Baptizing meanings for simple concepts

Abstract

Most people find it obvious that concepts, mental representations like APPLE, WALRUS, SWIM, FURRY, and CARBURETOR are acquired by inference from perceptual experiences. Models of how concepts are inferentially acquired usually take the acquired concepts to be complex and built up from more primitive representations (e.g., APPLE is built from perceptual representations of redness, roundness, and sweetness). Philosophy and psychology have struggled through history, however, to find complex representations that have the meanings of these concepts. As a result, some argue that the concepts are in fact simple, which then leads to the view that they are innate, rather than acquired from perception and inference. Because this innateness result is so unpalatable, most concept theorists aim to preserve inferential acquisition by continuing to search for complex meanings. Instead, this paper proposes a model on which concepts like APPLE and WALRUS are acquired from perception and inference, without being built up from the representations involved. A baptism (i.e., dubbing) process, for assigning meanings to mental terms, appeases the tension.