Concepts, Core Knowledge, and the Rationalism-Empiricism Debate PDF
ABSTRACT. While Elizabeth Spelke’s book What Babies Know provides powerful support for concept nativism, her focus on understanding concept nativism through six innate core knowledge systems is too confining. There is also no reason to suppose that what she calls the curse of a compositional mind constitutes a principled reason for positing less innate structure in explaining the origins of concepts. Any solution to such problems must take into account poverty of the stimulus considerations, which argue for postulating more innate structure, not less.
Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2024). Concepts, core knowledge, and the rationalism-empiricism debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47. doi:10.1017/ S0140525X23003072
Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2024). Concepts, core knowledge, and the rationalism-empiricism debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47. doi:10.1017/ S0140525X23003072