The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition
Reflecting the focus of a Jean Piaget Symposium entitled Biology and Knowledge: Structural Constraints on Development, this volume presents many of the emergent themes discussed. Among them:* Structural constraints on cognitive development and learning come in many shapes and forms and involve appeal to more than one level of analysis.* To postulate innate knowledge is not to deny that humans can acquire new concepts.* It is unlikely that there is only one learning mechanism, even if one prefers to work with general as opposed to domain-specific mechanisms.* The problems of induction with respect to concept acquisition are even harder than originally thought.Biological contributions to cognition -- Lessons from animal learning for the study of cognitive development / C.R. Gallistel, Ann L. Brown, Susan Carey, Rochel Gelman, and Frank C. Keil -- The instinct to learn / Peter Marler -- Neuropsychological insights into the meaning of object concept development / Adele Diamond -- Contrasting concepts of the critical period for language / Elissa L. Newport -- Innate knowledge and beyondPhysical knowledge in infancy : reflections on Piaget's theory / Elizabeth S. Spelke -- Beyond modularity : innate constraints and developmental change / Annette Karmiloff-Smith -- Constraining nativist inferences about cognitive capacities / Kurt W. Fischer and Thomas Bidell -- The emergence of theoretical beliefs as constraints on concepts / Frank C. Keil -- Knowledge acquisition : enrichment or conceptual change? / Susan Carey -- Epigenetic foundations of knowledge structures : initial and transcendent constructions / Rochel Gelman
