The Innate Mind

"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

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.

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