Compositional Mind Quotes

“Q: If evolution can produce creatures that fly and walk as well as swim, why did't it endow newborn minds with more concepts?
A: Historically, thinkers on both sides of the nativist-empiricist controversy have assumed that the more one knows innately, the less one needs to learn. Recent research in computational cognitive science suggests, however, that the reverse is true. A creature who possessed a rich array of innate concepts would face a massive learning challenge if it lives, as all animals do, in an uncertain and changeable environment. For such a creature, possession of the infinitely many concepts that are expressible in an innate language of thought would be a curse: the curse of a compositional mind.”
― Elizabeth S. Spelke, What Babies Know: Core Knowledge and Composition Volume 1