Stephen Downes

Ruth Millikan writes about 'unicepts', Nick Shea comments, Ruth Millikan replies. Unicepts are, "in Mill's sense, 'real kinds'. They are not 'carved out' by us but found in the world... discovered and clarified through ordinary experience." A unicept is typically not defined and it is not universal, that is, unicepts are unique to the person. "A unicept is a particular; each unicept belongs to a different person. A concept comes with something like a definition or a paradigm that fixes what it represents. The referent of a unicept is whatever it has been collecting information about." It's an interesting idea, it makes sense to me, and it fits my own real world experience.