Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis (Representation and Mind Series) - Hardcover

Prinz, Jj

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262162075 ISBN 13: 9780262162074

Publisher: MIT Press, 2002

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

" Prinz's discussions...provide a clear overview of the field, both in philosophy and psychology." -- S.W. Horst, Choice

& quot; Prinz's discussions...provide a clear overview of the field, both in philosophy and psychology.& quot; -- S.W. Horst, Choice

"Prinz's discussions...provide a clear overview of the field, both in philosophy and psychology."-- S.W. Horst, "Choice"

"Prinz's discussions...provide a clear overview of the field, both in philosophy and psychology." S.W. Horst Choice

About the Author:

Jesse J. Prinz is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi is Professor of Physiology in the Medical School at Northwestern University, with joint appointments in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Biomedical Engineering. He is also Founder and Director of the Robotics Laboratory at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0262162075
• ISBN 13: 9780262162074
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 376