InnateandLearned: Carey, Mad Dog Nativism, and the Poverty of Stimuli and Analogies (Yet Again)

Abstract

AbstractIn her recent (2009) book,The Origins of Concepts, Susan Carey argues that what she calls ‘Quinean Bootstrapping’ and processes of analogy in children show that the expressive power of a mind can be increased in ways that refute Jerry Fodor's (1975, 2008) ‘Mad Dog’ view that all concepts are innate. I argue that it is doubtful any evidence about themanifestationof concepts in children will bear upon thelogico‐semanticissues ofexpressive power. Analogy and bootstrapping may be ways to bring about the former, but only by presupposing the very expressive powers Carey is claiming they explain. Analogies must beunderstood, and bootstrapping involves confirmation of hypotheses alreadyexpressible; otherwise they can't select among an infinitude of hypotheses compatible with the finite data the child has encountered, a fact rendered vivid by Goodman's ‘grue’ paradox and Chomsky's poverty of stimulus argument. The problems have special application to minds, since there is no reason to expect a child's concepts to be ‘projectible’ or to correspond to mind‐independent natural kinds. I conclude with an ecumenical view that concepts are reasonably regarded asbothinnate and often learned, and that what is learned can in fact increase what really concerns Carey, thefunctioning psychological expressive powerof the child, even if it leaves untouched what concerns Fodor,the semantic expressive power. Less ecumenically: maybe Fodor (2008) miscast the debate, and the real issue that bothers people concerns not nativism, but an issue on which Carey and Fodor surprisingly agree, his conceptualAtomism, or the view that all mono‐morphemic concepts are primitive and unanalyzable. The issue deserves further discussion independently of Mad‐doggery.