The case for protoconcepts : Why concepts, language, and protolanguage all need protoconcepts
Författare
Summary, in English
Fodor is infamous for his radical conceptual nativism, McDowell likewise well-known for suggesting that concepts extend “all the way out” into the world and arguing against what he calls (per Sellars) The Myth of the Given: the idea that non-conceptual percepts justify conceptual frameworks. One need not go so far as either researcher, however, in allowing merit to their arguments. It seems we are predisposed, from the beginning of our lives, to look at the world in certain ways and not others. The world need not be “fully conceptual” to be never entirely free, for the conceptually minded agent, of conceptual taint. It seems structured remarkably like our concepts are structured because our concepts present it that way, and our concepts present it that way because of predispositions that are substantively innate. The Protoconcept Hypothesis holds that such protoconcepts are onto- and phylogenetically prior to concepts, themselves onto- and phylogenetically prior to (proto-)language. If that is right, then an account of language genesis and evolution requires a corresponding account for concepts and an explication of protolanguage assumes an explication of protoconcepts.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2014
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
159-178
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Theoria et Historia Scientiarum
Volym
11
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 420 kB
- Available as PDF - 351 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika
Ämne
- Languages and Literature
Nyckelord
- evolution
- productivity
- systematicity
- Kantian spontaneity
- Myth of the Given
- innateness
- protoconcepts
- concepts
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0867-4159