Methodological Empiricism

In Part IV of the book we examine a representative sample of the most important and influential empiricist challenges and alternatives to concept nativism. In this chapter, we begin with the challenge stemming from what we call methodological empiricism. This widely held view contends that empiricist approaches should be considered the default position in the rationalism-empiricism debate about the origins of concepts and that rationalism should only be considered as a last resort if all possible empiricist alternatives have been ruled out. Our discussion of this challenge is centred around the origins of the concept of physical objects, but the morals of our discussion generalize. We show that there are no grounds for accepting methodological empiricism as a general position, and that consideration of the argument as applied to the case of the concept of physical objects only provides further support for concept nativism in this domain.