Journal ArticleDOI
How the mind grows: a developmental perspective on the biology of cognition
Paul E. Griffiths,Karola Stotz +1 more
TLDR
It is suggested that what is distinctive about human development is its degree of reliance on external scaffolding, including those which can be explained in evolutionary terms.Abstract:
The ‘developmental systems’ perspective in biology is intended to replace the idea of a genetic program This new perspective is strongly convergent with recent work in psychology on situated/embodied cognition and on the role of external ‘scaffolding’ in cognitive development Cognitive processes, including those which can be explained in evolutionary terms, are not ‘inherited’ or produced in accordance with an inherited program Instead, they are constructed in each generation through the interaction of a range of developmental resources The attractors which emerge during development and explain robust and/or widespread outcomes are themselves constructed during the process At no stage is there an explanatory stopping point where some resources control or program the rest of the developmental cascade ‘Human nature’ is a description of how things generally turn out, not an explanation of why they turn out that way Finally, we suggest that what is distinctive about human development is its degree of reliance on external scaffoldingread more
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Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence
TL;DR: Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural practices into our existence as discussed by the authors, and argues that such a merger is entirely natural.
Journal ArticleDOI
Darwin's mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds
TL;DR: It is suggested that recent symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds.
Journal ArticleDOI
On Evolutionary Epistemology
TL;DR: Eichinger et al. as discussed by the authors pointed out the utter implausibility of all attempts to explain continued lactase activity throughout life by reference to survival and reproductive advantages, and pointed out that if the Danes who are among the best lactose absorbers in the world, had acquired this trait through selection for fitness, they would have to have lived for thousands of years in such precarious nutritional conditions that drinking or not drinking fresh milk made a difference to their survival and reproduction, which is obviously absurd.
Book
Natural-Born Cyborgs
TL;DR: Cognitive technologies are best understood as deep and integral parts of the problem-solving systems the authors identify as human intelligence, as well as the dense, reciprocal patterns of causal and co-evolutionary influence that run between them.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Variation: Evoked Culture and Mate Preferences
TL;DR: It is proposed that a well-articulated evolutionary perspective on cultural variation may be particularly useful because it can specify how variation in cultural practice itself may emerge and suggested that evolutionary psychology provides frameworks that transcend these dichotomies.
References
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Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought
George Lakoff,Mark Johnson +1 more
TL;DR: The Cognitive Science of Philosophy: A Cognitive Science Of Basic Philosophical Ideas as mentioned in this paper The Cognitive science of philosophy is a branch of the philosophy of early Greek metaphysics and philosophy of philosophy.
Book
The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture
TL;DR: The Adapted Mind as discussed by the authors explores evolutionary psychology and its implications for a new view of culture, in which the traditional view of the mind as a general-purpose computer, tabula rasa or passive recipient of culture is being replaced by the view that the mind resembles an intricate network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture.
Book
Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again
TL;DR: Clark as mentioned in this paper argues that the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, and argues that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity.