Concept innateness, concept continuity, and bootstrapping

Susan Carey
2011 Behavioral and Brain Sciences  
The commentators raised issues relevant to all three important theses of The Origin of Concepts (TOOC). Some questioned the very existence of innate representational primitives, and others questioned my claims about their richness and whether they should be thought of as concepts. Some questioned the existence of conceptual discontinuity in the course of knowledge acquisition and others argued that discontinuity is much more common than portrayed in TOOC. Some raised issues with my
more » ... ion of Quinian bootstrapping, and others questioned the dual factor theory of concepts motivated by my picture of conceptual development. I am deeply moved by the thoughtful commentaries provided by 29 colleagues, both philosophers and psychologists. Following the organization of the précis, my responses begin with preliminary issues, turn then to innateness and core cognition, and then to the issue of conceptual discontinuity and my proposal for the bootstrapping process that underlies discontinuities in conceptual development. I end with a general discussion of the nature of concepts and conceptual development.
doi:10.1017/s0140525x10003092 pmid:23264705 pmcid:PMC3528179 fatcat:kvy7n7auljewdflrscm5eyrc54