Stephen Laurence is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He received his PhD in Philosophy at Rutgers University and taught at the University of Manchester, Hampshire College, the London School of Economics, and the University of Hull. He is Director of the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies and directed the AHRC Innateness and the Structure of the Mind Project and the AHRC Culture and the Mind Project. He is co-editor of The Conceptual Mind and Concepts: Core Readings (both The MIT Press) among other books, and has published numerous articles in both philosophical and scientific journals.

Eric Margolis is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD in Philosophy at Rutgers University and taught at Rice University and the University of Wisconsin prior to his appointment at the University of British Columbia. He has received research funding from The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council. He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science (OUP, 2012), and The Conceptual Mind (The MIT Press), among other books, and has published extensively in philosophical journals.

• 1: Introduction: Whatever Happened to the Debate Over Innate Ideas?


• PART I: The Rationalism-Empiricism Debate


• 2: What the Rationalism-Empiricism Debate is Really About


• 3: Why the Rationalism-Empiricism Debate Isn't the Nature-Nurture Debate


• 4: The Viability of Rationalism


• 5: Abstraction and the Allure of Illusory Explanation


• 6: Concepts, Innateness, and Why Concept Nativism is about More Than Just Innate Concepts


• 7: Conclusion to Part I


• PART II: Seven Arguments for Concept Nativism


• 8: The Argument from Early Development (1)


• 9: The Argument from Early Development (2)


• 10: The Argument from Animals


• 11: The Argument from Universality


• 12: The Argument from Initial Representational Access


• 13: The Argument from Neural Wiring


• 14: The Argument from Prepared Learning


• 15: The Argument from Cognitive and Behavioural Quirks


• 16: Conclusion to Part II


• PART III. Alternative Empiricist Perspectives


• 17: Methodological Empiricism


• 18: Neo-Associationism


• 19: Artificial Neural Networks: From Connectionism to Deep Learning


• 20: Neuroconstructivism


• 21: Perceptual Meaning Analysis


• 22: Embodied Cognition


• 23: Conclusion to Part III


• PART IV. Fodorian Concept Nativism


• 24: The Evolution of Fodor's Case Against Concept Learning


• 25: Not All Concepts Are Innate


• 26: Fodor's Biological Account of Concept Acquisition-and the Importance of Cultural Learning


• 27: Conclusion to Part IV


• 28: Coda: Innate Ideas Revisited