Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis

by Jesse J. Prinz

Western philosophy has long been divided between empiricists, who argue that human understanding has its basis in experience, and rationalists, who argue that reason is the source of knowledge. A central issue in the debate is the nature of concepts, the internal representations we use to think about the world. The traditional empiricist thesis that concepts are built up from sensory input has fallen out of favor. Mainstream cognitive science tends to echo the rationalist tradition, with its emphasis on innateness. In Furnishing the Mind , Jesse Prinz attempts to swing the pendulum back toward empiricism. Prinz provides a critical survey of leading theories of concepts, including imagism, definitionism, prototype theory, exemplar theory, the theory theory, and informational atomism. He sets forth a new defense of concept empiricism that draws on philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology and introduces a new version of concept empiricism called proxytype theory. He also provides accounts of abstract concepts, intentionality, narrow content, and concept combination. In an extended discussion of innateness, he covers Noam Chomsky's arguments for the innateness of grammar, developmental psychologists' arguments for innate cognitive domains, and Jerry Fodor's argument for radical concept nativism.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Science

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jesse J. Prinz is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and director of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He lives in New York.

Reviews

[Assaf Weksler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Includes a very clear exposition of all the major theories of concepts from philosophy and cognitive science. In addition, for each theory, Prinz presents many arguments for and against it, in a philosophical way, and quickly, so that philosophers would feel at home. In appears therefore to be a book for philosophers about the science of concepts. The parts where Prinz developed his own theory of concepts also include a lot of expository material from cognitive and neuropsychology, again coupled with rapid, "cut-to-the-chase" philosophical analysis.