The Innate Mind Structure and Contents

by Carruthers, Peter; Laurence, Stephen; Stich, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780195179996
• ISBN10: 0195179994
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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 inphilosophy, 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 cognitivecapacities, 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 valuablereference 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 naturalorder.

Author Biography

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	xi
1 Introduction: Nativism Past and Present	3	(20)
Tom Simpson, Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich
PART ONE ARCHITECTURE
2 What Developmental Biology Can Tell Us about Innateness	23	(118)
Gary F. Marcus
3 Innateness and (Bayesian) Visual Perception: Reconciling Nativism and Development	34	(19)
Brian J. Scholl
4 Modularity and Relevance: How Can a Massively Modular Mind Be Flexible and Context-Sensitive?	53	(16)
Dan Sperber
5 Distinctively Human Thinking: Modular Precursors and Components	69	(20)
Peter Carruthers
6 Language and the Development of Spatial Reasoning	89	(18)
Anna Shusterman and Elizabeth Spelke
7 The Complexity of Cognition: Tractability Arguments for Massive Modularity	107	(15)
Richard Samuels
8 Toward a Reasonable Nativism	122	(19)
Tom Simpson
PART TWO LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
9 Strong versus Weak Adaptationism in Cognition and Language	141	(15)
Scott Atran
10 The Innate Endowment for Language: Underspecified or Overspecified?	156	(19)
Mark C. Baker
11 Brass Tacks in Linguistic Theory: Innate Grammatical Principles	175	(23)
Stephen Crain, Andrea Gualmini, and Paul Pietroski
12 Two Insights about Naming in the Preschool Child	198	(18)
Susan A. Gelman
13 Number and Natural Language	216	(23)
Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis
PART THREE THEORY OF MIND
14 Parent-Offspring Conflict and the Development of Social Understanding	239	(15)
Daniel J. Povinelli, Christopher G. Prince, and Todd M. Preuss
15 Reasoning about Intentionality in Preverbal Infants	254	(18)
Susan C. Johnson
16 What Neurodevelopmental Disorders Can Reveal about Cognitive Architecture: The Example of Theory of Mind	272	(19)
Helen Tager-Flusberg
PART FOUR MOTIVATION
17 The Plausibility of Adaptations for Homicide	291	(14)
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	305	(33)
John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, and H. Clark Barrett
19 Cognitive Neuroscience and the Structure of the Moral Mind	338	(15)
Joshua Greene
20 Innateness and Moral Psychology	353	(18)
Shaun Nichols
References	371	(46)
Index	417