FROM LOTS WIDE TO A PILLAR OF SALT - EVIDENCE THAT PHYSICAL OBJECT ISA SORTAL CONCEPT

A number of philosophers of language have proposed that people do not have conceptual access to 'bare particulars', or attribute-free indivi duals (e.g. Wiggins, 1980). Individuals can only be picked out under s ome sortal, a concept which provides principles of individuation and i dentity. Many advocates of this view have argued that object is not a genuine sortal concept. I will argue in this paper that a narrow sense of 'object', namely the concept of any bounded, coherent, three-dimen sional physical object that moves as a whole (Spelke, 1990) is a sorta l for both infants and adults. Furthermore, object may be the infant's first sortal and more specific sortals such as cup and dog may be acq uired later in the first year of life. I will discuss the implications for infant categorization studies, trying to draw a conceptual distin ction between a perceptual category and a sortal, and I will speculate on how a child may construct sortal concepts such as cup and dog.