The shape of things to come: the future of the shape bias controversy.

When confronted with a controversy such as the reason for the shape bias, one wonders, as Rodney King once did, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ Is there some combination of theory and data that could be acceptable to all parties? Often such conflict resolutions come from showing the parties are talking at cross purposes and that, once one clarifies terms and meanings, they can all live together in one big happy theoretical family. In reading over these papers, I kept trying to find such a resolution, trying to see if there was a way to talk about what is going on that everyone would agree with, with the important side benefit of not alienating half the authors. In the end, I’m not sure such a happy ending is possible. There seem to be real disagreements at work here that cannot easily be defined away. Those disagreements, however, may have less to do with the shape bias in particular and more do with very general approaches to learning and cognitive development. It is important to understand where the key disagreements lie, because finding their real locus is central to knowing why a broader community beyond the ‘shape bias people’ should care about the controversy.