Conceptualism and Concept Acquisition

• Autores: Blake McAllister
• Localización: Theoria : a Swedish journal of philosophy, ISSN 0040-5825, Vol. 87, Nº. Extra 1, 2021, págs. 69-86
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Many think that the perceptual theory known as “conceptualism” cannot honour a common and intuitive constraint on concept acquisition – that we gain the initial power to deploy primitive concepts through experience. Their argument is: if experience involves the deployment of concepts, then one must possess the power to deploy those concepts prior to experience. I argue that the plausibility of this argument rests on a subtle equivocation. It is true that conceptualism requires a particular kind of power to deploy concepts prior to experience, but not the sort referenced in the intuitive constraint mentioned above. I end by proposing how the conceptualist might satisfy this constraint. I conclude that conceptualism is better situated to account for primitive concept acquisition than typically thought.