In the last two decades, philosophers of mind have represented cognitive psychology very well: Jerry Fodor and Robert Cummins in particular are two whom one thinks of. They have formulated the basic principles that cognitive psychologists appear to work with. This is a review of their most recent books. Positive remarks are overshadowed by a number of questions that could be asked once one realizes humans are primates-albeit very well-equipped ones. The review expresses concerns about the lack of attention both authors pay to the evolutionary role of cognitions and the consequences this could have for our ideas about their organization and content.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Barsalou, L.W. (1994). Flexibility, structure, and linguistic vagary in concepts: Manifestations of a compositional system of perceptual symbols. In A. F. Collins, S. E. Cathercole, M. A. Conway, & P. E. Morris (Eds.), Theories of memory (pp. 29-101). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
2.
Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 31, 187-276.
3.
Cosmides, L. , & Tooby, J. (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: Toward an evolutionary rigorous cognitive science. Cognition, 50, 41-77.
4.
Gigerenzer, G. , & Hug, K. (1992). Domain-specific reasoning: Social contracts, cheating, and perspective change. Cognition, 43, 127-171.
5.
Rozin, P. , & Schull, J. (1988). The adaptive-evolutionary point of view in experimental psychology. In R. C. Atkinson, R. J. Herrnstein, G. Lindzey, & R. D. Luce (Eds.), Stevens's handbook of experimental psychology (pp. 503-546). New York: Wiley.
