A Science-Based Critique of Epistemological Naturalism in Quine’s Tradition by Reto Gubelmann

Author:Reto Gubelmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030245245
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

5.3.3 Conclusion: Insufficient Evidence for Innate Logic

In this chapter, I have examined one of the three main pillars of Maddy’s Second Philosophy of Logic: the claim that pre-linguistic human infants can reason in accordance with rudimentary logic. To substantiate her claim, Maddy almost exclusively relies on nativist interpretations of the behavior of infants in so-called habituation and preferential looking experiments. According to these nativist interpretations, the looking preferences of pre-linguistic infants in such experiments are best explained by crediting them with the ability to refer to so-called Spelke objects, and with a partial understanding of what can and what cannot happen to these objects.

Nativism, so conceived, directly contradicts Quine’s source-empiricism. Hence, if well-supported, it would undermine virtually every part of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. In contrast, it seems clear that nativism decisively supports the main pillar of Maddy’s Second Philosophy of Logic, according to which humans are innately disposed to pick up and represent rudimentary logical structures.

I have reconstructed a representative sample of the experiments that Maddy invokes in support of her claim. The first experiment aims to show that infants use the criterion of continuous motion to individuate Spelke objects. It aims to show this based on the looking times of infants at displays of one or two rods, after having been habituated to continuous and discontinuous rod movements respectively. The second kind of experiment, the so-called drawbridge experiment, is taken to show that infants understand that occluded objects persist and are not penetrable. This is inferred from the experimental datum that they are looking longer at the so-called impossible event, where the drawbridge appears to penetrate a box, or Mr. Potato head, than at various so-called possible events.

Finally, I have critically assessed these experiments on two levels. First, I have outlined the high degree of sophistication of the cognitive abilities that nativists want to attribute to infants to explain their behavior in preferential looking experiments. I have suggested that being able to understand, to expect, and to be surprised in the nativist understanding of these terms requires an epistemic self-consciousness. However, empirical research suggests that pre-linguistic infants do not have such a consciousness. More generally speaking, I have pointed out that the nativists’ inference is abductive in form: it infers nativism as the best explanation of the infant’s looking preferences in the experiments. Based on the methodological principle called Glock’s handgun, I have urged that it takes much in terms of empirical evidence to support this abductive inference.

Second, I have discussed empirical studies that imply that the habituation and preferential looking method probably cannot provide such empirical evidence. I have focused on the drawbridge experiments, as conducted by Baillargeon et al. (1985) and Baillargeon (1987). I have argued that there are strong reasons, arising simply from paying close attention to the experimental set-up, against taking the results of these experiments to support nativism. First, Rivera et al. (1999) provide evidence that a combination of simple preferences of the infants, namely a preference for novelty and more motion, can explain

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