New thinking, innateness and inherited representation

N. Shea

doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0125

New thinking, innateness and inherited representation

N. Shea

Philosophy

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16 Citations (Scopus)

202 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The New Thinking contained in this volume rejects an Evolutionary Psychology that is committed to innate domain-specific psychological mechanisms: gene-based adaptations that are unlearnt, developmentally fixed and culturally universal. But the New Thinking does not simply deny the importance of innate psychological traits. The problem runs deeper: the concept of innateness is not suited to distinguishing between the New Thinking and Evolutionary Psychology. That points to a more serious problem with the concept of innateness as it is applied to human psychological phenotypes. This paper argues that the features of recent human evolution highlighted by the New Thinking imply that the concept of inherited representation, set out here, is a better tool for theorizing about human cognitive evolution.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2234-2244
Number of pages	12
Journal	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences
Volume	367
Issue number	1599
Early online date	25 Jun 2012
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0125
Publication status	Published - 5 Aug 2012

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New thinking, innateness and inherited representation

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