#69 Peter Carruthers: Innate Human Cognition
Dr. Peter Carruthers is a British-American philosopher and cognitive scientist working primarily in the area of philosophy of mind, though he has also made contributions to philosophy of language and ethics. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, associate member of the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program and member of the Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences. He’s also the author of many books, like The Philosophy of Psychology, The Architecture of the Mind, and the editor of the trilogy Innate Mind.
In this episode, we talk about what is innate in the human mind; the theory of the massive modularity of the human mind, or how the mind is composed of cognitive modules, each dealing with particular sorts of information; the content of our thoughts; the role that language plays in cognition; and how to conjugate innateness with development flexibility.
Time Links:
How is the mind innate?
Is our cognition composed of modules?
The evolutionary bases of cognition
Why we don’t have only general-domain learning mechanisms
About the prenatal environment
The content of our thoughts
The role of language in cognition
Creativity in evolution
What is creativity about?
How does innateness allow for flexibility during development?
Follow Dr. Carruthers’ work
Follow Dr. Carruthers’ work:
Faculty page: http://faculty.philosophy.umd.edu/pcarruthers/
Books: https://tinyurl.com/y6v3vb4l