This chapter discusses the kind, episodic memory, which has recently garnered a great deal of attention from philosophers. In light of current empirical work, it has become increasingly challenging to accept an influential and intuitively plausible philosophical account of memory, namely the “causal theory of memory.” It is unlikely that each episodic memory can be associated with a trace or “engram” that can be shown to be linked by an uninterrupted causal chain to an episode in the thinker’s past. Some philosophers and psychologists have responded by effectively abandoning the category of episodic memory and assimilating memory to imagination or hypothetical thinking. But I argue that there is still room for a distinct cognitive kind, episodic memory, a cognitive capacity whose function it is to generate representational states that are connected to past episodes in the experience of the thinker, which bear traces of these episodes that are individuated not at the neural level but at the “computational level.”

This chapter is about the category of innateness, which is a feature often associated with a range of cognitive phenomena, including concepts, cognitive capacities, behavioral dispositions, and mental states. Arguing against a number of recent critiques of the notion, this chapter tries to show that innateness can be identified with a cluster of properties that are causally interrelated in various ways and proposes a tentative causal model of the kind. In individuating innateness, it is important to distinguish proximal from distal causation. Some of the causal properties associated with innateness are involved in individuating innate cognitive capacities synchronically, while others are etiological in nature, responsible for making those capacities innate in the first place. This complex causal network is robust enough to warrant considering innateness to be a real kind as used in contemporary cognitive science.

This chapter tackles a psychiatric kind that does not pertain to cognitive science narrowly conceived, though it is strongly rooted in cognition. It concerns Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), a condition that involves persistent and intrusive thoughts about a perceived bodily flaw that is not observable or appears slight to others, leading to repetitive behaviors and tending to result in significant distress or functional impairment. The chapter argues that the disorder has an important cognitive component involving certain deficits in visual processing, in interpreting the mental states of others, and in assessing evidence for and against one’s beliefs. A causal model of BDD is proposed that aims to show how its main features fit together. Based on this causal model, there are strong grounds for considering it a distinct psychiatric kind. This model implies a revision of the standard psychiatric taxonomy based on an analysis of the underlying causes of the disorder as opposed to its superficial symptoms. It also suggests the feasibility of constructing cognitive causal models of other psychiatric disorders.

This chapter sets out the broad metaphysical picture that guides the inquiry. I derive a naturalist notion of kinds from the nineteenth-century discussion of classification and kinds initiated by Whewell, Mill, and Venn, rather than the more recent essentialist view of natural kinds suggested by Kripke and Putnam. I go on to defend a “simple causal theory” of cognitive kinds, which conceives of them as “nodes in causal networks” in the cognitive domain. In addition, I argue against the layer-cake picture of scientific domains and put forward some reasons to resist reductionism when it comes to cognitive categories, based on different bases for individuating cognitive and neural categories. Finally, I respond to some concerns that the resulting ontological picture is not a realist one, on the grounds that it countenances the existence of cognitive kinds that are mind-dependent and self-reflexive.

This chapter discusses one of the most basic putative cognitive kinds, concept, arguing that it should be considered a real kind based on our current state of knowledge, contrary to what some philosophers have urged. After surveying empirical work on concepts in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology, the chapter tries to show that this work is pitched at different levels of explanation. Much recent work on concepts using neuroimaging techniques should not be expected to reveal the neural correlates of concepts because the research has different explananda and is investigating different causal processes. Other work on concepts in cognitive science reveals psychological structures (prototypes) associated mainly with automatic processing rather than deliberative reasoning. By contrast, concepts proper can be understood as functional kinds, which are individuated partly etiologically and partly with reference to the thinker’s discriminatory and inferential abilities. Many research programs in cognitive science individuate concepts in this way, combining diachronic and synchronic factors.

This chapter discusses the categories of cognitive heuristic and cognitive bias. These categories have come to define a burgeoning research program in cognitive science (the “heuristics and biases” program) and are widely considered to be universal features of human thought. On closer inspection, both categories are found to be too heterogeneous to identify real cognitive kinds, though some of their sub-categories may. In particular, the chapter examines the construct myside heuristic (closely related to the phenomenon often known as “confirmation bias”). This is found to be a better candidate for being a cognitive kind, since it seems to pertain to a specific feature of human cognitive architecture. Moreover, the myside heuristic, which (roughly speaking) attaches more weight to one’s own opinions than to contrary opinions, can be rational in certain contexts. Thus, distinguishing the heuristic from a corresponding bias can only be done against the background of a cognitive task or problem. This constitutes another instance of contextual or environmental individuation of a cognitive construct, making it unlikely that it will correspond to a neural kind.

This chapter brings together some of the main themes that run through the previous chapters, namely: the etiological-environmental individuation of cognitive kinds; the advantages of a real-kind approach to cognitive ontology; and the purview of cognitive neuroscience. On the first score, I distinguish the variety of externalism defended in this book from the familiar varieties in the philosophical literature. On the second, I show how taxonomic practices in cognitive science can benefit from reflecting on the overarching ontological categories in the cognitive domain and from greater clarity in distinguishing relationships among different kinds of kinds (for example, subordinate and superordinate kinds). On the third point, I argue that the scientific discipline of cognitive neuroscience, which aims to build bridges between neural and cognitive taxonomies, need not revolve around the search for neural correlates of cognitive kinds.

This chapter considers an unusual cognitive category, which pertains to a kind of process rather than a kind of entity, state, or capacity, namely language-thought processes. The kind of process in question is often discussed in the cognitive science literature under the headings of “linguistic relativity” and “linguistic determinism.” These labels aim to identify a distinctive type of cognitive process, all of whose instances share something important in common, namely a fundamental or deep-seated influence of language on thought. By looking at some paradigmatic cases, I argue that there is nothing to distinguish this type of process from a broader cognitive phenomenon, namely concept acquisition or conceptual change. Moreover, within this broader category, there are two distinct kinds of process that are usually lumped together but that do not seem to have anything significant in common. There is an important difference between those processes that involve simultaneous recruitment of linguistic capacities and those that do not. These two types of process may constitute distinct cognitive kinds within the broader cognitive kind of concept acquisition or conceptual change.

This chapter considers the cognitive construct, domain specificity, which is invoked in a number of different research programs in cognitive science, to indicate cognitive capacities that are limited in certain ways. Some cognitive capacities are restricted in their application to a certain domain, whereas others range freely beyond that domain. The challenge arises in saying what constitutes the domain of a capacity, especially since areas of knowledge do not come neatly compartmentalized. Building on the work of some cognitive scientists, I argue that the best way to understand the proper domain of a cognitive capacity is by invoking evolutionary considerations. This means that domain-specific capacities are individuated etiologically (at least in part), based on their evolutionary history. They are also identified on the basis of their synchronic causal powers, what they can and cannot do, since domain-specific cognitive capacities cannot range beyond their proper domains (whereas domain-general ones can). Given this cluster of causal features, I argue that there is a prima facie case to be made for considering domain specificity to be a cognitive kind.