systematicity

Systematicity is a property of cognitive systems wherein the possession of certain mental states entails the possession of a wide range of related states according to stable, rule-governed connections. In philosophy of mind, it refers to the idea that the mind’s representations are systematically linked by the operations of a mental language, so the ability to think one proposition or form often licenses related propositions. This supports the view that thinking is productive and that mental content is compositional: complex thoughts are built from simpler constituents through general rules.

Historically, systematicity gained prominence in debates about the nature of mental representation and cognition, especially in discussions contrasting symbolic, rule-governed processes with connectionist approaches. It has been used to motivate the idea that a language of thought or other structured representational systems underlie human cognition.

Examples often cited include the capacity to think both “If it rains, the ground is wet” and “The ground is wet if it rains,” or to form related thoughts by substituting terms or combining with other propositions. The point is that the ability to entertain one thought preserves a family of structurally related thoughts, illustrating a systematic pattern in cognition.

Debates continue about how best to account for systematicity. Proponents of symbolic or rule-governed theories argue that it reflects genuine compositional structure in cognition, while critics from distributed representations or connectionist perspectives contend that systematicity can emerge from non-symbolic processes without explicit rules. The concept remains central to discussions of knowledge, inference, and generalization across domains.