Does geometry constitues a core set of intuitions present in all humans, regarless of their language or schooling ? We used two non verbal tests to probe the conceptual primitives of geometry in the Munduruku, an isolated Amazonian indigene group. Our results provide evidence for geometrical intuitions in the absence of schooling, experience with graphic symbols or maps, or a rich language of geometrical terms.

Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)

Only 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 incommensurate with core cognition and other earlier representational systems. Finally, Carey fleshes out Quinian bootstrapping, a learning mechanism that has been repeatedly sketched in the literature on the history and philosophy of science. She demonstrates that Quinian bootstrapping is a major mechanism in the construction of new representational resources over the course of childrens cognitive development. Carey shows how developmental cognitive science resolves aspects of long-standing philosophical debates about the existence, nature, content, and format of innate knowledge. She also shows that understanding the processes of conceptual development in children illuminates the historical process by which concepts are constructed, and transforms the way we think about philosophical problems about the nature of concepts and the relations between language and thought. (shrink)

Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of Kant and Helmholtz, who adopted opposing stances on whether central questions about spatial perception were fully amenable to natural-scientific treatment. At stake were the proper understanding of the relationships among sensation, perception, and experience, and the proper methodological framework for investigating the mental activities of judgment, understanding, and reason issues which remain at the core of philosophical psychology (...) and cognitive science. (shrink)

_One summary of the great Kant's view, to the extent that it can be summed up, is_ _that he takes determinism to be a kind of fact, and indeterminism to be another kind_ _of fact, and our freedom to be a fact too -- but takes this situation to have nothing to_ _do with the kind of compatibility of determinism and freedom proclaimed by such_ _Compatibilists as Hobbes and Hume. Thus Kant does not make freedom consistent_ _with determinism by taking (...) up a definition of freedom as voluntariness -- at bottom,_ _being able to do what you want. This he dismisses as a wretched subterfuge,_ _quibbling about words. Rather, the freedom he seeks to make consistent with_ _determinism does indeed seem to be the freedom of the Incompatibilists --_ _origination. Is he then an Incompatibilist? Well, against that, it can be said he does_ _not allow the existence of origination in what can be called the world we know, as_ _Incompatibilists certainly do._. (shrink)

This chapter argues that human and animal minds indeed depend on a collection of domain-specific, task-specific, and encapsulated cognitive systems: on a set of cognitive ‘modules’ in Fodor's sense. It also argues that human and animal minds are endowed with domain-general, central systems that orchestrate the information delivered by core knowledge systems. The chapter begins by reviewing the literature on spatial reorientation in animals and in young children, arguing that spatial reorientation bears the hallmarks of core knowledge and of modularity. (...) It then considers studies of older children and adults, arguing that human spatial representations change qualitatively over development and show capacities not found in any other species. Finally, it presents two new experiments that investigate the role of emerging spatial language in uniquely human navigation performance. (shrink)

As we move around in our environment, and interact with it, many of the most important problems we face involve the processing of spatial information. We have to be able to navigate by perceiving and remembering the locations and orientations of the objects around us relative to ourself; we have to sense and act upon these objects; and we need to move through space to position ourselves in favourable locations or to avoid dangerous ones. While this appears so simple that (...) we don't even think about it, the difficulty of solving these problems has been shown in the repeated failure of artificial systems to perform these kinds of tasks efficiently. In contrast, humans and other animals routinely overcome these problems every single day. This book examines some of the neural substrates and mechanisms that support these remarkable abilities. The hippocampus and the parietal cortex have been implicated in various core spatial behaviours, such as the ability to localise an object and navigate to it. Damage to these areas in humans and animals leads to impairment of these spatial functions. This collection of papers, written by internationally recognized experts in the field, reviews the evidence that each area is involved in spatial cognition, examines the mechanisms underlying the generation of spatial behaviours, and considers the relative roles of the parietal and hippocampal areas, including how each interacts with the other. The papers integrate a wide range of theoretical and experimental approaches, and touch on broader issues relating to memory and imagery. As such, this book represents the state of the art of current research into the neural basis of spatial cognition. It should be of interest to anyone - researchers or graduate students - working in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, and cognition generally. (shrink)

Fundamental to spatial knowledge in all species are the representations underlying object recognition, object search, and navigation through space. But what sets humans apart from other species is our ability to express spatial experience through language. This target article explores the language ofobjectsandplaces, asking what geometric properties are preserved in the representations underlying object nouns and spatial prepositions in English. Evidence from these two aspects of language suggests there are significant differences in the geometric richness with which objects and places (...) are encoded. When an object is named (i.e., with count nouns), detailed geometric properties – principally the object's shape (axes, solid and hollow volumes, surfaces, and parts) – are represented. In contrast, when an object plays the role of either “figure” (located object) or “ground” (reference object) in a locational expression, only very coarse geometric object properties are represented, primarily the main axes. In addition, the spatial functions encoded by spatial prepositions tend to be nonmetric and relatively coarse, for example, “containment,” “contact,” “relative distance,” and “relative direction.” These properties are representative of other languages as well. The striking differences in the way language encodes objects versus places lead us to suggest two explanations: First, there is a tendency for languages to level out geometric detail from both object and place representations. Second, a nonlinguistic disparity between the representations of “what” and “where” underlies how language represents objects and places. The language of objects and places converges with and enriches our understanding of corresponding spatial representations. (shrink)

I said that the book is brilliant. This is not so much because of the conclusions eventually reached about the inadequacy of a purely naturalistic approach to mind. These conclusions are already familiar in the work of Donald Davidson and others. Rather, it is because of the accumulation of historical detail and insight on the basis of which these conclusions are reached. It is often said, for instance, that Kant is a watershed figure, in some sense synthesizing and then moving (...) beyond both empiricism and naturalism. Hatfield uses these terms. But he reinvests them with meaning and energy and in the process shows how radical Kant was in refocusing, by way of a sharp distinction between empirical and transcendental inquiries, the central questions of philosophy. (shrink)