Abstract:
Considering the past 40 years of research on the mental representations of animals and infants has led many to conclude that non-linguistic thought contains abstract concepts such as logical connectives, number, abstract relations such as same and different. In a case study of abstract relations I will sketch the evidence for this conclusion, which I will endorse with two caveats: the non-linguistic versions are often proto versions of the target concept as lexicalized in language. I will show that there are three principally different formats for the concept same. I will show that specifying format explains patterns of success and striking failures on tasks requiring deploying those concepts, and allows us to make precise some ways there can be proto concepts.
Bio: Dr. Susan Carey