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The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology versus Ethnography
In a further development of the nature-nurture debate, this collection of articles questions how the human mind influences the content and organization of culture. In the study of mental activity, can the effects of evolution and history be teased apart? Evolutionary psychologists argue that cultural transmission is constrained by our genetic inheritance. Few social and cultural anthropologists have found this argument to be relevant to their work and many would doubt its validity. This book uniquely pitches the arguments for innatism against ethnographic perspectives that call into question the theoretical foundations of orthodox evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Ultimately the aim of the debate is to create an original set of mutually compatible theories that will open up new areas for interdisciplinary research.
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2001
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September 3, 2024
ESSAYS ON DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES OF THE "NATURE/NURTURE" DEBATE
Editor Harvey Whitehouse is a Reader in Social Anthropology at the Queen's University of Belfast. He has written books such as 'Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science,' 'Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission,' 'Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity,' etc.
The "Acknowledgements" section of this 2001 book states, "This volume arose from a series of ESRC-funded seminars on 'Memory and Social Transmission'... The planning and development of the book owes much to the efforts of those attending the meetings, especially those who eventually contributed chapters." (Pg. ix)
He adds in the Introduction, "One of the greatest controversies ... has been the so-called nature/nurture debate... The debate which unfolds in this volume is rather more subtle... some theorists (e.g. Sperber, this volume) argue that the mind-brain is richly endowed with genetically specified mechanisms for the discrimination and processing of inputs...
"At the other end of the spectrum, there are 'empiricists' who envisage the neonate as a tabula rasa, bombarded by a flux of inputs that can only be discriminated and conceptualized through experience and learning, without the guidance of genetically specified equipment capable of anticipating some of that input... however we answer such questions, genes, environment, and culture stand in complex relations of mutual causation...
"In general, the Part-One contributors favour a division of intellectual labor in the study of mental and cultural phenomena, allowing various projects, both naturalistic and humanistic, to proceed more or less independently. By contrast, Part-Two contributors express serious misgivings about the validity of the projects advanced in Part-One, and argue that the latter need to be radically modified... or dispensed with altogether... Thus, at the root of the debate... is a concern not about the relative salience of biological, psychological, and ethnographic perspectives on cultural transmission but about the way in which multidisciplinary research, and interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, should proceed." (Pg. 1-3)
The subtitle of this book ("Evolutionary Psychology Versus Ethnography") suggested to me that it might be a two-sided debate about Evolutionary Psychology (e.g., Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson, Buss, Wright, etc.); it isn't. It's more a discussion about methodology in ethnography, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology.
Editor Harvey Whitehouse is a Reader in Social Anthropology at the Queen's University of Belfast. He has written books such as 'Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science,' 'Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission,' 'Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity,' etc.
The "Acknowledgements" section of this 2001 book states, "This volume arose from a series of ESRC-funded seminars on 'Memory and Social Transmission'... The planning and development of the book owes much to the efforts of those attending the meetings, especially those who eventually contributed chapters." (Pg. ix)
He adds in the Introduction, "One of the greatest controversies ... has been the so-called nature/nurture debate... The debate which unfolds in this volume is rather more subtle... some theorists (e.g. Sperber, this volume) argue that the mind-brain is richly endowed with genetically specified mechanisms for the discrimination and processing of inputs...
"At the other end of the spectrum, there are 'empiricists' who envisage the neonate as a tabula rasa, bombarded by a flux of inputs that can only be discriminated and conceptualized through experience and learning, without the guidance of genetically specified equipment capable of anticipating some of that input... however we answer such questions, genes, environment, and culture stand in complex relations of mutual causation...
"In general, the Part-One contributors favour a division of intellectual labor in the study of mental and cultural phenomena, allowing various projects, both naturalistic and humanistic, to proceed more or less independently. By contrast, Part-Two contributors express serious misgivings about the validity of the projects advanced in Part-One, and argue that the latter need to be radically modified... or dispensed with altogether... Thus, at the root of the debate... is a concern not about the relative salience of biological, psychological, and ethnographic perspectives on cultural transmission but about the way in which multidisciplinary research, and interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, should proceed." (Pg. 1-3)
The subtitle of this book ("Evolutionary Psychology Versus Ethnography") suggested to me that it might be a two-sided debate about Evolutionary Psychology (e.g., Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson, Buss, Wright, etc.); it isn't. It's more a discussion about methodology in ethnography, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology.
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