Concept Acquisition: Dogs and Chairs

Of late several of my posts have described aspects of Fiona Cowie's arguments about and against innatism, both in the classical rationalists and in contemporary figures, especially Jerry Fodor. Let's return to that subject

Fodor calls his view of concept acquisition "brute causal." There is nothing psychological to say about it, it simply is the case that when I see a dog it triggers in me the protoconcept  that then becomes the full-fledged concept DOG.

Cowie contends that this is irrational. Any view of concept acquisition of any value must involve "doing psychology," using "intentional" rather than brute-causal mechanisms.

A story that she tells about this involves the movement of the mind from a certain medium level of  abstraction both up and down, toward greater and toward lesser generality. A child typically grasps the idea of "dog" fairly early in life. The movement up in generality, toward "mammals" and "vertebrates," comes later, and the movement is accompanied by a movement in the other direction, toward a concept of "chihuahuas" for example.

Likewise, a child's mind will grasp "chair" fairly early on.  Later there will be a movement toward specific sorts of chair, like "recliners," and a simultaneous movement toward categories such as "furniture." On the scale of abstraction there is in both cases a medium that seems to be a developing mind's comfort zone, and various highs and lows working from there.

Such facts indicate to Cowie that there is an intentional process at work in concept acquisition, a deliberate struggling by a mind with the outside world: this is not brute causality. It is not right to say that a person is simply a furniture detector, like a certain machine might be a metal detector. Detecting furniture -- lumping together chairs with stools and sofas for this purpose -- isn't something one is, it is something one does.