What's Within?: Nativism ReconsideredOxford University Press, 30 ene 2003 - 334 páginas This powerfully iconoclastic book reconsiders the influential nativist position toward the mind. Nativists assert that some concepts, beliefs, or capacities are innate or inborn: "native" to the mind rather than acquired. Fiona Cowie argues that this view is mistaken, demonstrating that nativism is an unstable amalgam of two quite different--and probably inconsistent--theses about the mind. Unlike empiricists, who postulate domain-neutral learning strategies, nativists insist that some learning tasks require special kinds of skills, and that these skills are hard-wired into our brains at birth. This "faculties hypothesis" finds its modern expression in the views of Noam Chomsky. Cowie, marshaling recent empirical evidence from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, computer science, and linguistics, provides a crisp and timely critique of Chomsky's nativism and defends in its place a moderately nativist approach to language acquisition. Also in contrast to empiricists, who view the mind as simply another natural phenomenon susceptible of scientific explanation, nativists suspect that the mental is inelectably mysterious. Cowie addresses this second strand in nativist thought, taking on the view articulated by Jerry Fodor and other nativists that learning, particularly concept acquisition, is a fundamentally inexplicable process. Cowie challenges this explanatory pessimism, and argues convincingly that concept acquisition is psychologically explicable. What's Within? is a clear and provocative achievement in the study of the human mind. |
Índice
11 What Is Nativism? Preliminary Spleen | 3 |
12 The Oblique Approach | 6 |
13 Two Problems | 7 |
Foundations for Rationalism | 8 |
The Genetic Question | 16 |
More Spleen | 25 |
What Nativism Is I The Hypothesis of Special Faculties | 27 |
An Overview of the Dispute | 28 |
65 Objections | 139 |
LanguageLearning From Behaviorism to Nativism | 151 |
The Case for Representationalism | 159 |
A New Approach to the Psychology of Language | 163 |
From Hypothesis Testing to Nativism | 172 |
From Weak Nativism to Chomskyan Nativism | 174 |
The Poverty of the Stimulus | 176 |
81 The A Posteriori Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus | 178 |
2 The Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus | 31 |
23 A Trilemma | 38 |
DomainSpecific Faculties | 39 |
The Genetic Question Revisited | 43 |
The Case for SpecialPurpose Faculties | 47 |
What Nativism Is II The Mystery Hypothesis | 49 |
31 The Impossibility Argument of Leibniz | 50 |
32 The Impossibility Argument of Descartes | 52 |
33 Everything s Innate Is Not an Acquisition Theory | 56 |
34 Nonnaturalism | 60 |
35 Nativism as Nonnaturalism | 64 |
36 What Nativism Is | 67 |
CONCEPT ACQUISITION Problem or Mystery? | 69 |
The Case Against Empiricism | 71 |
42 Alternative Accounts of Conceptual Structure | 76 |
43 Radical Concept Nativism | 80 |
44 Protoconcepts | 83 |
45 BruteCausal Mechanisms | 86 |
46 Concept Acquisition FodorStyle | 89 |
The Constitution Hypothesis | 91 |
51 The DoorknobDOORKNOB Problem | 92 |
52 The Constitution Hypothesis | 93 |
53 Ontology Acquisition and Innateness | 99 |
54 The Standard Argument and the Dialectical Role of the Constitution Hypothesis | 102 |
55 Is Fodor a Nativist? | 105 |
56 How Low Can You Go? | 110 |
Prospects for a Psychology of Concept Acquisition | 112 |
61 The SterelnyLoar Objections | 114 |
62 Ostension | 121 |
63 Nonostensive Acquisition | 126 |
64 Concept Acquisition Is Psychologically Mediated | 131 |
The APS versus Putnamian Empiricism | 179 |
The APS Versus Enlightened Empiricism | 182 |
84 Childrens Errors and the Primary 0ata | 184 |
85 The Predictions of Empiricism | 188 |
86 Other Versions of the APS | 196 |
The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition | 204 |
91 The Logical Problem | 207 |
92 Guaranteeing Learnability | 211 |
93 The Case for OSand the Case Against i | 213 |
94 Some Morals for Language Learners | 217 |
95 Substitutes for Negative 0ata | 222 |
96 The Dialectical Role of the Logical Problem | 234 |
The Role of Universal Grammar in LanguageLearning | 238 |
101 The Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus Reiterated | 239 |
True by Stipulation? | 240 |
103 What Is Linguistics About? | 242 |
An Inference to the Best Explanation? | 248 |
105 Hypothesis Testing and ParameterSetting | 250 |
106 Some Problems with Parameters | 257 |
107 HypothesisTesting | 264 |
108 The Iterated APS 0efused | 270 |
109 Polemics and Concluding Truculence | 272 |
Will the Evidence for Linguistic Nativism Please Stand Up? | 276 |
112 The Distinctive ness Of Language | 282 |
114 Pidgins and Creolization | 302 |
115 Conclusory Moralizing | 305 |
Conclusion | 309 |
Bibliography | 313 |
331 | |