 Cowie is describing an extremely strong form of anti-empiricist skepticism. When directed at the explanatory prospects of science in general it is unlikely that this brand of nativism will be appealing to naturalistic philosophers or scientists. However, skepticism of this kind may be directed at specific scientific theories or explanatory frameworks. Cowie (1998) discusses Jerry Fodor’s (1975; 1981) peculiar-sounding hypothesis that most concepts – e.g. our concept of a doorknob – are innate. On Cowie’s reading, Fodor is offering an impossibility argument: concept acquisition cannot in principle be explained by an empiricist model of associative learning. The following section (2.3) looks more closely at psychological primitivism, a more developed version of Cowie’s mystery hypothesis. The remainder of this section focuses on the special-faculties hypothesis.