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Learning, Expressive Power and Mad Dog Nativism: The Poverty of Stimuli (and Analogies), Yet Again| old_uid | 11678 |
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| title | Learning, Expressive Power and Mad Dog Nativism: The Poverty of Stimuli (and Analogies), Yet Again |
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| start_date | 2012/10/02 |
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| schedule | 12h-13h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In her splendid review of the substantial psychological literature on conceptual development, Carey purports to reply to Jerry Fodor's "Mad Nog Nativism," according to which all concepts are innate. I argue that she, like many others, fails to appreciate the depth of the arguments for the view, the main one to my mind being an application of the point made variously by Wittgenstein, Goodman, Chomsky and Kripke, that no finite amount of experiential data can, by itself, fix the potentially infinite extension of a concept, what Chomsky has called "the poverty of stimulus argument." Indeed, the case for nativism about concepts would seem on the face of it indistinguishable from the case for the innateness of grammar. I conclude, however, with an ecumenical proposal, that concepts, like, indeed, grammars, are both innate and learned: learning consists in the confirmation of their application of specific concepts and grammars from a small innate set, whose expressive power is not increased thereby. I'm not sure not I believe this view, but I think it needs to be taken more seriously than Carey. |
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| responsibles | Sackur |
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