Description
Book SynopsisOnly human beings have a rich conceptual repertoire with concepts like tort, entropy, Abelian group, mannerism, icon and deconstruction. How have humans constructed these concepts? And once they have been constructed by adults, how do children acquire them? While primarily focusing on the second question, in The Origin of Concepts , Susan Carey shows that the answers to both overlap substantially.Carey begins by characterizing the innate starting point for conceptual development, namely systems of core cognition. Representations of core cognition are the output of dedicated input analyzers, as with perceptual representations, but these core representations differ from perceptual representations in having more abstract contents and richer functional roles. Carey argues that the key to understanding cognitive development lies in recognizing conceptual discontinuities in which new representational systems emerge that have more expressive power than core cognition and are also incommensura
Trade ReviewAnyone with the slightest interest in the nature of mathematics should give [Carey] serious study. * James Robert Brown and James Davies, Philosophical Quarterly *
Table of Contents1. Some Preliminaries ; 2. The Initial Representational Repertoire: The Empiricist Picture ; 3. Core Object Cognition ; 4. Core Cognition: Number ; 5. Core Cognition: Agency ; 6. Representations of Cause ; 7. Language and Core Cognition ; 8. Beyond Core Cognition: Natural Number ; 9. Beyond the Numeral List Representation of Integers ; 10. Beyond Core Object Cognition ; 11. The Process of Conceptual Change ; 12. Conclusion I: The Origins of Concepts ; 13. Conclusion II: Implications for a Theory of Concepts ; References ; Index of Names ; Index of Subjects
