Abstract

What is it for thoughts to redeploy the same concept? Elsewhere, we have argued for a specific relational model of concept identity, the _connectedness model_. Our aims in this chapter are to explain the motivations behind that account, to address worries about transitivity and vagueness, and to contrast our approach with closely related accounts of concept identity. What’s distinctive of our approach to sameness of concept is that we seek to vindicate the first-person epistemic perspective of concept users on logical relations and epistemic self-regulation. Concepts, we argue, play a crucial normative role in setting _regulative ideals_ for the representational practices in which individual subjects participate. This focus on the normative role of concepts—as opposed to a purely causal-explanatory role—motivates our approach to concept identity and our approach to borderline cases of concept identity.