The Building Blocks of Thought: A Rationalist Account of the Origins of Concepts - Softcover

Laurence, Stephen; Margolis, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192898922 ISBN 13: 9780192898920

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2024

Synopsis

Where do our concepts come from? This question has divided philosophers since antiquity and now sits at the heart of cognitive science.<br><br>Many have charged that the rationalism-empiricism debate about concept origins is riddled with confusion, or that rationalist approaches are deeply problematic. <i>The Building Blocks of Thought</i> offers a comprehensive rethinking of the foundations of the debate, showing that these negative appraisals rest on misunderstandings. The debate isn't about nature versus nurture. It concerns the unlearned psychological traits that provide the foundation for learning all concepts.<br><br>Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis argue that there is a rationalist account of the origins of concepts across many domains — extending well beyond core knowledge (objects, agents, number) to concepts and conceptual domains as diverse as morality, kinship, logic, causation, plants, and emotions. They develop seven distinct lines of argument, drawing on evidence from across the cognitive sciences, that converge into a single unified case for concept nativism.<br><br>The book also confronts the most influential empiricist accounts and alternative rationalist views, including Fodor's notorious claim that concept learning is impossible. This is a rationalism that doesn't sideline learning or culture but explains them: innate structure is what makes rich cultural and conceptual learning possible at all.<br><br><i>The Building Blocks of Thought</i> is also freely available as a PDF download from Oxford Academic under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.

About this title

About the Author

<b>Stephen Laurence</b> is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He received his PhD in Philosophy at Rutgers University and taught at the University of Manchester, Hampshire College, the London School of Economics, and the University of Hull. He is Director of the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies and directed the AHRC Innateness and the Structure of the Mind Project and the AHRC Culture and the Mind Project. He is co-editor of <i>The Conceptual Mind </i>and<i> Concepts: Core Readings</i> (both The MIT Press), among other books, and has published numerous articles in both philosophical and scientific journals.<br><br><b>Eric Margolis</b> is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in Philosophy at Rutgers University and taught at Rice University and the University of Wisconsin prior to his appointment at the University of British Columbia. He has received research funding from The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council. He is co-editor of <i>The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science</i> (OUP, 2012), and <i>The Conceptual Mind </i>(The MIT Press), among other books, and has published extensively in philosophical journals.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192898922
• ISBN 13: 9780192898920
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 704