Nativism and thought

Nativism and thought

1. How can we ever think about certain concepts or ideas for the very first time without first having some sort of prior notion of the concept or entity in question?

2. Green (2010): at least something must be innate

3. What is innate and what is acquired?

4. Piaget 1923

   • constructivist position
   • cognition provides the basis upon which language develops
   • evidence that language depends on cognitive development (Green, 2010)
     • infants think first, talk later
     • simultaneous appearance of several cognitive capabilities including language as a result of cognitive development
     • language does not affect reasoning capabilities in middle childhood
     • nature of speech early childhood: cognitive development => communicative function of speech
   • problematic evidence
     • (contrarily to what Piaget proposed,) blind children are not retarded in language development despite impoverished sensory input (Bigelow 1987, Nelson 1973)
       • BUT if carers would not compensate, the children may have been retarded in language development (Messer 2000)
       • BUT what if Piaget was wrong to assume that impoverished sensory input would retard language development?
     • object permanence does not necessarily precede the acquisition of concepts of objects and names (Xu 2002)
     • causal relationship between language and though: DIFFICULT

5. Fodor 1975

   • extreme nativism
   • all concepts are innate
   • language of thought
     • Chomsky (2006)
     • content of concepts
       • modularity of the cognition: language is one module BUT central system (thinking, reasoning, consciousness, world knowledge) non-modular
       • acquisition of concepts
         • inductive generalisation: hypothesis testing and confirmation BUT children must possess concept defining features to do that
         • belief fixation
         • concepts are innately given: Russell 2004 explanation
           • hypothesis formation and confirmation
             • hypotheses
               • environment feedback
                 • hypotheses come from the child
                   • innately present => representational format
                     • symbolic
                       • innate language of thought
         • computer machine code analogy: we do not interact with it but it underpins the functioning
         • Fodor et al. 1980: concepts are simple or complex, equally easy to use but not simple definitions
         • complex concepts decomposed into elemental components (so that there are not many thousands of them)
     • structure of propositions
       • Language of thought: object of the thought <=> mental state giving rise to the thought
         • LOT: mental syntax => transitions between thoughts
       • parallels between language of thought and language: if language has combinatorial semantics then also language of thought has combinatorial semantics
         • HOWEVER Russell 2004: logical fallacy of confirming the consequent
         • Fodor 1987: language of thought: hypothesis
     • propositional attitude => THEORY OF MIND
       • False belief task research (another mindmap)