Quinian bootstraping for conceptual change is a process that requires making use of a placeholder. Placeholders are public symbols that can induce significant changes in the mind. The external symbol leads to the acquisition of a new mental concept as it acquires its meaning. Before conceptual change is completed, however, placeholders are promissory notes as future thinking tools. They do not yet have inferential power and they are not yet fully functional cognitive tools with which to understand the world. Nonetheless, placeholders must be ascribed a role – even if an indefinite one – in cognition.
How do people undergoing conceptual change conceive of placeholders so that they can take the role they have in Quinian bootstraping? What kinds of processes and dispositions are at work? I contend that placeholders, if they are to enable conceptual change, must be thought of as potentially useful cognitive tools and that this thought is initiated by the disposition to think that what is communicated is relevant. This disposition is triggered even in cases when what is communicated is not understood. In a communicative context (archetypically, when a communicator addresses an audience) the audience presumes that the placeholder has referential and/or inferential features.
For instance, children believe that “seven comes after six” even before they understand what “six” and “seven” mean and what the relation “coming after” really implies in this context. For this, children must hold representations whose content is that the meaning of “seven” (whatever it is) bears a specific relation to the meaning of “six” (whatever it is.) It is on the basis of such partially understood beliefs that bootstrapping occurs. The counting routine is likewise involved in the bootstrapping and is used by children before they can see that it actually enables knowing precisely how many items there are in a given collection.
Quinian bootstraping relies on the curious fact that humans have beliefs they do not understand, hold representations whose meaning they don't comprehend, and perform actions whose relation to goals is unclear to them. The psychological dispositions that cause these attitudes are therefore at work in Quinian bootstraping and a psychological account of what these dispositions do and why they do it would complement Susan Carey's account of conceptual change (Carey Reference Carey2009).
Dan Sperber (Reference Sperber1975; Reference Sperber1997) has long argued that beliefs that are held but not fully understood are common among cultural beliefs. He has termed such beliefs “semi-propositional beliefs” because one has only partial knowledge of their truth-conditions. Sperber argues that such beliefs are held because they are embedded in meta-representations that assert or imply that they are true rather than just being held intuitively (i.e. without attentions to reasons for taking them to be true). The reasons such beliefs are held, he further argues, are to do with the communicative context in which they occur, which leads the audience to presume that what is conveyed is of relevance, even if they don't understand it. Typically, the authority of the communicator justifies accepting them even without fully understanding their content.
In parallel, György Gergely and Gergely Csibra (Reference Gergely, Csibra, Enfield and Levenson2006) have shown that, in a communicative context, infants imitate behavior even when they don't understand why the behavior would help achieve any goal better than easier alternatives (e.g., switching a lamp on with one's forehead rather than with one's hand). Such imitative behavior is triggered in a communicative context (e.g., with the demonstrator making eye contact, and addressing the infant directly), because the observers come to assume that the demonstrator is demonstrating an action for them to learn. The communicative context leads observers to presume that the actions demonstrated are an efficient means to achieve a worthwhile goal, even if they do not really understand why, how, or even what the goal is.
The presumption of the relevance of communicated representations and of the efficiency of demonstrated actions is a human disposition that enables Quinian bootstraping. There is some evidence that supports the claim that this disposition is uniquely human (e.g., whereas children imitate inefficient actions of a demonstrator, these same actions are not imitated by nonhuman primates; Horner & Whiten Reference Horner and Whiten2005). This would confirm Carey's conjecture that conceptual change is human-specific even in cases in which the core cognitive abilities recruited for giving meaning to new concepts are shared with other species.
Let me conclude with two open questions:
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1. Some partially understood representations lead to conceptual change, but many others remain forever the topic of interpretation and reinterpretation. There are paradigmatic cases of the former in science (e.g., the notion of “weight”), and paradigmatic case of the latter in religions (e.g. the notion of the “Trinity”). Why would representations with similar cognitive features eventually have such different cognitive roles? I hypothesize that the difference lies in the practices: in the former case, the initial presumption of relevance is held, but questioned. The individual eventually has to find a reliable way to achieve a positive cognitive effect – this is when the concept is understood. In the latter case the presumption of relevance is maintained via other means – typically a deference to the communicator (God or priest) and post-hoc reinterpretations (Sperber Reference Sperber1975; Reference Sperber2010).
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2. I claimed that the presumption of relevance is triggered by the communicative context. It is clear how this can happen for children or adults listening to their parents or teacher. But what happens when scientists discover new ideas and concepts? In these cases, the placeholder does not seem to be involved in a communication event that would activate the presumption of relevance. Are we therefore bound to accept that a different process is at work? I suggest that, in fact, scientists are always in a communicative context when they elaborate their theory: they talk, or mentally simulate talking, with their colleagues or with themselves. The presumption of relevance present in their attitude toward a partially understood idea that they take to be nonetheless worth investigating is triggered by a real or simulated communicative context – a context where the new idea is being argued for (Heintz & Mercier Reference Heintz and Mercier2010).
Quinian bootstraping for conceptual change is a process that requires making use of a placeholder. Placeholders are public symbols that can induce significant changes in the mind. The external symbol leads to the acquisition of a new mental concept as it acquires its meaning. Before conceptual change is completed, however, placeholders are promissory notes as future thinking tools. They do not yet have inferential power and they are not yet fully functional cognitive tools with which to understand the world. Nonetheless, placeholders must be ascribed a role – even if an indefinite one – in cognition.
How do people undergoing conceptual change conceive of placeholders so that they can take the role they have in Quinian bootstraping? What kinds of processes and dispositions are at work? I contend that placeholders, if they are to enable conceptual change, must be thought of as potentially useful cognitive tools and that this thought is initiated by the disposition to think that what is communicated is relevant. This disposition is triggered even in cases when what is communicated is not understood. In a communicative context (archetypically, when a communicator addresses an audience) the audience presumes that the placeholder has referential and/or inferential features.
For instance, children believe that “seven comes after six” even before they understand what “six” and “seven” mean and what the relation “coming after” really implies in this context. For this, children must hold representations whose content is that the meaning of “seven” (whatever it is) bears a specific relation to the meaning of “six” (whatever it is.) It is on the basis of such partially understood beliefs that bootstrapping occurs. The counting routine is likewise involved in the bootstrapping and is used by children before they can see that it actually enables knowing precisely how many items there are in a given collection.
Quinian bootstraping relies on the curious fact that humans have beliefs they do not understand, hold representations whose meaning they don't comprehend, and perform actions whose relation to goals is unclear to them. The psychological dispositions that cause these attitudes are therefore at work in Quinian bootstraping and a psychological account of what these dispositions do and why they do it would complement Susan Carey's account of conceptual change (Carey Reference Carey2009).
Dan Sperber (Reference Sperber1975; Reference Sperber1997) has long argued that beliefs that are held but not fully understood are common among cultural beliefs. He has termed such beliefs “semi-propositional beliefs” because one has only partial knowledge of their truth-conditions. Sperber argues that such beliefs are held because they are embedded in meta-representations that assert or imply that they are true rather than just being held intuitively (i.e. without attentions to reasons for taking them to be true). The reasons such beliefs are held, he further argues, are to do with the communicative context in which they occur, which leads the audience to presume that what is conveyed is of relevance, even if they don't understand it. Typically, the authority of the communicator justifies accepting them even without fully understanding their content.
In parallel, György Gergely and Gergely Csibra (Reference Gergely, Csibra, Enfield and Levenson2006) have shown that, in a communicative context, infants imitate behavior even when they don't understand why the behavior would help achieve any goal better than easier alternatives (e.g., switching a lamp on with one's forehead rather than with one's hand). Such imitative behavior is triggered in a communicative context (e.g., with the demonstrator making eye contact, and addressing the infant directly), because the observers come to assume that the demonstrator is demonstrating an action for them to learn. The communicative context leads observers to presume that the actions demonstrated are an efficient means to achieve a worthwhile goal, even if they do not really understand why, how, or even what the goal is.
The presumption of the relevance of communicated representations and of the efficiency of demonstrated actions is a human disposition that enables Quinian bootstraping. There is some evidence that supports the claim that this disposition is uniquely human (e.g., whereas children imitate inefficient actions of a demonstrator, these same actions are not imitated by nonhuman primates; Horner & Whiten Reference Horner and Whiten2005). This would confirm Carey's conjecture that conceptual change is human-specific even in cases in which the core cognitive abilities recruited for giving meaning to new concepts are shared with other species.
Let me conclude with two open questions:
1. Some partially understood representations lead to conceptual change, but many others remain forever the topic of interpretation and reinterpretation. There are paradigmatic cases of the former in science (e.g., the notion of “weight”), and paradigmatic case of the latter in religions (e.g. the notion of the “Trinity”). Why would representations with similar cognitive features eventually have such different cognitive roles? I hypothesize that the difference lies in the practices: in the former case, the initial presumption of relevance is held, but questioned. The individual eventually has to find a reliable way to achieve a positive cognitive effect – this is when the concept is understood. In the latter case the presumption of relevance is maintained via other means – typically a deference to the communicator (God or priest) and post-hoc reinterpretations (Sperber Reference Sperber1975; Reference Sperber2010).
2. I claimed that the presumption of relevance is triggered by the communicative context. It is clear how this can happen for children or adults listening to their parents or teacher. But what happens when scientists discover new ideas and concepts? In these cases, the placeholder does not seem to be involved in a communication event that would activate the presumption of relevance. Are we therefore bound to accept that a different process is at work? I suggest that, in fact, scientists are always in a communicative context when they elaborate their theory: they talk, or mentally simulate talking, with their colleagues or with themselves. The presumption of relevance present in their attitude toward a partially understood idea that they take to be nonetheless worth investigating is triggered by a real or simulated communicative context – a context where the new idea is being argued for (Heintz & Mercier Reference Heintz and Mercier2010).