Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals areendowed with a “number sense”, or approximate number system(ANS), that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view hasbeen subject to numerous critiques, with critics maintaining eitherthat numerical content is absent altogether, or else that someprimitive analog of number (‘numerosity’) is represented as opposedto number itself. We distinguish three arguments for these claims –the arguments from congruency, confounds, and imprecision – andshow that none succeed. We then highlight positive reasons forthinking that the ANS genuinely represents numbers. The upshot isthat proponents of the orthodox view should not feel troubled byrecent critiques of their position.