The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents

by Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, Stephen Stich

Overview

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The extent to which the mind is innate is one of the central questions in the human sciences, with important implications for many surrounding debates. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry.

The Innate Mind: Structure and Content, concerns the fundamental architecture of the mind, addressing such question as: What capacities, processes, representations, biases, and connections are innate? How do these innate elements feed into a story about the development of our mature cognitive capacities, and which of them are shared with other members of the animal kingdom? The editors have provided an introduction giving some of the background to debates about innateness and introducing each of the subsequent essays, as well as a consolidated bibliography that will be a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great importance to all researchers and students interested in the fundamental nature and powers of the human mind.

Together, the three volumes in the series will provide the most intensive and richly cross-disciplinary investigation of nativism ever undertaken. They point the way toward a synthesis of nativist work that promises to provide a new understanding of our minds and their place in the natural order.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195179996
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2005
Series:	Evolution and Cognition
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	9.21(w) x 6.14(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Peter Carruthers is Professor and Chair in the Department of Philosophy at The University of Maryland.

Stephen Laurence is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Co-Director at the Hang Seng Center for Cognitive Studies at University of Sheffield.

Stephen Stich is Board of Governors Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors
1. Introduction: Nativism Past and Present, Tom Simpson, Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich
PART ONE: ARCHITECTURE
2. What Developmental Biology Can Tell Us about Innateness, Gary F. Marcus
3. Innateness and (Bayesian) Visual Perception: Reconciling Nativism and Development, Brian J. Scholl
4. Modularity and Relevance: How Can a Massively Modular Mind Be Flexible and Context-Sensitive?, Dan Sperber
5. Distinctively Human Thinking: Modular Precursors and Components, Peter Carruthers
6. Language and the Development of Spatial Reasoning, Anna Shusterman and Elizabeth Spelke
7. The Complexity of Cognition: Tractability Arguments for Massive Modularity, Richard Samuels
8. Toward a Reasonable Nativism, Tom Simpson
PART TWO: LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
9. Strong versus Weak Adaptationism in Cognition and Language, Scott Atran
10. The Innate Endowment for Language: Underspecified or Overspecified?, Mark C. Baker
11. Brass Tacks in Linguistic Theory: Innate Grammatical Principles, Stephen Crain, Andrea Gualmini, and Paul Pietroski
12. Two Insights about Naming in the Preschool Child, Susan A. Gelman
13. Number and Natural Language, Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis
PART THREE: THEORY OF MIND
14. Parent-Offspring Conflict and the Development of Social Understanding, Daniel J. Povinelli, Christopher G. Prince, and Todd M. Preuss
15. Reasoning about Intentionality in Preverbal Infants, Susan C. Johnson
16. What Neurodevelopmental Disorders Can Reveal about Cognitive Architecture: The Example of Theory of Mind, Helen Tager-Flusberg
PART FOUR: MOTIVATION
17. The Plausibility of Adaptations for Homicide, Joshua D. Duntley and David M. Buss
18. Resolving the Debate on Innate Ideas: Learnability Constraints and the Evolved Interpenetration of Motivational and Conceptual Functions, John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, and a. Clark Barrett
19. Cognitive Neuroscience and the Structure of the Moral Mind, Joshua Greene
20. Innateness and Moral Psychology, Shaun Nichols
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a terrific collection. It's not just a survey of the terrain, though it is that; it also contains a number of papers that push the boundaries and make major new contributions to several hot debates in cognitive science ...I predict that the book will become a must-have collection, not just for all participants in these fields, but also for those not working in these areas and desiring a comprehensive and accessible guide to the issues."—Fiona Cowie, California Institute of Technology

"The Innate Mind is a must-have book, precisely because it brings together theory and research over so much of cognitive science..."—Thomas H. Leahey, PsycCritiques

From the Publisher