Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Behavior analysis has recently developed a new paradigm for the study of categorization and language based on the mathematical notion of equivalence. Inspired by this paradigm, this paper presents a defmitional framework that could be relevant for several of the phenomena under study in Cognitive Science. First, categories are viewed as classes of functional equivalence. By doing so, results from behavior analysis and cognitive psychology seem to converge towards an experience-based interpretation of category basicness. Second, conditional equivalence is proposed as the basis for symbol-meaning and symbolsymbol relationships. Transfer of function through conditional links is suggested as the mechanism of connection between language and other aspects of cognition. The adoption and extension of these functionalist formalisms provides us with significant methodological, conceptual and even empirical advantages.