The Origin of Concepts: A Precis

3 The human conceptual repertoire is a unique phenomenon on earth, posing a formidable challenge to the disciplines of cognitive science. Alone among animals, humans can ponder the causes and cures of pancreatic cancer or global warming. How are we to account for the human capacity to create concepts such as electron, cancer, infinity, galaxy, and wisdom? 1. Components of a theory of conceptual development As a matter of logic, a theory of conceptual development must have three components. First, it must characterize the innate representational repertoire—the representations that are the input to subsequent learning processes. Second, it must describe how the initial stock of representations differs from the adult conceptual system. Third, it must characterize the learning mechanisms that achieve the transformation of the initial into the final state. The Origin of Concepts (TOOC) defends three theses. With respect to the initial state, contrary to historically important thinkers such as the British empiricists, Quine, and Piaget, as well as many contemporary scientists, the innate stock of primitives is not limited to sensory, perceptual or sensory-motor representations; rather, there are also innate conceptual representations. With respect to developmental change, contrary to continuity theorists such as Fodor, Pinker, Macnamara and others, conceptual development consists of episodes of qualitative change, resulting in systems of representation that are more powerful than and 4 sometimes incommensurable with those from which they are built. With respect to a learning mechanism that achieves conceptual discontinuity, I offer Quinian bootstrapping. 2. Relations between theories of conceptual developmental and theories of concepts. Obviously, our theory of conceptual development must mesh with our theory of concepts. Concepts are mental symbols, the units of thought. As with all mental representations, a theory of concepts must specify what it is that determines the content of any given mental symbol (i.e., what determines which concept it is, what