Richard Stöckle-Schobel - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Richard Stöckle-Schobel

In my thesis, I argue that the philosophical and psychological study of concept-learning mechanis... more In my thesis, I argue that the philosophical and psychological study of concept-learning mechanisms has failed to take the diversity of learning mechanisms into account, and that consequently researchers should embrace a new way of thinking about concept learning: ‘concept learning’ as a class of psychological mechanisms is not a natural kind lending itself to unified study and should be eliminated. To arrive at this, I discuss several concept-learning models that attempt to overcome Jerry Fodor’s challenge and base my judgment on the plurality of feasible concept-learning mechanisms and on criteria for theoretical notions from the philosophy of science. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the topic ‘concept learning’ and highlights its importance as a research topic in the study of the mind. I argue that a mechanistic understanding of the shape of concept learning is best suited to explain the phenomena, in line with the recent resurgence of mechanism-based explanation in the ph...

Creative Engagements With Children Inside and Outside School Contexts, 2012

Frontiers in Psychology, 2012

A central challenge for any theory of concept learning comes from Fodor's argument against the le... more A central challenge for any theory of concept learning comes from Fodor's argument against the learning of concepts, which lies at the basis of contemporary computationalist accounts of the mind. Robert Goldstone and his colleagues propose a theory of perceptual learning that attempts to overcome Fodor's challenge. Its main component is the addition of a cognitive device at the interface of perception and conception, which slowly builds "cognitive symbols" out of perceptual stimuli. Two main mechanisms of concept creation are unitization and differentiation. In this paper, I will present and examine their theory, and will show that two problems hinder this reply to Fodor's challenge from being a successful answer to the challenge. To amend the theory, I will argue that one would need to say more about the input systems to unitization and differentiation, and be clearer on the representational format that they are able to operate upon. Until these issues have been addressed, the proposal does not deploy its full potential to threaten a Fodorian position.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2016

In this article 1 , I investigate a special type of argument regarding the role of development in... more In this article 1 , I investigate a special type of argument regarding the role of development in theorizing about psychological processes and cognitive capacities. Among the issues that developmental psychologists study, discovering the ontogenetic trajectory of mechanisms or capacities underpinning our cognitive functions ranks highly. The order in which functions are developed or capacities are acquired is a matter of debate between competing psychological theories, and also philosophical conceptions of the mind-getting the role and the significance of the different steps in this order right could be seen as an important virtue of such theories. Thus, a special kind of strategy in arguments between competing philosophical or psychological theories is using developmental order in arguing for or against a given psychological claim. In this article, I will introduce an analysis of arguments from developmental order, which come in two general types: arguments emphasizing the importance of the early cognitive processes and arguments emphasizing the late cognitive processes. I will discuss their role in one of the central tools for evaluating scientific theories, namely in making inferences to the best explanation. I will argue that appeal to developmental order is, by itself, an insufficient criterion for theory choice and has to be part of an argument based on other core explanatory or empirical virtues. I will end by proposing a more concerted study of philosophical issues concerning (cognitive) development, and I will present some topics that also pertain to a full-fledged 'philosophy of development.' Keywords: development, developmental order, inference to the best explanation, philosophy of science, argumentation, conditional reasoning, theories of concepts, developmental psychology 1 An earlier version of this paper was published as a blog post on the iCog blog (see Stöckle-Schobel, 2015).

Frontiers in Psychology, 2016

In this article, I investigate a special type of argument regarding the role of development in th... more In this article, I investigate a special type of argument regarding the role of development in theorizing about psychological processes and cognitive capacities. Among the issues that developmental psychologists study, discovering the ontogenetic trajectory of mechanisms or capacities underpinning our cognitive functions ranks highly. The order in which functions are developed or capacities are acquired is a matter of debate between competing psychological theories, and also philosophical conceptions of the mind – getting the role and the significance of the different steps in this order right could be seen as an important virtue of such theories. Thus, a special kind of strategy in arguments between competing philosophical or psychological theories is using developmental order in arguing for or against a given psychological claim. In this article, I will introduce an analysis of arguments from developmental order, which come in two general types: arguments emphasizing the importance of the early cognitive processes and arguments emphasizing the late cognitive processes. I will discuss their role in one of the central tools for evaluating scientific theories, namely in making inferences to the best explanation. I will argue that appeal to developmental order is, by itself, an insufficient criterion for theory choice and has to be part of an argument based on other core explanatory or empirical virtues. I will end by proposing a more concerted study of philosophical issues concerning (cognitive) development, and I will present some topics that also pertain to a full-fledged 'philosophy of development.'

Conditionals are basic for human reasoning. In our paper, we present two experiments, which for t... more Conditionals are basic for human reasoning. In our paper, we present two experiments, which for the first time systematically compare how people reason about indicative conditionals (Experiment 1) and counterfactual conditionals (Experiment 2) in causal and non-causal task settings (N = 80). The main result of both experiments is that conditional probability is the dominant response pattern and thus a key ingredient for modeling causal, indicative, and counterfactual conditionals. In the paper, we will give an overview of the main experimental results and discuss their relevance for understanding how people reason about conditionals.

A central challenge for any theory of concept learning comes from Fodor’s argument against the le... more A central challenge for any theory of concept learning comes from Fodor’s argument against the learning of concepts, which lies at the basis of contemporary computationalist accounts of the mind. Robert Goldstone and his colleagues propose a theory of perceptual learning that attempts to overcome Fodor’s challenge. Its main component is the addition of a cognitive device at the interface of perception and conception, which slowly builds “cognitive symbols” out of perceptual stimuli. Two main mechanisms of concept creation are unitization and differentiation. In this paper, I will present and examine their theory, and will show that two problems hinder this reply to Fodor’s challenge from being a successful answer to the challenge. To amend the theory, I will argue that one would need to say more about the input systems to unitization and differentiation, and be clearer on the representational format that they are able to operate upon. Until these issues have been addressed, the proposal does not deploy its full potential to threaten a Fodorian position.

Talks by Richard Stöckle-Schobel

In his latest presentation of the argument against the possibility of concept learning, in LOT2, ... more In his latest presentation of the argument against the possibility of concept learning, in LOT2, Jerry Fodor distinguishes between three kinds of concepts: innate concepts, non-rationally acquired concepts, and learned concepts. He argues that the last category is empty, and suggests through his choice of examples that the second class is not very interesting for understanding cognition, as it contains cases like acquiring a concept through being hit on the head, or through surgical ‘implantation’. In this picture, cognitive scientists should regard innate concepts as the most interesting category of concepts, and they should not look for environmental influences that would change one’s conceptual vocabulary. The Radical Concept Nativism argument crucially relies on this threefold distinction, which is a precondition for the second big premise of the argument – the empirical premise regarding psychological mechanisms of learning. It states that the only available mechanism for learning concepts is forming and testing hypotheses, and gives rise to the damning paradox that Fodor raises against concept learning: To form a hypothesis about a given thing X, one needs to have a concept x that one applies in this hypothesis – and learning x by forming a hypothesis containing x is no learning at all.
In this presentation, I will argue that a look at case studies from empirical work in cognitive psychology suggests that Fodor is underestimating the power and the commonness of non-rational concept acquisition and the effect that this kind of acquisition has on the conceptual vocabulary. Especially cases such as learning to perceptually discriminate between psychologically fused perceptual dimensions, like brightness and saturation in colour perception, speak for the creation of new concepts – despite there neither being a ‘rational’ engagement with the question (as in forming a hypothesis) nor purely coincidental changes in one’s cognitive system (as in the bump on the head case).
By looking at such cases of perceptual learning, as investigated by Robert Goldstone and Philippe Schyns, among others, I will propose that the boundaries between purely sensory change and conceptual change are far more permeable than Fodor’s stance would allow. The distinction between rationally acquired (i.e. learned) and non-rationally acquired concepts is far less attractive as a methodological tool than Fodor would like it to be.
If it is permissible to blur the line between rational and non-rational acquisition of concepts, then the range of possible mechanisms for learning opens up and hypothesis formation and testing isn’t the only game in town any more. An empirically informed and empirically testable theory of concept learning could then just as well start with a ‘non-rational’ mechanism that creates cognitively interesting and applicable concepts. My analysis of the matter thus is that (a) the foundations of Fodor’s argument can be called into question because there are empirical considerations that call for blurring one of his central distinctions, and (b) once this distinction is given up, one can construe alternative models for concept learning that are untouched by Fodor’s Radical Concept Nativism argument.

This paper addresses the issue of the development of conceptual abilities in childhood in light o... more This paper addresses the issue of the development of conceptual abilities in childhood in light of Wilfrid Sellars’s theory of word learning as governed by rules. I will argue that a Sellarsian view implies that large parts of mindful activity are inherently social. In his recent book, Words and Images, Christopher Gauker claims that learning a concept is identical to learning a word and concludes from this that no prelinguistic conceptual activity is possible. I want to object to this and use developmental evidence which suggests the position that children aged 9-12 months already have certain social concepts such as “agency” or “person” at their disposal. The crucial types of case studies for such an argument come from the literature on joint attention. I want to argue that establishing a connection between Sellars’s theory of word learning and the joint attention literature is a natural move in assessing their empirical compatibility and the theoretical foundations of the empirical research alike. If we conceive of concepts as the tools for, or components of, judgments, then we can entertain a position that describes various types of social behaviour, like social referencing and pointing gestures as based on the concept of personhood. Granting the possibility of prelinguistic concepts, however, requires a major change to Sellars’s original position: Besides an explanation of concept learning without word learning, which is beyond the scope of the paper, a framework for concepts outside of the socially shaped ‘logical space of reasons’ is necessary. As a final, constructive point, I will argue that such a framework is possible and consistent with Sellars’s perspective.

My blog by Richard Stöckle-Schobel

Creative Engagements With Children Inside and Outside School Contexts, 2012

Frontiers in Psychology, 2012

Frontiers in Psychology, 2016