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    Primitive concepts are in principle unlearnable. — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Primitive concepts are in principle unlearnable.

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Learning a concept via hypothesis testing requires the concept to already be available to the learner.
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    • 2.Primitive concepts lack the constituent structure needed for assembly-based learning.
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    • 3.Therefore, no learning mechanism can account for the acquisition of primitive concepts.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Perceptual learning can attune the cognitive system to detect new property distinctions without requiring prior possession of the target concept.
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    • 2.Fodor's bootstrapping objection conflates logical circularity with the causal-historical process by which sensory systems become tuned to environmental regularities.
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    • 3.Primitive concepts can be acquired through causal locking to worldly properties, as Millikan and Dretske argue, without requiring conceptual constituents.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Carey's Quinean bootstrapping account demonstrates that new primitive-level representations can emerge from analogical mappings between existing placeholder structures.
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    • 2.If conceptual change in science allows genuinely novel primitives to arise through theoretical reconceptualization, unlearnability cannot be a general feature of primitive concepts.
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    Related

    Carey's Quinean bootstrapping account demonstrates that new primitive-level repr...Fodor's bootstrapping objection conflates logical circularity with the causal-hi...If conceptual change in science allows genuinely novel primitives to arise throu...Learning a concept via hypothesis testing requires the concept to already be ava...
    +4 moreShow less
    Perceptual learning can attune the cognitive system to detect new property disti...Primitive concepts can be acquired through causal locking to worldly properties,...Primitive concepts lack the constituent structure needed for assembly-based lear...Therefore, no learning mechanism can account for the acquisition of primitive co...

    Similar

    Fodor's argument that primitive concepts are unlearnable can be challe...84%That which involves no conceptual thinking cannot be articulated throu...80%Philosophy cannot be reduced to concepts and propositions alone79%Human conceptual ability is limited to natural concepts of qualities.78%

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    Perhaps the most influential discussion of concepts in relation to the nativism/empiricism debate is Jerry Fodor’s (1975, 1981) argument for the claim that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Fodor (1975) argued that there are theoretical problems with all models of concept learning in that all such models treat concept learning as hypothesis testing. The problem is that the correct hypothesis invariably employs the very concept to be learned and hence the concept has to be available to a
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