Coda

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides a brief conclusion to the book, highlighting some of its major themes. The Building Blocks of Thought comprehensively rethinks the rationalism-empiricism debate about the origins of concepts by revisiting and updating the theoretical foundations of the debate and defending a form of concept nativism according to which many concepts across many conceptual domains are either innate or acquired via rationalist learning mechanisms. Our concept nativism stands in stark contrast with empiricist approaches in philosophy and cognitive science, with Fodor’s scepticism about concepts being learned, and with views that refer to core knowledge systems in only a handful of content domains. We conclude that the best account of the origins of concepts is one that posits a rich innate entry point into many different conceptual domains—one in which characteristically rationalist learning mechanisms are critical to explaining how the human mind acquires its vast stock of concepts.