Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T08:00:16.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - Innateness and the Situated Mind

from Part II - Conceptual Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Philip Robbins
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
Murat Aydede
Affiliation:
University of Florida
Get access

Summary

Situated theorists have reached something approximating an antinativist consensus. The advocate of extended cognition urges us to focus on the traits of extended systems, and it is difficult to see how genes could encode such traits, for genes would seem to affect directly only the organism itself. Humans categorize, perceive, remember, use language, reason, and make sense of the actions of others; these and more are abilities of persisting systems. In contrast, most actual extended systems are short-lived. The embedded approach minimizes the amount of internal representation used to model the human performance of cognitive tasks. Theories of cognition must make some allowance for persisting, internal representations. Children employ amodal representations from early on, and concepts are used in abstract thought, when one is, for example, alone in the study. The wide range of theoretical possibilities opens with respect to nativism and the situated modeling of cognition.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×