DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Innate Mind: Volume 2: Culture and Cognition

Peter Carruthers editor Stephen Laurence editor Stephen Stich editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:18th Jan '07

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Innate Mind: Volume 2: Culture and Cognition cover

This is the second of a three volume series on innateness--one of the central topics currently debated in the cognitive and behavioral sciences. The series grows out of interdisciplinary "working groups" at Rutgers University. The first volume focused on the fundamental architecture of the human mind. The second volume focuses on culture. It is comprised of cutting-edge work by an interdisciplinary roster of well-known scholars including Robert Boyd, Peter Richerson, David Sloan Wilson, Paul Griffiths, Dan Sperber, Kim Sterelny, Scott Atran, and Peter Todd.

"If you are impressed by our species' cross-cultural variation, but mystified by how it emerges, then read this book. If you are unimpressed by our cross-cultural variation, but moved by our universality, then read this book. You will learn that of all the species that have existed on earth, we are truly bizarre, at once both clones of each other and yet remarkably different."--Marc Hauser, Harvard College Professor of Psychology and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and author of Wild Minds and Moral Minds.
"Carruthers, Laurence, and Stich have done it again! The second book in their Innate Mind series is as much a must have as the first. Most of the big names in evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution are represented here, talking sensibly and informatively about how culture informs and shapes the innate mind, and vice versa. Both meta-level and object-level issues are dealt with. How should the relation between culture and the genetically shaped mind be conceived? Is the innate mind modular? How does our manifest and massive enculturation influence the evolution of our minds, and how do the minds we have inherited from our hominid ancestors shape our mental, social, moral, and religious practices? This book is not a survey; it is a collection of cutting-edge research papers, which should stimulate professionals and students alike."--Fiona Cowie, author of What's Within
"This is a fantastic volume. It beautifully answers the tired complaint that we need to get beyond the simple nature/nurture dichotomy. This collection of essays represents a striking advance in our understanding of both nativism and culture. It also provides the basis for a bright future in charting how innate and cultural components interact. Together with the other Innate Mind volumes assembled by this team, this volume represents a real landmark in the development of nativism."--Shaun Nichols, University of Arizona, and author of Sentimental Rules and co-author of Mindreading.

ISBN: 9780195310146

Dimensions: 159mm x 234mm x 23mm

Weight: 531g

368 pages