It is common in contemporary metaphysics to distinguish two levels of ontology: the ontology of ordinary objects and the ontology of fundamental reality. This papers argues that natural language reflects not only the ontology of ordinary objects, but also a language-driven ontology, which is involved in the mass-count distinction and part-structure-sensitive semantic selection, as well as perhaps the light ontology of pleonastic entities. The paper recasts my older theory of situated part structures without situations, making use of a primitive notion (...) of unity. (shrink)

An explanation of how we acquire concepts of kinds if they are socially constructed is a desideratum both for a successful account of concept acquisition and a successful account of social constructionism. Both face the so-called “mismatch problem” that is based on the observation that that there is often a mismatch between the descriptions proficient speakers associate with a word and the properties that its referents have in common. I argue that externalist theories of reference provide a plausible and attractive (...) account of concept acquisition, including the acquisition of concepts of social constructs, that avoids the mismatch problem. However, externalist theories are ontologically and psychologically highly demanding, which places strong constraints on accounts of the metaphysics of socially constructed kinds. In particular, they require a rather strong form of realism that is incompatible with some but not all theories of social constructionism. Finally, I show that these demands can be met by means of adopting a homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds. (shrink)

Debunking arguments typically attempt to show that a set of beliefs or other intensional mental states bear no appropriate explanatory connection to the facts they purport to be about. That is, a debunking argument will attempt to show that beliefs about p are not held because of the facts about p. Such beliefs, if true, would then only be accidentally so. Thus, their causal origins constitute an undermining defeater. Debunking arguments arise in various philosophical domains, targeting beliefs about morality, the (...) existence of God, logic, and others. They have also arisen in material-object metaphysics, often aimed at debunking common-sense ontology. And while most of these arguments feature appeals to ‘biological and cultural contingencies’ that are ostensibly responsible for our beliefs about which kinds of objects exist, few of them take a serious look at what those contingencies might actually be. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to remedy this by providing empirical substantiation for a key premise in these debunking arguments by examining data from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that support a ‘debunking explanation’ of our common-sense beliefs and intuitions about which objects exist. Second, to argue that such data also undermines a particular kind of rationalist defense of common-sense ontology, sometimes employed as a response to the debunking threat. (shrink)

Objects and substances bear fundamentally different ontologies. In this article, we examine the relations between language, the ontological distinction with respect to individuation, and the world. Specifically, in cross‐linguistic developmental studies that follow Imai and Gentner (1997), we examine the question of whether language influences our thought in different forms, like (1) whether the language‐specific construal of entities found in a word extension context (Imai & Gentner, 1997) is also found in a nonlinguistic classification context; (2) whether the presence of (...) labels per se, independent of the count‐mass syntax, fosters ontology‐based classification; (3) in what way, if at all, the count‐mass syntax that accompanies a label changes English speakers' default construal of a given entity?On the basis of the results, we argue that the ontological distinction concerning individuation is universally shared and functions as a constraint on early learning of words. At the same time, language influences one's construal of entities cross‐lingistically and developmentally, and causes a temporary change of construal within a single language. We provide a detailed discussion of how each of these three ways language may affect the construal of entities, and discuss how our universally possessed knowledge interacts with language both within a single language and in cross‐linguistic context. (shrink)

People are remarkably smart: They use language, possess complex motor skills, make nontrivial inferences, develop and use scientific theories, make laws, and adapt to complex dynamic environments. Much of this knowledge requires concepts and this study focuses on how people acquire concepts. It is argued that conceptual development progresses from simple perceptual grouping to highly abstract scientific concepts. This proposal of conceptual development has four parts. First, it is argued that categories in the world have different structure. Second, there might (...) be different learning systems that evolved to learn categories of differing structures. Third, these systems exhibit differential maturational course, which affects how categories of different structures are learned in the course of development. And finally, an interaction of these components may result in the developmental transition from perceptual groupings to more abstract concepts. This study reviews a large body of empirical evidence supporting this proposal. (shrink)

Learning depends on attention. The processes that cue attention in the moment dynamically integrate learned regularities and immediate contextual cues. This paper reviews the extensive literature on cued attention and attentional learning in the adult literature and proposes that these fundamental processes are likely significant mechanisms of change in cognitive development. The value of this idea is illustrated using phenomena in children's novel word learning.

Are concepts stable entities, unchanged from context to context? Or rather are they context-dependent structures, created on the fly? We argue that this does not constitute a genuine dilemma. Our main thesis is that the more a pattern of features is general and shared, the more it qualifies as a concept. Contextualists have not shown that conceptual structures lack a stable, general core, acting as an attractor on idiosyncratic information. What they have done instead is to give a contribution to (...) the comprehension of how conceptual structure organized around such a stable core can produce contextually appropriate representations on demand. (shrink)

Although our concepts of “Mama,” “milk,” and “mice” have much in common, the suggestion that they are identical in structure in the mind of the prelinguistic child is mistaken. Even infants think about objects as different from substances and appreciate the distinction between kinds (e.g., mice) and individuals (e.g., Mama). Such cognitive capacities exist in other animals as well, and have important adaptive consequences.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that empirically delimited structures of mind are also differentiable by means of systematic logical analysis. In the sake of this aim, the paper first summarizes Demetriou's theory of cognitive organization and growth. This theory assumes that the mind is a multistructural entity that develops across three fronts: the processing system that constrains processing potentials, a set of specialized structural systems (SSSs) that guide processing within different reality and knowledge domains, and a hypecognitive (...) system that monitors and controls the functioning of all other systems. In the second part the paper focuses on the SSSs, which are the target of our logical analysis, and it summarizes a series of empirical studies demonstrating their autonomous operation. The third part develops the logical proof showing that each SSS involves a kernel element that cannot be reduced to standard logic or to any other SSS. The implications of this analysis for the general theory of knowledge and cognitive development are discussed in the concluding part of the paper. (shrink)

Descriptive metaphysics investigates our naïve ontology as this is articulated in the content of our perception or of our pre-reflective thought about the world. But is access to such content reliable? Sceptics about the standard modes of access (introspection, or language-driven intuitions) may think that investigations in descriptive metaphysics can be aided by the controlled findings of cognitive science. Cognitive scientists have studied a promising range of representational advantages, that is, ways in which cognition favours one type of entity over (...) another. The notion of representational advantage is investigated and some scepticism is expressed as to its appropriateness for use in descriptive metaphysics. (shrink)

Radical concept nativism is the thesis that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. Notoriously endorsed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981), radical concept nativism has had few supporters. However, it has proven difficult to say exactly what’s wrong with Fodor’s argument. We show that previous responses are inadequate on a number of grounds. Chief among these is that they typically do not achieve sufficient distance from Fodor’s dialectic, and, as a result, they do not illuminate the central question of how new (...) primitive concepts are acquired. To achieve a fully satisfactory response to Fodor’s argument, one has to juxtapose questions about conceptual content with questions about cognitive development. To this end, we formulate a general schema for thinking about how concepts are acquired and then present a detailed illustration. (shrink)

Esta investigación indaga sobre el procesamiento de la contabilidad nominal. De hecho, añade más evidencia a favor de una posible influencia del número semántico en el procesamiento de los sustantivos incontables en cuatro pacientes diagnosticadas con afasia de Broca, siendo su lengua materna es el inglés. Esto sugiere que el procesamiento de estos sustantivos sería un híbrido tanto sintáctico como semántico. Además, corrobora al igual que estudios previos, un déficit específico en la gramática de los sustantivos incontables.

The idea that the form of a word reflects information about its meaning has its roots in Platonic philosophy, and has been experimentally investigated for concrete, sensory-based properties since the early 20th century. Here, we provide evidence for an abstract property of ‘boundedness’ that introduces a systematic, iconic bias on the phonological expectations of a novel lexicon. We show that this abstract property is general across events and objects. In Experiment 1, we show that subjects are systematically more likely to (...) associate sign language signs that end with a gestural boundary with telic verbs (denoting events with temporal boundaries, e.g., die, arrive) and with count nouns (denoting objects with spatial boundaries, e.g., ball, coin). In Experiments 2–3, we show that this iconic mapping acts on conceptual representations, not on grammatical features. Specifically, the mapping does not carry over to psychological nouns (e.g. people are not more likely to associate a gestural boundary with idea than with knowledge). Although these psychological nouns are still syntactically encoded as either count or mass, they do not denote objects that are conceived of as having spatial boundaries. The mapping bias thus breaks down. Experiments 4–5 replicate these findings with a new set of stimuli. Finally, in Experiments 6–11, we explore possible extensions to a similar bias for spoken language stimuli, with mixed results. Generally, the results here suggest that ‘boundedness’ of words' referents (in space or time) has a powerful effect on intuitions regarding the form that the words should take. (shrink)

Abstract:A number of philosophers of language have proposed that people do not have conceptual access to‘bare particulars’, or attribute‐free individuals (e.g. Wiggins, 1980). Individuals can only be picked out under some sortal, a concept which provides principles of individuation and identity. Many advocates of this view have argued thatobjectis not a genuine sortal concept. I will argue in this paper that a narrow sense of‘object’, namely the concept of any bounded, coherent, three‐dimensional physical object that moves as a whole (Spelke, (...) 1990) is a sortal for both infants and adults. Furthermore,objectmay be the infant's first sortal and more specific sortals such ascupanddogmay be acquired later in the first year of life. I will discuss the implications for infant categorization studies, trying to draw a conceptual distinction between a perceptual category and a sortal, and I will speculate on how a child may construct sortal concepts such ascupanddog. (shrink)

The role of figurative languages such as metaphor and metonymy in creativity has been studied in cognitive linguistics. These methods can also be applied to analyze non-linguistic data such as pictures and gestures. In this paper we analyze fashion design by focusing on visual metaphor and metonymy. The nature of creativity in fashion design is not fully studied from a cognitive perspective compared to other related fields such as art. We especially focus on the aspect of fashion design as a (...) communication tool between the designer and the audience to convey designer’s image of human. Photos from two fashion shows are analyzed. We carried out an experiment to compare how human images in two shows are interpreted by those who are familiar with fashion and those who are not. We got three results: (1) As far as figurative (metaphorical and metonymic) interpretations of human image are concerned, two groups with different familiarity to fashion have significantly different patterns of responses to two shows. (2) For non-figurative interpretations (such as physical or personal attributes), no significant difference in the pattern of response to the show was observed between two groups. The participants as a whole, however, responded to the two shows differently. (3) In addition for non-figurative interpretation, fashion experts found significantly more attributes in human images than the others. The results show that the analysis of figurative interpreations is effective in seeing how the familiarity to fashion affects the mode of seeing fashion shows. (shrink)

To what extent are countability distinctions subject to systematic semantic variation? Could there be a language with no countability distinctions—in particular, one where all nouns are count? I argue that the answer is no: even in a language where all NPs have the core morphosyntactic properties of English count NPs, such as combining with numerals directly and showing singular/plural contrasts, countability distinctions still emerge on close inspection. I divide these distinctions into those related to sums and those related to parts. (...) In the Sahaptian language Nez Perce, evidence can be found for both types of distinction, in spite of the absence of anything like a traditional mass–count division in noun morphosyntax. I propose an extension of the Nez Perce analysis to Yudja, analyzed by Lima as lacking any countability distinctions. More generally, I suggest that at least one countability distinction may be universal and that languages without any countability distinctions may be unlearnable. (shrink)

I argue that §§15–20 of the B-Deduction contain two independent arguments for the applicability of a priori concepts, the first an argument from above, the second an argument from below. The core of the first argument is §16's explanation of our consciousness of subject-identity across self-attributions, while the focus of the second is §18's account of universality and necessity in our experience. I conclude that the B-Deduction comprises powerful strategies for establishing its intended conclusion, and that some assistance from empirical (...) psychology might well have produced a completely successful argument. (shrink)

Do properties of a word's features influence the order of its acquisition in early word learning? Combining the principles of mutual exclusivity and shape bias, the present work takes a network analysis approach to understanding how feature distinctiveness predicts the order of early word learning. Distance networks were built from nouns with edge lengths computed using various distance measures. Feature distinctiveness was computed as a distance measure, showing how far an object in a network is from other objects based on (...) shared and non‐shared features. Feature distinctiveness predicted order of acquisition across all measures: Words that were further away from other words in the network space were learned earlier. The best distance measures were based only on non‐shared features (object dissimilarity) and did not include shared features (object similarity). This indicates that shared features may play less of a role in early word learning than non‐shared features. In addition, the strongest effects were found for visual form and surface features. Cluster analysis further revealed that this effect is a localized effect in the object feature space, where objects' distances from their cluster centroid were inversely correlated with their age of acquisition. Together, these results suggest a role for feature distinctiveness in early word learning. (shrink)

In typical development, word learning goes from slow and laborious to fast and seemingly effortless. Typically developing 2-year-olds seem to intuit the whole range of things in a category from hearing a single instance named—they have word-learning biases. This is not the case for children with relatively small vocabularies. We present a computational model that accounts for the emergence of word-learning biases in children at both ends of the vocabulary spectrum based solely on vocabulary structure. The results of Experiment 1 (...) show that late-talkers' and early-talkers' noun vocabularies have different structures and that neural networks trained on the vocabularies of individual late talkers acquire different word-learning biases than those trained on early-talker vocabularies. These models make novel predictions about the word-learning biases in these two populations. Experiment 2 tests these predictions on late- and early-talking toddlers in a novel noun generalization task. (shrink)

In English, some common nouns, like 'dog', can combine with determiners like 'a' and 'many', but not with 'much', while other nouns, like 'water', can be used together with 'much', but not with 'a' and 'many'. These common nouns have been respectively called count nouns (CNs) and mass nouns (MNs). How do children learn to use CNs and MNs in the appropriate contexts? Gaining a better understanding of this is the goal of this paper. To do so, it is important (...) to first get clear on the nature of the distinction between CNs and MNs. Is it a grammatical distinction? Does the distinction apply to nouns, to their senses, or only to their occurrences within noun phrases (NPs)? Showing that the count-mass distinction really is grammatical and applies to nouns is the matter of my first part. Then the question occurs as to whether the distinction corresponds to a systematic difference in the sense of count and mass expressions. If it does, children's acquisition of the distinction may simply follow from their ability to learn the senses of these expressions and determiners. In a second part, I thus discuss various semantic characterizations that have been proposed, and make explicit the exceptions from which they suffer. Now, understanding the sense of an expression is interpreting it correctly as it occurs in an utterance. Formal characterizations of our interpretations help to clarify what is involved in learning and understanding these expressions. In my third part, I examine several formal characterizations with the purpose to specify what would be an adequate representation of the interpretations of mass and count nominal expressions. The understanding gained in these first three parts is used to identify what abilities are exercised by children when they acquire the count-mass distinction. The picture that emerges differs from earlier views of the acquisition in several respects. I thus describe these views and highlight the differences between them and my own proposal. In a final, fifth part, I critically examine the experimental evidence that proponents of some of the accounts of the acquisition of the count-mass distinction have cited in their favor. (shrink)

Research from ethology and evolutionary biology indicates the following about the evolution of reasoning capacity. First, solving problems of social competition and cooperation have direct impact on survival rates and reproductive success. Second, the social structure that evolved from this pressure is the dominance hierarchy. Third, primates that live in large groups with complex dominance hierarchies also show greater neocortical development, and concomitantly greater cognitive capacity. These facts suggest that the necessity of reasoning effectively about dominance hierarchies left an indelible (...) mark on primate reasoning architectures, including that of humans. In order to survive in a dominance hierarchy, an individual must be capable of (a) making rank discriminations, (b) recognizing what is forbidden and what is permitted based one's rank, and (c) deciding whether to engage in or refriin from activities that will allow one to move up in rank. The first problem is closely tied to the capacity for transitive reasoning, while the second and third are intimately related to the capacity for deontic reasoning. I argue that the human capacity for these types of reasoning have evolutionary roots that reach deeper into our ancestral past than the emergence of the hominid line, and the operation of these evolutionarily primitive reasoning systems can be seen in the development of human reasoning and domain-specific effects in adult reasoning. (shrink)

The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically (...) pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG. (shrink)