Eric Margolis

Would an innate Approximate Number System (ANS) vindicate number concept nativism? A natural and widely assumed way to approach this question is to suppose that the answer turns on whether the ANS’s representations are conceptual—if they are, this would support number concept nativism, but if they aren’t, then an innate ANS wouldn’t provide any support for number concept nativism. As tempting as this approach may be, this chapter argues that it is mistaken. Whether an innate ANS supports number concept nativism doesn’t turn on whether its representations are concepts—or on there being any innate number concepts at all.

This chapter examines the question of whether there is an essential connection between language and number, while looking more broadly at some of the potential innate precursors to the acquisition of the positive integers. It focuses on the theoretical question of how language may figure in an account of the ontogeny of the positive integers. Despite the trend in developmental psychology to suppose that it does, there are actually few detailed accounts on offer. Two exceptions are examined — two theories that give natural language a prominent role to play and that represent the state of the art in the study of mathematical cognition. The first is owing to C. R. Gallistel, Rochel Gelman, and their colleagues; the second to Elizabeth Spelke and her colleagues. Although both accounts are rich and innovative, they face a range of serious objections, in particular, their appeal to language isn't helpful.

This chapter examines Gordon's study and its implications for theories of numerical concepts. Gordon's data was collected among the Pirahã tribe of the Brazilian Amazon, who have no words for precise numerical quantities. The data appear to show that the Pirahã are also incapable of precise numerical thought, and this has been widely taken to undermine strong nativism and support the claim that exact numerical thought is dependent upon natural language. It is argued that there are many important flaws in Gordon's study which prevent us from drawing any inferences at all regarding the numerical abilities of the Pirahã or the dependence of thought on language. Hence, there is nothing in Gordon's study that could undermine strong nativism or support linguistic determinism.

Many psychologists think that concepts should be understood on analogy with the terms of scientific theories, yet the significance of this claim has always been obscure. In this paper, I clarify the psychological content of the theory analogy, focusing on influential pieces by Susan Carey. Once plainly put, the analogy amounts to the view that a mental representation has its semantical properties by virtue of its role in a restricted knowledge structure. One of the commendable things about Carey's work is that, unlike many other psychologists who appeal to the theory analogy, she takes seriously the need to specify how these structures are constrained. At the same time, the constraints she offers are insufficient. Her account also faces challenges from recent work in the semantics of natural kind terms.

Can an atomistic theory of concepts accommodate concept learning? The standard assumption is no: without internal structure, there are no semantic constituents for learning to assemble. This paper challenges that assumption. I develop an acquisition model for natural kind concepts within an atomistic, information-based semantic framework. The key is the notion of a sustaining mechanism—the inferential apparatus that links a concept to its worldly property. I argue that children's essentialist dispositions and perceptual heuristics for natural kinds provide the resources to construct such mechanisms through experience with exemplars, delivering a learning model rather than a mere triggering account.

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so‐called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of conceptual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong on all of these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn't succeed. At the same time, we argue that the sorts of intuitions that figure in conceptual analysis may still have a significant role to play in philosophy. So naturalists needn't disregard intuitions altogether.

The human mind is capable of entertaining an astounding range of thoughts. These thoughts are composed of concepts or ideas, which are the building blocks of thoughts. This book is about where all of these concepts come from and the psychological structures that ultimately account for their acquisition. We argue that the debate over the origins of concepts, known as the rationalism-empiricism debate, has been widely misunderstood—not just by its critics but also by researchers who have been active participants in the debate. Part I fundamentally rethinks the foundations of the debate. Part II defends a rationalist view of the origins of concepts according to which many concepts across many conceptual domains are either innate or acquired via rationalist learning mechanisms. Our case is built around seven distinct arguments, which together form a large-scale inference to the best explanation argument for our account. Part III then defends this account against the most important empiricist objections and alternatives. Finally, Part IV argues against an extreme but highly influential rationalist view—Jerry Fodor’s infamous view that it is impossible to learn new concepts and his related radical concept nativism, which holds that essentially all lexical concepts are innate. Throughout the book, our discussion blends philosophical and theoretical reflection with consideration of a broad range of empirical work drawn from many different disciplines studying the mind, providing a thorough update to the rationalism-empiricism debate in philosophy and cognitive science and a major new rationalist account of the origins of concepts. [An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence]

The notion of domain specificity plays a central role in some of the most important debates in cognitive science. Yet, despite the widespread reliance on domain specificity in recent theorizing in cognitive science, this notion remains elusive. Critics have claimed that the notion of domain specificity can't bear the theoretical weight that has been put on it and that it should be abandoned. Even its most steadfast proponents have highlighted puzzles and tensions that arise once one tries to go beyond an initial intuitive sketch of what domain specificity involves. In this paper, we address these concerns head on by developing an account of what it means for a cognitive mechanism to be domain specific that overcomes the obstacles that have made domain specificity seem so problematic. We then apply this understanding of domain specificity to one of the key debates that it has figured prominently in—the rationalism-empiricism debate concerning the origins of cognitive traits—and introduce several related theoretical notions that work alongside domain specificity in helping to clarify what makes a view more (or less) rationalist. This example illustrates how the notion of domain specificity can, and should, continue to play a central role in ongoing debates in cognitive science.

Fiona Cowie's book What's Within: Nativism Reconsidered offers an important critical assessment of nativist views of the mind. She provides an account of what nativism consists in, and discusses prominent nativist views of concept acquisition and language acquisition. In the latter case, she also offers an empiricist alternative to Chomskyan nativist accounts, and claims that the main arguments for an innate language faculty—one that embodies Universal Grammar—don't work. We provide an overview of her position, focusing mostly on her views about natural language, and argue that she has underestimated the power the poverty of the stimulus argument and consequently has underestimated the advantages of nativist models of language acquisition.

I argue that the human mind includes an innate domain-specific system for representing precise small numerical quantities. This theory contrasts with object-tracking theories and with domain-general theories that only make use of mental models. I argue that there is a good amount of evidence for innate representations of small numerical quantities and that such a domain-specific system has explanatory advantages when infants’ poor working memory is taken into account. I also show that the mental models approach requires previously unnoticed domain-specific structure and consequently that there is no domain-general alternative to an innate domain-specific small number system.

How do people decide what category an artifact belongs to? Previous studies have suggested that adults and, to some degree, children, categorize artifacts in accordance with the design stance, a categorization system which privileges the designer’s original intent in making categorization judgments. However, these studies have all been conducted in Western, technologically advanced societies, where artifacts are mass produced. In this study, we examined intuitions about artifact categorization among the Shuar, a hunter-horticulturalist society in the Amazon region of Ecuador. We used a forced-choice method similar to previous studies, but unlike these studies, our scenarios involved artifacts that would be familiar to the Shuar. We also incorporated a community condition to examine the possible effect of community consensus on how artifacts are categorized. The same scenarios were presented to university student participants in the UK. Across populations and conditions, participants tended to categorize artifacts in terms of a creator’s intent as opposed to a differing current use. This lends support to the view that the design stance may be a universal feature of human cognition. However, we conclude with some thoughts on the limitations of the present method for studying artifact concepts.

Where do human numerical abilities come from? This article is a commentary on Leibovich et al.’s “From 'sense of number' to 'sense of magnitude' —The role of continuous magnitudes in numerical cognition”. Leibovich et al. argue against nativist views of numerical development by noting limitations in newborns’ vision and limitations regarding newborns’ ability to individuate objects. I argue that these considerations do not undermine competing nativist views and that Leibovich et al.'s model itself presupposes that infant learners have numerical representations.

The topic of this thesis is the nature of human concepts understood as mental symbols or representations. ;Many discussions in this area presuppose an inferential model of concepts taken together with what I call the standard model of concept learning. An inferential model of concepts says that a concept's identity depends upon its participating in inferential dispositions linking it to certain other concepts. For example, one might think that part of what makes a mental symbol the concept BIRD is that it participates in an inferential disposition linking it to the concept ANIMAL. The standard model of concept learning says that learning a concept involves assembling it from previously available concepts. For example, one might think that the concept BIRD is learned by putting together the concept ANIMAL with concepts like WING, FLIES, and so on, yielding a more complex structure. The standard model of concept learning presupposes a form of the inferential model of concepts. Thus one of the reasons many people endorse the inferential model is that they are committed to a broadly empiricist picture of the mind; they assume that most concepts are learned, so they must also assume that most concepts have the sort of structure that the model presupposes. ;My thesis challenges both of these points with respect to a class of concept that has been of central interest in philosophy and cognitive science, namely, the lexical concepts . I argue that the independent evidence for the inferential model in this case is no good and consequently that the standard model of concept learning doesn't work. Still, it remains plausible that many lexical concepts are learned. What we need are new learning models, ones that depart in significant ways from the standard model. I end the thesis by outlining a proposal that may work for the natural kind concepts

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.

This paper examines Christopher Peacocke’s implicit conceptions and their relation to conceptual identity. While Peacocke’s reliance on implicit conceptions marks a novel development in his views on concepts, it remains unclear whether he takes them to be constitutive of their associated concepts. I argue that this constitutive reading, which would align his view with conceptual role semantics, isn’t required and should be rejected. My argument turns on what I call the Phenomenon of Abandoned Principles—the fact that people can rationally reject principles they once took to be constitutive of a concept. This phenomenon, the flip-side of Peacocke’s Phenomenon of New Principles, is best explained by a model where the contentful states responsible for judgments about a concept’s application aren’t constitutive of that concept. I consider alternative models, including prototype theory and information-based semantics, showing that one can acknowledge tacit conceptions that guide our judgments without committing to the view that these conceptions are constitutive of conceptual content.

One of the most important abilities we have as humans is the ability to think about number. In this chapter, we examine the question of whether there is an essential connection between language and number. We provide a careful examination of two prominent theories according to which concepts of the positive integers are dependent on language. The first of these claims that language creates the positive integers on the basis of an innate capacity to represent real numbers. The second claims that language’s function is to integrate contents from modules that humans share with other animals. We argue that neither model is successful.

At least since W. V. O. Quine's famous critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction, philosophers have been deeply divided over whether there are any analytic truths. One line of thought suggests that the simple fact that people have ' intuitions of analyticity' might provide an independent argument for analyticities. If defenders of analyticity can explain these intuitions and opponents cannot, then perhaps there are analyticities after all. We argue that opponents of analyticity have some unexpected resources for explaining these intuitions and that, accordingly, the argument from intuition fails.

Creations of the Mind presents sixteen original essays by theorists from a wide variety of disciplines who have a shared interest in the nature of artifacts and their implications for the human mind. All the papers are written specially for this volume, and they cover a broad range of topics concerned with the metaphysics of artifacts, our concepts of artifacts and the categories that they represent, the emergence of an understanding of artifacts in infants' cognitive development, as well as the evolution of artifacts and the use of tools by non-human animals. This volume will be a fascinating resource for philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists, and the starting point for future research in the study of artifacts and their role in human understanding, development, and behaviour.Contributors: John R. Searle, Richard E. Grandy, Crawford L. Elder, Amie L. Thomasson, Jerrold Levinson, Barbara C. Malt, Steven A. Sloman, Dan Sperber, Hilary Kornblith, Paul Bloom, Bradford Z. Mahon, Alfonso Caramazza, Jean M. Mandler, Deborah Kelemen, Susan Carey, Frank C. Keil, Marissa L. Greif, Rebekkah S. Kerner, James L. Gould, Marc D. Hauser, Laurie R. Santos, Steven Mithen.

Many philosophers reject the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOT) on the grounds that is leads to an explanatory regress problem. According to this line of argument, LOT is invoked to explain certain features of natural language, but the language of thought has the very same features and consequently no explanatory progress has been made. In an earlier paper (“Regress Arguments against the Language of Thought”, Analysis 57.1), we argued that this regress argument doesn’t work and that even proponents of LOT have given the regress argument too much credit. In this paper, we extend our critique of the regress argument against LOT by responding to J. Knowles’s commentary of our earlier paper (in “The Language of Thought and Natural Language Understanding”, Analysis 58.4).

One of the most important recent developments in the study of concepts has been the resurgence of interest in nativist accounts of the human conceptual system. However, many theorists suppose that a key feature of neural organization—the brain’s plasticity—undermines the nativist approach to concept acquisition. We argue that, on the contrary, not only does the brain’s plasticity fail to undermine concept nativism, but a detailed examination of the neurological evidence actually provides powerful support for concept nativism.

Many psychologists think that concepts should be understood on analogy with the terms of scientific theories, yet the significance of this claim has always been obscure. In this paper, I clarify the psychological content of the theory analogy, focusing on influential pieces by Susan Carey. Once plainly put, the analogy amounts to the view that a mental representation has its semantic properties by virtue of its role in a restricted knowledge structure. One of the commendable things about Carey's work is that, unlike many other psychologists who appeal to the theory analogy, she takes seriously the need to specify how these structures are constrained. At the same time, the constraints she offers are insufficient. Her account also faces challenges from work in the semantics of natural kind terms.

This article is a commentary on Machery (2009) Doing without Concepts. Concepts are mental symbols that have semantic structure and processing structure. This approach (1) allows for different disciplines to converge on a common subject matter; (2) it promotes theoretical unification; and (3) it accommodates the varied processes that preoccupy Machery. It also avoids problems that go with his eliminativism, including the explanation of how fundamentally different types of concepts can be co-referential.

This paper takes a fresh look at the nativism–empiricism debate, presenting and defending a nativist perspective on the mind. Empiricism is often taken to be the default view both in philosophy and in cognitive science. This paper argues, on the contrary, that there should be no presumption in favor of empiricism (or nativism), but that the existing evidence suggests that nativism is the most promising framework for the scientific study of the mind. Our case on behalf of nativism has four parts. (1) We characterize nativism’s core commitments relative to the contemporary debate between empiricists and nativists, (2) we present the positive case for nativism in terms of two central nativist arguments (the poverty of the stimulus argument and the argument from animals), (3) we respond to a number of influential objections to nativist theories, and (4) we explain the nativist approach to the conceptual system