Mad Dog Nativism

Bibliographic Data

ID8399426
AuthorsFiona Cowie (0000-0002-1097-1754, California Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume49
Issue2
Pages227-252
Publication date1998-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-0882 • E-ISSN: 1464-3537
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/bjps/49.2.227
OpenAlexW2050497070
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited19

In his recent book, Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, Jerry Fodor retracts the radical concept-nativism he once defended. Yet that postion 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.

Counterfactual conditional · Counterfactual thinking · Empiricism · Epistemology · Extant taxon · Political science · Psychological nativism · Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science

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