The missing link between core knowledge and language: Review of Elizabeth Spelke's What babies know, volume 1 (2022)

Barbu Revencu, Gergely Csibra

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/debate

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Spelke's book defends two hypotheses about human cognition. First, humans and other species are endowed with core knowledge systems—innate computational structures that use abstract concepts to represent various aspects of the environment. Second, humans, and only humans, acquire natural languages, whose syntax and compositional semantics allow them to construct new concepts by combining the outputs of core systems. We endorse the first hypothesis but doubt that language acquisition alone explains the productivity of human cognition. In particular, we argue against the claim that infants use aspects of language to develop a new conception of other people.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1314-1322
Number of pages9
JournalMind and Language
Volume38
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 11 Oct 2023

Keywords

  • agent concepts
  • cognitive development
  • core knowledge
  • language of thought
  • natural language

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