On the very idea of a science forming faculty

Dialectica 56 (2):125–151 (2002)
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Abstract

It has been speculated, by Chomsky and others, that our capacity for scientific understanding is not only enabled but also limited by a biologically endowed science forming faculty . I look at two sorts of consideration for the SFF thesis and find both wanting. Firstly, it has been claimed that a problem‐mystery distinction militates for the SFF thesis. I suggest that the distinction can be coherently drawn for cases, but that the purported‘evidence’for even a fairly lose general demarcation of problems and mysteries is not best explained by a SFF. Secondly, I consider in detail a range of cognitive considerations for the SFF thesis and contend that it is at best moot whether science can be so construed as to make it feasible that it is a faculty competence

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References found in this work

The Language of Thought.Jerry Fodor - 1975 - Harvard University Press.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.Noam Chomsky - 1965 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.Nelson Goodman - 1983 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The View From Nowhere.Thomas Nagel - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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