Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Sophia and the Toy Chair

Sophia was maybe eighteen months old, maybe a bit younger, when she delighted her grandmother with a bit of business with a toy chair. It was a tiny plastic chair for dolls, about two inches tall. Sophia tried to lower herself down into the chair. What is philosophical about this (or at least psychological; I'm thinking of Kant) is that she has the concept of chair way before she has a working grasp of spatial relations. Kant thought that the mind was a concept engine, organizing everything into categories (for better or for worse: his analysis of prejudice and stereotypes is based on this and is spot on I think).

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