The history of psychology and philosophy is littered with the bloated carcasses of grand theories that tried to do far more than they were able in explaining the origins and growth of concepts. Many classic theorists proposed large-scale origins stories, but their accounts were invariably missing critical details, full of inconsistencies, or both. Carey's book is just the opposite (Carey Reference Carey2009). It tackles head on some of the most vexing problems about the nature of concepts and their origins, and illustrates how the right origins stories are critical to understanding what concepts really are and how they are represented in adults. It provides specific mechanisms that go from core domains in infancy to more elaborated conceptual systems in children and adults. It is gratifying to see many precise and empirically testable claims, such as: initial concepts are represented iconically, Quinian bootstrapping enables children to circumvent Fodor's problem of testing new concepts that one cannot yet fully represent, and the concept of cause does not simply emerge of out of perceptual primitives. Through such cases as the growth of numerical thought, Carey illustrates her theory in detail and makes sometimes startlingly precise claims.
These characteristics make this a landmark book that sets a new standard for the study of concepts and their development. One need not agree with all of Carey's proposals to appreciate the benefits of having such a detailed and verifiable account. There are, of course, many remaining questions. For example, how does analogy allow one to implement Quinian boostrapping successfully as opposed to getting lost in a sea of irrelevant analogies? How does one unambiguously show that early representations are iconic in nature as opposed to being in other formats? To all such questions, Carey is usually refreshingly open to alternative answers and would simply want to know how they could be empirically tested against her views. There is, however, a broader question that poses a challenge for all approaches to concepts and their origins: namely, what happens when the information content of concepts is degraded?
Although traditionally used in Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) models in which networks could suffer damage and still function approximately the same way (Rumelhart Reference Rumelhart and Posner1989), the idea of “graceful degradation” here raises the question of whether stories of origins and conceptual change remain elegant and coherent as concepts themselves become increasingly degraded. Carey is clearly aware of the problem of packing too much inside concepts proper and of the challenges of deciding on what information is associated with concepts and what information is part of their internal structure. Rejecting Fodor's (Reference Fodor1998) minimalist program, she wants concepts to have some internal relational structures to act as vehicles for conceptual growth and change. The question is, how much internal structure is needed for Carey's account of the origins of concepts to go forward and how explicit must it be?
Consider three challenges. First, what people know about concepts such as “gold,” “tiger,” or “winter” can be startlingly degraded. Most accounts of concepts hold that prototypes or other bottom-up probabilistic tabulations of features are inadequate and also include beliefs with entailments. Yet the details are elusive. What does the layperson know about tigers in particular, and not just animals, that has any content beyond the prototype? The answer may seem to lie in how we cognitively implement “sustaining mechanisms,” those ways of “locking” our concepts onto real-world entities (Laurence & Margolis Reference Laurence and Margolis2002). Some sustaining mechanisms use theories to directly lock, some use deference to experts, and some use prototypes (Laurence & Margolis Reference Laurence and Margolis2002). All three mechanisms usually work together, but it remains unclear just how they interact, what parts are in concept proper, and how they would figure in conceptual change. The theory component is often limited to large categories, such as living kinds; the prototypes can mislead; and deference cannot work without complex cognitive activities that specify relevant experts (Keil et al. Reference Keil, Stein, Webb, Billings and Rozenblit2008). Sustaining mechanisms remain troublingly mysterious.
Second, even when crisp explicit beliefs might be candidates for conceptual components, they often don't behave well. Adults routinely believe that winter is when the earth is farther away from the sun than in summer; yet they might also believe that it is summer in Australia when it is winter in Europe. They acknowledge this contradiction when it is explicitly pointed out to them; but they can go through their entire lives holding both beliefs and be unaware of the contradiction. If such beliefs are the basis for networks of entailments and other relations that enable Quinian bootstrapping, how can such a process work when local contradictions are prolific?
Third, there is the concepts-within-theories dilemma. Discussions of scientists learning the distinction between heat and temperature, or rejecting luminiferous aether, or embracing evolution, all assume theory-like systems that undergo change; but can we reduce such cases to laypeople and children? How degraded can a theory-like structure become and still work as a theory? If theories must be coherent and a basis for making ontological commitments, will disorganized sets of fragments suffice? If the coherent units of a child's intuitive biology are little more than two or three nodes and a few links between them (Inagaki & Hatano Reference Inagaki and Hatano2002), is that enough structure? In addition, do theories have to be couched in explicit beliefs or can they be implicit intuitions about causal patterns that lurk dimly outside awareness?
All of us, especially young children, reveal striking brilliance and cluelessness at the same time. We can track surprisingly abstract causal patterns in ways that clearly go beyond noting frequencies and correlations, yet we can also be profoundly ignorant of even the simplest mechanistic details (Lawson Reference Lawson2006; Keil Reference Keil2010). From infancy onwards, we function much of the time at a level that senses causal regularities and seems to be inferential in nature, but which is nonetheless heavily degraded. Because of its specificity and rigor, Carey's book makes clear just how much of a challenge still remains in telling a full story of where concepts come from and how they change with development.
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The history of psychology and philosophy is littered with the bloated carcasses of grand theories that tried to do far more than they were able in explaining the origins and growth of concepts. Many classic theorists proposed large-scale origins stories, but their accounts were invariably missing critical details, full of inconsistencies, or both. Carey's book is just the opposite (Carey Reference Carey2009). It tackles head on some of the most vexing problems about the nature of concepts and their origins, and illustrates how the right origins stories are critical to understanding what concepts really are and how they are represented in adults. It provides specific mechanisms that go from core domains in infancy to more elaborated conceptual systems in children and adults. It is gratifying to see many precise and empirically testable claims, such as: initial concepts are represented iconically, Quinian bootstrapping enables children to circumvent Fodor's problem of testing new concepts that one cannot yet fully represent, and the concept of cause does not simply emerge of out of perceptual primitives. Through such cases as the growth of numerical thought, Carey illustrates her theory in detail and makes sometimes startlingly precise claims.
These characteristics make this a landmark book that sets a new standard for the study of concepts and their development. One need not agree with all of Carey's proposals to appreciate the benefits of having such a detailed and verifiable account. There are, of course, many remaining questions. For example, how does analogy allow one to implement Quinian boostrapping successfully as opposed to getting lost in a sea of irrelevant analogies? How does one unambiguously show that early representations are iconic in nature as opposed to being in other formats? To all such questions, Carey is usually refreshingly open to alternative answers and would simply want to know how they could be empirically tested against her views. There is, however, a broader question that poses a challenge for all approaches to concepts and their origins: namely, what happens when the information content of concepts is degraded?
Although traditionally used in Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) models in which networks could suffer damage and still function approximately the same way (Rumelhart Reference Rumelhart and Posner1989), the idea of “graceful degradation” here raises the question of whether stories of origins and conceptual change remain elegant and coherent as concepts themselves become increasingly degraded. Carey is clearly aware of the problem of packing too much inside concepts proper and of the challenges of deciding on what information is associated with concepts and what information is part of their internal structure. Rejecting Fodor's (Reference Fodor1998) minimalist program, she wants concepts to have some internal relational structures to act as vehicles for conceptual growth and change. The question is, how much internal structure is needed for Carey's account of the origins of concepts to go forward and how explicit must it be?
Consider three challenges. First, what people know about concepts such as “gold,” “tiger,” or “winter” can be startlingly degraded. Most accounts of concepts hold that prototypes or other bottom-up probabilistic tabulations of features are inadequate and also include beliefs with entailments. Yet the details are elusive. What does the layperson know about tigers in particular, and not just animals, that has any content beyond the prototype? The answer may seem to lie in how we cognitively implement “sustaining mechanisms,” those ways of “locking” our concepts onto real-world entities (Laurence & Margolis Reference Laurence and Margolis2002). Some sustaining mechanisms use theories to directly lock, some use deference to experts, and some use prototypes (Laurence & Margolis Reference Laurence and Margolis2002). All three mechanisms usually work together, but it remains unclear just how they interact, what parts are in concept proper, and how they would figure in conceptual change. The theory component is often limited to large categories, such as living kinds; the prototypes can mislead; and deference cannot work without complex cognitive activities that specify relevant experts (Keil et al. Reference Keil, Stein, Webb, Billings and Rozenblit2008). Sustaining mechanisms remain troublingly mysterious.
Second, even when crisp explicit beliefs might be candidates for conceptual components, they often don't behave well. Adults routinely believe that winter is when the earth is farther away from the sun than in summer; yet they might also believe that it is summer in Australia when it is winter in Europe. They acknowledge this contradiction when it is explicitly pointed out to them; but they can go through their entire lives holding both beliefs and be unaware of the contradiction. If such beliefs are the basis for networks of entailments and other relations that enable Quinian bootstrapping, how can such a process work when local contradictions are prolific?
Third, there is the concepts-within-theories dilemma. Discussions of scientists learning the distinction between heat and temperature, or rejecting luminiferous aether, or embracing evolution, all assume theory-like systems that undergo change; but can we reduce such cases to laypeople and children? How degraded can a theory-like structure become and still work as a theory? If theories must be coherent and a basis for making ontological commitments, will disorganized sets of fragments suffice? If the coherent units of a child's intuitive biology are little more than two or three nodes and a few links between them (Inagaki & Hatano Reference Inagaki and Hatano2002), is that enough structure? In addition, do theories have to be couched in explicit beliefs or can they be implicit intuitions about causal patterns that lurk dimly outside awareness?
All of us, especially young children, reveal striking brilliance and cluelessness at the same time. We can track surprisingly abstract causal patterns in ways that clearly go beyond noting frequencies and correlations, yet we can also be profoundly ignorant of even the simplest mechanistic details (Lawson Reference Lawson2006; Keil Reference Keil2010). From infancy onwards, we function much of the time at a level that senses causal regularities and seems to be inferential in nature, but which is nonetheless heavily degraded. Because of its specificity and rigor, Carey's book makes clear just how much of a challenge still remains in telling a full story of where concepts come from and how they change with development.