TY - JOUR A1 - Hildebrandt, Frauke A1 - Glauer, Ramiro A1 - Moore, Richard T1 - Rethinking how children individuate objects T2 - Synthese N2 - The current understanding of cognitive development rests on the premise that infants can individuate objects early on. However, the so-called object-first account faces severe difficulties explaining extant empirical findings in object individuation tasks while alternative, more parsimonious explanations are available. In this paper, we assume that children start as feature-thinkers without being able to individuate objects and show how this ability can be learned by thinkers who do not already implicitly possess the notion of an object. Based on Tugendhat's ideas on the relation between singular terms and object reference, we argue that spatial indexicals comprise the fundamental means of object individuation and describe how feature thinkers might acquire the complex substitutional system of spatial indexicals. In closing, two accounts of object cognition that do not rely on symbolic capacities, namely Pylyshyn's FINST indexes and Burge's perceptual objectivity, are critically discussed. KW - Kind KW - Säugling KW - Kognitive Entwicklung Y1 - 2023 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fhpotsdam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3194 SN - 0039-7857 SN - 1573-0964 VL - 202 IS - 3 SP - 1 EP - 25 PB - Springer Nature CY - Berlin ER -