In this article, Eric Margolis and Mary Romero examine the effect of the "hidden curriculum" on women of color graduate students in sociology. They interview twenty-six women of color enrolled in Ph.D. programs in sociology to uncover how the graduate school curriculum not only produces professional sociologists, but also simultaneously reproduces gender, race, class, and other forms of inequality. In their analysis, Margolis and Romero identify two forms of the hidden curriculum at work: the "weak" form, which is the professionalization process essential to "becoming a sociologist," and the "strong" form, which acts to reproduce stratified and unequal social relations. The numerous quotations from the women graduate students interviewed reveal that many elements of the hidden curriculum — such as stereotyping and blaming the victim — were painfully obvious to them. As Margolis and Romero argue, the women's stories, the authors' analysis, and the publication of this article are forms of resistance to the hidden curriculum, constituting "a lifting of veils to make visible what was hidden."
The word "concept" is used in various ways; its sense is sometimes psychological, sometimes logical, and sometimes perhaps a confused mixture of both. (Gottlob Frege 1892a, p. 42) What is a concept? Philosophers have given many different answers to this question, reflecting a wide variety of approaches to the study of mind and language. Nonetheless, at the most general level, there are two dominant frameworks in contemporary philosophy. One proposes that concepts are mental representations, while the other proposes that they are abstract objects. This paper looks at the differences between these two approaches, the prospects for combining them, and the issues that are involved in the dispute. We argue that powerful motivations have been offered in support of both frameworks. This suggests the possibility of combining the two. Unlike Frege, we hold that the resulting position is perfectly coherent and well worth considering. Nonetheless, we argue that it should be rejected along with the view that concepts are abstract objects-the two have a shared failing-and that the mental representation framework is to be preferred.Here is how we proceed. In sections 1 and 2, we introduce the two frameworks and briefly review their supporting motivations. Next, in section 3 we show how mental representations and abstract objects can be combined into a unified theory of concepts-what we call the Mixed View.
In this paper, I develop a novel account of concept acquisition for an atomistic theory of concepts. Conceptual atomism is rarely explored in cognitive science because of the feeling that atomistic treatments of concepts are inherently nativistic. My model illustrates, on the contrary, that atomism does not preclude the learning of a concept.
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