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  1. Natural selection and natural language.Steven Pinker & Paul Bloom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):707-784.
    Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...)
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  • The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition.Michael Tomasello - 1999 - Harvard University Press.
    Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from. -/- Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within (...)
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  • What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered.Steven Gross - 2001 - Philosophical Review 110 (1):94-97.
    Fiona Cowie’s What’s Within consists of three parts. In the first, she examines the early modern rationalist-empiricist debate over nativism, isolating what she considers the two substantive “strands” that truly separated them: whether there exist domain-specific learning mechanisms, and whether concept acquisition is amenable to naturalistic explanation. She then turns, in the book’s succeeding parts, to where things stand today with these issues. The second part argues that Jerry Fodor’s view of concepts is continuous with traditional nativism in that it (...)
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  • Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures.Noam Chomsky - 1987 - MIT Press.
    Language and Problems of Knowledge is sixteenth in the series Current Studies in Linguistics, edited by Jay Keyser.
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  • Nongenetic selection and nongenetic inheritance.Matteo Mameli - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1):35-71.
    According to the received view of evolution, only genes are inherited. From this view it follows that only genetically-caused phenotypic variation is selectable and, thereby, that all selection is at bottom genetic selection. This paper argues that the received view is wrong. In many species, there are intergenerationally-stable phenotypic differences due to environmental differences. Natural selection can act on these nongenetically-caused phenotypic differences in the same way it acts on genetically-caused phenotypic differences. Some selection is at bottom nongenetic selection. The (...)
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  • Natural language and natural selection.Steven Pinker & Paul Bloom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):707-27.
    Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...)
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  • The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture.Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby - 1992 - Oxford University Press. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby.
    Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors-...
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  • The new nativism: a commentary on Gary Marcus’s The birth of the mind. [REVIEW]Matteo Mameli & David Papineau - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (4):559-573.
    Gary Marcus has written a very interesting book about mental development from a nativist perspective. For the general readership at which the book is largely aimed, it will be interesting because of its many informative examples of the development of cognitive structures and because of its illuminating explanations of ways in which genes can contribute to these developmental processes. However, the book is also interesting from a theoretical point of view. Marcus tries to make nativism compatible with the central arguments (...)
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  • The poverty of the stimulus argument.Stephen Laurence & Eric Margolis - 2001 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (2):217-276.
    Noam Chomsky's Poverty of the Stimulus Argument is one of the most famous and controversial arguments in the study of language and the mind. Though widely endorsed by linguists, the argument has met with much resistance in philosophy. Unfortunately, philosophical critics have often failed to fully appreciate the power of the argument. In this paper, we provide a systematic presentation of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument, clarifying its structure, content, and evidential base. We defend the argument against a variety (...)
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  • The Mind Doesn’T Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology.Jerry A. Fodor - 2000 - MIT Press.
    Jerry Fodor argues against the widely held view that mental processes are largely computations, that the architecture of cognition is massively modular, and...
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  • (1 other version)Human minds.David Papineau - 2003 - In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Minds and Persons. Cambridge University Press. pp. 159-183.
    Humans are part of the animal kingdom, but their minds differ from those of other animals. They are capable of many things that lie beyond the intellectual powers of the rest of the animal realm. In this paper, I want to ask what makes human minds distinctive. What accounts for the special powers that set humans aside from other animals?
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  • Consciousness Explained.Daniel C. Dennett - 1991 - Penguin Books.
    Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.
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  • Consciousness Explained.Daniel Dennett - 1991 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4):905-910.
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  • (1 other version)Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach.K. Sterelny - 1996 - Mind 110 (439):845-854.
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  • Language and Mind.Noam Chomsky - 1968 - Cambridge University Press.
    This is the third edition of Chomsky's outstanding collection of essays on language and mind, first published in 2006. The first six chapters, originally published in the 1960s, made a groundbreaking contribution to linguistic theory. This edition complements them with an additional chapter and a new preface, bringing Chomsky's influential approach into the twenty-first century. Chapters 1-6 present Chomsky's early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a genetically endowed, biological system, through the rules and principles of which (...)
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  • Consciousness Explained.William G. Lycan - 1993 - Philosophical Review 102 (3):424.
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  • Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition.Kim Sterelny - 2003 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    (From the Press's Website) -/- Winner of the 2004 Lakatos Prize, Thought in a Hostile World is an exploration of the evolution of cognition, especially human cognition, by one of today's foremost philosophers of biology and of mind. Features an exploration of the evolution of human cognition. Written by one of today’s foremost philosophers of mind and language. Presents a set of analytic tools for thinking about cognition and its evolution. Offers a critique of nativist, modular versions of evolutionary psychology, (...)
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  • Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: The Lamarckian Dimension.Eva Jablonka & Marion J. Lamb - 1995 - Oxford University Press UK.
    '...a challenging and useful book, both because it provokes a careful scrutiny of one's own basic ideas regarding evolutionary theory, and because it cuts across so many biological disciplines.' -The Quarterly Review of Biology 'In my view, this work exemplifies Theoretical Biology at its best...here is rampant speculation that is consistently based on cautious reasoning from the available data. Even more refreshing is the absence of sloganeering, grandstanding, and 'isms'.' -Biology and Philosophy 'Epigenetics is fundamental to understanding both development and (...)
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  • Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach.Dan Sperber - 1996 - Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
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  • Nativism in cognitive science.Richard Samuels - 2002 - Mind and Language 17 (3):233-65.
    Though nativist hypotheses have played a pivotal role in the development of cognitive science, it remains exceedingly obscure how they—and the debates in which they figure—ought to be understood. The central aim of this paper is to provide an account which addresses this concern and in so doing: a) makes sense of the roles that nativist theorizing plays in cognitive science and, moreover, b), explains why it really matters to the contemporary study of cognition. I conclude by outlining a range (...)
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  • (1 other version)Language and Problems of Knowledge.Noam Chomsky - 1989 - Studia Logica 48 (1):132-133.
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  • Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett. [REVIEW]Ned Block - 1993 - Journal of Philosophy 90 (4):181-193.
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  • Between Baldwin skepticism and Baldwin boosterism.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2003 - In Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. MIT Press. pp. 53--67.
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  • Innateness in cognitive science.Richard Samuels - 2004 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (3):136-141.
    has a more specific role to play in the development of Of course, the conclusion to draw is not that innateness innate cognitive structure. In particular, a common claim claims are trivially false or that they cannot be character-.
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  • Climbing Mount Improbable.Richard Dawkins - 1999 - Environmental Values 8 (1):114-116.
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  • Discussion. A note on Baldwin effect.John Watkins - 1999 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (3):417-423.
    Baldwin Effect, in which there has been a revival of interest in recent years, is disentangled from certain other ideas which, while resembling it in some ways, also differ importantly from it. Baldwin's original idea was that a 'voluntarily' adopted practice which is adaptive can foster, in some non-Lamarckian way, 'coincident variations' that render the practice instinctive and heritable. It is argued that this idea involves a surreptitious slide back to Lamarckism.
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  • The active role of behaviour in evolution.Patrick Bateson - 2004 - Biology and Philosophy 19 (2):283-298.
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  • (1 other version)Language and Problems of Knowledge.Noam Chomsky - 1997 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 16 (2).
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  • Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change.Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee & Marcus W. Feldman - 2000 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (1):131-146.
    We propose a conceptual model that maps the causal pathways relating biological evolution to cultural change. It builds on conventional evolutionary theory by placing emphasis on the capacity of organisms to modify sources of natural selection in their environment (niche construction) and by broadening the evolutionary dynamic to incorporate ontogenetic and cultural processes. In this model, phenotypes have a much more active role in evolution than generally conceived. This sheds light on hominid evolution, on the evolution of culture, and on (...)
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  • (1 other version)Human Minds.David Papineau - 2003 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 53:159-183.
    Humans are part of the animal kingdom, but their minds differ from those of other animals. They are capable of many things that lie beyond the intellectual powers ofthe rest of the animal realm. In this paper, I want to ask what makes human minds distinctive. What accounts for the special powers that set humans aside from other animals?
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  • A Note on Baldwin Effect.John Watkins - 1999 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (3):417 - 423.
    Baldwin Effect, in which there has been a revival of interest in recent years, is disentangled from certain other ideas which, while resembling it in some ways, also differ importantly from it. Baldwin's original idea was that a 'voluntarily' adopted practice which is adaptive can foster, in some non-Lamarckian way, 'coincident variations' that render the practice instinctive and heritable. It is argued that this idea involves a surreptitious slide back to Lamarckism.
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  • The Selfish Gene. [REVIEW]Gunther S. Stent & Richard Dawkins - 1977 - Hastings Center Report 7 (6):33.
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  • The Baldwin effect and Genetic assimilation: Contrasting explanatory foci and Gene concepts in two approaches to an evolutionary process.Paul Griffiths - 2006 - In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition. New York: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 91-101.
    David Papineau (2003; 2005) has discussed the relationship between social learning and the family of postulated evolutionary processes that includes ‘organic selection’, ‘coincident selection’, ‘autonomisation’, ‘the Baldwin effect’ and ‘genetic assimilation’. In all these processes a trait which initially develops in the members of a population as a result of some interaction with the environment comes to develop without that interaction in their descendants. It is uncontroversial that the development of an identical phenotypic trait might depend on an interaction with (...)
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  • Social learning and the Baldwin effect.David Papineau - 2005 - In António Zilhão (ed.), Evolution, Rationality and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.
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  • (1 other version)What brains won't tell us about the mind: A critique of the neurobiological argument against representational nativism.Richard Samuels - 1998 - Mind and Language 13 (4):548-570.
    In their recent and influential book Rethinking Innateness, Jeffrey Elman and his co‐authors argue that evidence from neurobiology provides us with grounds to reject representational nativism (RN). I argue that Elman et al.’s argument fails because it makes a series of unwarranted assumptions about RN and about the extent to which neurobiological data constrain claims about the innateness of mental rep‐resentations. Moreover, I briefly discuss how we ought to understand RN and argue that on two prima facie plausible approaches, far (...)
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  • (1 other version)What Brains Won’t Tell Us About the Mind: A Critique of the Neurobiological Argument Against Representational Nativism.Richard Samuels - 2002 - Mind and Language 13 (4):548-570.
    In their recent and influential book Rethinking Innateness, Jeffrey Elman and his co‐authors argue that evidence from neurobiology provides us with grounds to reject representational nativism (RN). I argue that Elman et al.’s argument fails because it makes a series of unwarranted assumptions about RN and about the extent to which neurobiological data constrain claims about the innateness of mental rep‐resentations. Moreover, I briefly discuss how we ought to understand RN and argue that on two prima facie plausible approaches, far (...)
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