Of course our genes will make some capacities very much easier to learn than others, and of course our genes themselves are not learned. But the point remains that genes themselves are not cognitive capacities, and that anything worth calling a cognitive capacity will depend to some degree on learning and so not be innate.
David PapineauPhilosophers sometimes also use 'reductionist' more strictly, to mean 'type-identities' between mental and physical categories, and to exclude 'non-reductive physicalisms' like metaphysical functionalism.
David PapineauI think my view is rather more radical than Pete Mandik's. Both of us want to show that colour perception doesn't transcend what can be conceptualized, but I don't think he goes so far as to deny that it doesn't involve different responses to all the discriminable surfaces.
David PapineauI rather incline towards 'conceptualism', in line with my view of colour perception - I don't think that we can represent objects and properties for which we have no concepts, not even in perceptual experience. In this sense I differ from those who defend 'non-conceptual content' like Michael Tye and Chris Peacocke.
David Papineau