Culture and Cognition: Evolutionary Perspectives

ISBN-13: 9780230008779 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 380 str.

Bradley Franks

Opis

This book provides a critical assessment of modularity-based and social constructionist approaches to understanding mind and culture. In this groundbreaking and timely work, Franks demonstrates how a more plausible resolution to the circularity problem emerges from reframing mind and culture and their relations in evolutionary terms.

Spis treści

Introduction The Circularity Problem and Social Constructionist Views  The Circularity Problem and Naturalistic Views  Massive Modularity and Psychological Essentialism  Explanatory Approaches: Cultural and Cognitive Environments and the Evolutionary Past  Massive Modularity and Adaptations  Representations, Motivation and Affect  Mind, Situation and Representation  Culture, Embodiment and Extended Mind  Varieties of Theory of Mind, Affordances, Indication and Culture  Adaptations, Culture and External Theory of Mind  Cultural Evolution, Cultural Transmission and Cultural Patterns  Circularity Revisited: Mind and Culture in Interaction  References.

O autorze

BRADLEY FRANKS is a senior lecturer in psychology at the London School of Economics. He has published widely in the areas of cognition, culture, evolutionary theory and philosophy of mind.

Blurb

Human culture depends on human minds for its creation, meaning and exchange. But minds also depend on culture for their contents and processes. Past resolutions to this circularity problem have tended to give too much weight to one side and too little weight to the other.

In this groundbreaking and timely work, Bradley Franks demonstrates how a more plausible resolution to the circularity problem emerges from reframing mind and culture and their relations in evolutionary terms. He proposes an alternative evolutionary approach that draws on views of mind as embodied and situated. By grounding social construction in evolution, evolution of mind is intrinsically connected to culture – resolving the circularity problem.

In developing his theory, Franks provides a balanced critical assessment of modularity-based and social constructionist approaches to understanding mind and culture.