Sperber 2009, submitted for a proposal along these lines and a critique
of previous suggestions). Thus a one to one process-competence relationship is still
possible under most dual process theories, which are therefore not genuine multi-
process theories in Machery’s sense.
The third example of multi-process theory offered is Gigerenzer’s ‘toolbox of
simple heuristics’ (Gigerenzer et al. 1999). It illustrates, in my view, another
possible pitfall of multi-process theories. According to Gigerenzer and his
colleagues, people can rely on a large choice of heuristic mechanisms when they
have to make a decision. For instance, the simple ‘take the best’ rule—that only
compares the most important attribute of different options—can be used quite
successfully in a variety of contexts. The problem here is that except for the
uselessly vague ‘decision making’ competence there is no well defined competence
that all of these heuristics are supposed support. It can be safely assumed that
decision making in humans uses a wealth of processes (much as it does in any non-
trivial cognitive system, see Carruthers 2006). If this constitutes evidence for multi-
process theories, then they are rather trivially true. The problem then is that we seem
to be losing much of the structure—function relation: when competences are
described at such a broad level, it becomes practically impossible to engage in
adaptive thinking—trying to infer structure from function.1 This would be an
important drawback for evolutionarily minded psychologists.
Let’s fast forward to the last chapter of the book (chapter eight) in which the
author argues that concepts are not natural kinds and that the notion of concept

1
The problems of finding a good level of description for competences (or functions) and the trouble this
can cause for evolutionary psychologists have been described by Sterelny and Griffiths (1999, p. 328ff),
who call it the grain problem.

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should be eliminated from psychology because it causes more harm than good. To
support his claim Machery uses a ‘‘horizontal argument’’ (p. 237/8) which states that
a ‘‘theoretical term ‘K’ fail[s] to pick out a natural kind’’ when:
1. There are very few generalizations that are true of K’s, besides the properties
that are used to identify the K’s. At the same time, many generalizations are
true of the members of subclasses of K—K1,…, Kn.
2. The generalizations that were assumed to be specifically true of the K’s are in
fact true of the members of a superset S of K. Generalizations are true of the
K’s because the K’s belong to this superset.
3. The generalizations that were assumed to be causally grounded are in fact
accidental.
Machery makes the case that concepts are not a natural kind mostly through
point 1 above (p. 242): according to him, the different kinds of concepts
(prototypes, exemplars and theories) have no interesting property in common that
would grant the honor of being a natural kind to ‘concept’ (in general). If this is the
case, then I would be very much tempted to argue that this is at least equally true of
broad competences, be they cognitive (decision making, perception, but also
categorization or induction) or not (nutrition, locomotion, etc.). Take locomotion.
All types of locomotion will involve some kind of movement, but this is very much
the definition of locomotion (i.e. the ‘‘properties that are used to identify’’ it, cf.
point 1 above). They will all involve some kind of energy consumption (at least to
contrast them with mere falling), but then this is true of all competences (point 2).
On the other hand, it may be possible to draw useful generalizations from subsets
of this competence, such as flying, swimming or running. This seems to apply as
well to competences such as induction. At the more general level, it is not clear that
mechanisms of induction share much besides complying with the definition of
induction (whatever it is). There may very well be interesting generalizations about
subtypes of induction (such as Bayesian induction, or induction about mental
states), but this would again fall within point 1. And the fact that all inductive
competences will manipulate information would be explained by their belonging
to the larger superset of cognitive competences (point 2). Likewise for
categorization.2
What does this mean for Machery’s more general argument? If one concedes
that the ‘horizontal argument’ applies as well to broad competences than to
concepts, then the general conclusion (i.e. concepts are not natural kinds) still
holds, but the argument for multi-process theories is much weakened. For instance,
it could be argued that talking about categorization generally is not useful and that
one should talk instead about prototype based categorization, exemplar based
categorization and theory based categorization (likewise for induction, etc.). But it
is also possible to try to refute the horizontal argument as it applies to broad
competences.

2
It could be argued that competences cannot be natural kinds in the first place on ontological grounds.
Still, the argument here mostly bears on the place of a given construct within a scientific theory (i.e. is the
construct of ‘concept’ useful within psychology), and this applies equally well to competences.

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So, are there useful generalizations to be made about such competences as

perception, decision making, categorization or induction? There may be common-
alities in the computational problems faced by these different competences. For
instance, decision making will typically involve a bottleneck: effectors engage in
only one action at a time while many possible actions are competing to get a hold of
them. To solve this problem one or a few ‘common currencies’ will probably be
necessary, something that we observe from bacteria (in a very broad characteriza-
tion of decision making (Csete and Doyle 2004) to humans (Montague and King-
Casas 2007). If we turn towards categorization, some computational solutions may
apply across the board. For instance, perhaps using a mix of prototypes, exemplars
and theories is (almost always) a good thing. Moreover, and as Machery points out
(p. 139 for instance), the way the different processes work together has to be
regulated (a point made stronger if we throw away the notion of default as suggested
above). There has to be mechanisms to make sure that (1) the different processes
tend to be triggered in the appropriate conditions and (2) the output of these
processes is appropriately integrated (either through ‘real’ integration that blends
the output of several processes or through mere selection).3 Now if the competence
of categorization encounters common computational problems, then there should be
common solutions to these problems not only in terms of common processes
(prototypes, etc.), but also in terms of the regulation of these processes (points (1)
and (2) above). There is no reason to think that one should be more important than
the other: the least efficient part (either the processes or their regulation) sets a lower
boundary to the overall performance, and we should therefore expect similar levels
of efficiency on both sides. We should therefore expect to find specialized
regulatory mechanisms that deal with the organization of the processes subserving
categorization, much in the same way as we find a set of specialized processes that
are used in categorization. If this is the case, such mechanisms constitute an
interesting generalization that can be drawn from the fact that something is a
process that underlies categorization, including concepts.
The above argument is not exactly right in that concepts are not used only in
categorization, but also in other higher order processes (such as induction). The
argument extends to other high order processes though for the following reason: a
computational mechanism that subserves several competences faces at least the
same computational problems as a mechanism that subserves only one of these
competences. So if we start from the idea that there is something to broad
competences such as categorization or induction, then there should also be
something to their sum (basically, you add the two sets of computational problems
plus the problems that stem from the fact that one process—or set of processes—has
to deal with them at the same time). It follows from this that if broad competences

3
Machery discusses hybrid theories of concepts, theories in which the different conceptual processes
related to a category (prototype, exemplar, theory) are regulated by the necessity to yield consistent
output (p. 64). He argues that consistency is not required and is in fact often absent between these
processes. But that does not mean that other types of regulatory mechanisms, that might tend to yield
consistent answers without looking specifically for them, would make it useless to talk of the set of
processes they regulate as a unified concept. After all, minds are, presumably, natural kinds even though it
is not clear that they have a specific device to avoid drawing inconsistent conclusions.

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are useful theoretical constructs, then so are the processes that bring them about
(even if they contribute to bringing about several of them) and so are the
mechanisms that regulate these processes.
Let’s sum up the argument so far. It is possible to argue that broad competences
such as categorization or induction are not useful theoretical constructs. If this is the
case, then concepts should not be one either, much in the same way as if locomotion
is not a useful theoretical construct then neither is ‘locomotion process’. But this
considerably weakens the multi-process perspective, by emphasizing the fit between
one type of process and a more specific competence (or set of competences). On the
other hand, if one wants to uphold broad competences as useful theoretical
constructs, then the processes that underlie them will be solving common problems,
and it should be possible to draw non-trivial generalizations about the processes that
deal with these problems.
In the chapters six and seven Machery reviews empirical evidence supporting the
idea that people can use the different varieties of concepts (prototypes, exemplars
and theories) in categorization and in induction. He clearly has a good grasp of this
literature and some of his criticisms are welcome, criticisms that he also addresses at
evidence that could have supported his ideas (see for instance p. 217ff). I will not
delve into these chapters because even though the point is rather forcefully made it
does not obviate the criticism suggested above.
On the whole, Machery’s defiance towards the general notion of concept is far
from being unwarranted. While it is hard to tell if getting rid of the notion altogether
is the best way to proceed, more carefulness in its manipulation and its application
to specific cases would indeed be welcome. But it is not clear whether this advice
will be heeded by psychologists. To us, it might seem that it is once again a
philosopher trying to tell what psychologists should do something that, as the author
points out, is not exactly a recipe for success. And indeed in the conclusion we find
pieces of advice such as ‘‘Psychologists should […] systematically replicate the
experiments on categorization and concept learning with different kinds of
stimulus.’’ (p. 251). This is most certainly true, but a psychologist working on
concept will be tempted to think at this point that she knows that already and that
please, go ahead, you are most welcome to pursue this rather tedious (if
scientifically pertinent) research agenda yourself.
This may very well be a shame because, once again, the author supports his
claims well, with cogent arguments and references to the latest research. Still, it
might have been both more efficient rhetorically and more interesting scientifically
to present a more positive thesis. Given his knowledge of the literature, the author is
in a good position to suggest new theories about concepts (if not about concepts
generally, which would run against his own arguments, then about the more specific
types of concepts). This might be more interesting to most psychologists, especially
given that the field of concepts is in dire need of such theories. He might then
decide, given his experimental bent (see, e.g. Machery et al. 2004), to go ahead and
test the theories himself (experimental results being a language psychologists are
even more likely to heed). He would then run the risk of becoming one of us
psychologists… but would that be such a bad thing?

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