The Innate Mind, Volume 3: Foundations and the Future(Evolution and Cognition)

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.

Table of Contents:
List of Contributors 1: Introduction Part One: Innateness, Genes, and the Poverty of the Stimulus 2: Is Innateness a Confused Concept? 3: Geners, Environments, and Concepts of Biological Inheritance 4: Innateness and Genetic Information 5: Genes and Human Psychological Traits 6: Poverty of the Stimulus Arguments Concerning Language and Fold Psychology Part Two: Innateness and Cognitive Development 7: Where the Integers Come From 8: Linguistic Determinism and the Innate Basis of Number 9: Learning "about " Versus Learning "from" Other Minds: The System of Human Pedagogy and its Implications 10: Rational Statistical Inference and Cognitive Development 11: Of Pigeons, Humans, Language and the Mind Part Three: Language, Creativity, and Cognition 12: The Creative Aspect of Language Use and Non-Biological Nativism 13: The Creative-Action Theory of Creativity 14: Space and the Language-Cognition Interface Part Four: Culture, Motivation, and Morality 15: Innate Constraints on Judgment an Decision Making?: Insights from Non-Human Primates 16: Adaptationism, Culture, and the Malleability of Human Nature 17: Some Innate Foundations of Social and Moral Cognition 18: Two Theories About the Cognitive Architecture Underlying Morality 19: The Moral Mind: How Five Sets of Innate Moral Institutions Guide the Development of Many Culture-Specific Virtues, and Perhaps Even Modules References Index