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Animal vs. human rationality-cum-conceptuality: a philosophical perspective on developmental psychology

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Abstract

In this paper, we first extract from Susan Carey’s seminal account of the origin of concepts a notion of rationality, which is (1) applicable to human infants and non-human animals; (2) significantly different from the notions of rationality prevalent in behavioral ecology and yet, like these notions, amenable to empirical testing; (3) conceptually more fundamental than the latter notions. Relatedly, this notion (4) underlies a proto-conceptuality ascribable, by a key component of Carey’s account, to human infants and non-human animals. Based on a Kantian-inspired analysis of fully-fledged conceptuality and the type of rationality underlying it, we then show (1) the profound difference between the type of rationality extracted from Carey’s account and the rationality of human adults; (2) related fundamental differences between the types of conceptual representation that these types of rationality respectively ground. By showing this, we highlight fundamental aspects of conceptual representations that are missing from Carey’s account of the origin of concepts. Based on this, we finally argue that, as ingenious and explanatorily valuable as Carey’s account of the origin of concepts is, it is only a partial account of this origin.

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Acknowledgements

An early version of the paper was presented at an international workshop “Rational Animals?” co-organized by us at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in June 2017. In addition, parts of a later version were discussed in two meetings of an interdisciplinary reading group on rationality also co-organized by us, this time in 2019 at the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality. We would like to thank the participants in both the workshop and the reading group for their helpful comments on those versions of the paper. We are also grateful to Elijah Millgram for his penetrating comments on a still later version of the paper. Last but not least, thanks are due to two anonymous referees of Mind and Society for their helpful and constructive comments on the penultimate draft of the paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Yakir Levin

  2. Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem, Israel

    Itzhak Aharon

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  1. Yakir Levin
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Correspondence to Yakir Levin.

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Levin, Y., Aharon, I. Animal vs. human rationality-cum-conceptuality: a philosophical perspective on developmental psychology. Mind Soc 21, 63–88 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-022-00285-9

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