Mad Dog Nativism
- Creators
- Cowie, Fiona
Abstract
In his recent book, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, Jerry Fodor retracts the radical concept-nativism he once defended. Yet that position stood, virtually unchallenged, for more than twenty years. This neglect is puzzling, as Fodor's arguments against concepts being learnable from experience remain unanswered, and nativism has historically been taken very seriously as a response to empiricism's perceived shortcomings. In this paper, I urge that Fodorean nativism should indeed be rejected. I argue, however, that its deficiencies are not so obvious that they can simply be taken for granted. Fodor can counter extant objections by stressing two distinctions: between historicist and counterfactual semantic theories and between explaining reference and explaining concept-acquisition. But, I argue, this victory is pyrrhic. Reformulated as objections to his account qua theory of concept-acquisition, and not qua theory of reference, analogous difficulties are fatal to the Fodorean position.
Additional Information
© 1998 Oxford University Press. I am grateful for the help of David Hilbert, Kim Sterelny, and Jim Woodward in writing this paper.Attached Files
Accepted Version - Cowie_1998_Mad_Dog_Nativism.pdf
Files
Name | Size | Download all |
---|---|---|
md5:42a233852cd27f4233c10bdc10707044
|
286.0 kB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 28758
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20120112-113102983
- Created
-
2012-03-22Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field