The Innate Mind: Volume 3: Foundations and the Future (Evolution and Cognition Series) - Hardcover

Carruthers, Peter; Laurence, Stephen; Stich, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195332830 ISBN 13: 9780195332834

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

This is the third volume of a three-volume set on The Innate Mind. The extent to which cognitive structures, processes, and contents are innate is one of the central questions concerning the nature of the mind, with important implications for debates throughout the human sciences. 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: Volume 3: Foundations and the Future, concerns a variety of foundational issues as well as questions about the direction of future nativist research. It addresses such questions as: What is innateness? Is it a confused notion? What is at stake in debates between nativists and empiricists? What is the relationship between genes and innateness? How do innate structures and learned information interact to produce adult forms of cognition, e.g. about number, and how does such learning take place? What innate abilities underlie the creative aspect of language, and of creative cognition generally? What are the innate foundations of human motivation, and of human moral cognition? In the course of their discussions, many of the contributors pose the question (whether explicitly or implicitly): Where next for nativist research?

Together, these three volumes 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 powerful picture of our minds and their place in the natural order.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Carruthers (born 16 June 1952) is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Maryland College Park. He was until recently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where he founded and directed the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies. He is the author of Language, Thought and Consciousness (CUP, 1996), Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory (CUP, 2000), and (with George Botterill) of The Philosophy of Psychology (CUP, 1999). He co-edited the previous three Hang Seng Centre volumes, Theories of Theories of Mind (CUP, 1996), Language and Thought (CUP, 1998) and Evolution and the Human Mind (CUP, 2000).

Stephen Laurence is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Margolis and Laurence are coeditors of "Concepts: Core Readings" (MIT Press).

Michael Siegal (born 30 March 1950) is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He has researched and taught internationally and has published extensively in the area of developmental psychology. Siegal is the author of Knowing Children: Experiments in Conversation and Cognition (2nd ed., Psychology Press, 1997) and co-editor with Candida C. Peterson of Children's Understanding of Biology and Health (CUP, 1999). He has served on the editorial boards of Child Development, Developmental Science, and Developmental Psychology, and is an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0195332830
• ISBN 13: 9780195332834
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 456