2026/07/22 by Víctor M. Verdejo, Joost J. Joosten
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Psychology · #Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge #Philosophy and History of Science #Philosophy and Theoretical Science
paper · doi:10.1111/rati.70034
crossref issued 2026/07/22 · crossref published 2026/07/22 · crossref published-online 2026/07/22 · openalex publication_date 2026/07/22 · crossref created 2026/07/22 · crossref deposited 2026/07/22 · openalex created_date 2026/07/23 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
ABSTRACT A growing number of authors suggest that concept coordination—the kind of relation we pick out when we say that the concepts of one or more individuals represent something as the same—is not a transitive relation. Here we consider global features of representational systems to break new ground in the assessment of the intransitivity view. From this angle, two versions of the view are in fact available. Provided that we grant the reflexivity of the coordination relation, one of them—which we call “anti‐transitivity”—leads to logical inconsistency. We therefore focus on the “non‐transitive” version which, while viable, leads to acknowledging a substantial upper bound on the amount of intransitivity actually allowed in the system. We shall argue that this result, together with the consideration of local and global rationality features of representational systems, clearly constrains the scope and the explanatory significance of intransitive coordination.