Skip to main content

Externalist Evolutionary Cognitive Science

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences
  • 3247 Accesses

Abstract

The chapter aims to defend an externalist conception of evolutionary psychology by integrating the two forms of externalism found, respectively, in cognitive science and evolutionary biology, which were until now been pursued independently. We call this conception of evolutionary psychology “externalist evolutionary cognitive science”. However, adopting an externalist position is easier said than done, especially on the empirical and experimental front. To this day, externalism (both in cognitive science and evolutionary biology) is mostly limited to conceptual arguments, methodological prescriptions and speculative interpretations of scientific work. To integrate the two forms of externalism, we propose to trade internalist idealizations in cognitive science and evolutionary biology with another set of idealizations, inspired by work in mobile robotics as well as in developmental cognitive neuroscience. We start however by explaining in more detail what exactly internalism and externalism in those disciplines are.

Translated by Frédéric-I. Banville, with a revision by Amanda Leigh Cox.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    According to an embodied conception of the mind, the nature of the mind is dependent upon the body. Various advocates of this conception will derive different epistemological and/or ontological conclusions, see for instance Varela et al. (1992), Clark (1997).

  2. 2.

    Such a position is stated in Faucher and Poirier (2001) as well as in Poirier et al. (2008); here it is developed and defended. For an outline of a similar position, see Anderson (2008). The hypothesis we propose is also compatible to some extent with what we call “evolutionary developmental psychology” as defended, among others, by Bjorklund and Blasi (2005).

  3. 3.

    For evolutionary biology, see Oyama et al. (2003); for cognitive science, see Clark (1997, 2008).

  4. 4.

    An animat is an artificial autonomous adaptive agent inspired by biology; it can be physical (a robot) or virtual (simulation).

  5. 5.

    For a defence of reductivism in psychology, see (among others) Bickle (2008)

  6. 6.

    Reductivism should not be confused with reductionism, the latter of which consists of showing that a given property emerges from the interaction of certain lower-level properties attributed to components of the system. This form of reduction is closely associated with emergence (Wimsatt 1986), and holds that the property is in fact a property of the system. Reductivism, on the other hand, holds that the property is not a property of the system, but really a property of one of its components.

  7. 7.

    See also Bechtel and Richardson (1992), who discuss research strategies.

  8. 8.

    We call this phase of the explanatory strategy “augmentationism” (Faucher and Poirier 2001; Faucher 2006).

  9. 9.

    It is important to note that while we have discussed mechanisms of revision of fundamental attributions as distinctive, such a separation is of theoretical and conceptual value rather than historical or sociological.

  10. 10.

    We refer to Hurley’s (2002) vehicular externalism, which is not to be confused with Putnam’s (1975) and Burge’s (1979) semantic, or metaphysical, externalism.

  11. 11.

    Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes externalist in one of the two senses we outlined here, and at times in both. For instance, discussing DST and the study of the mind, Griffiths and Gray (2005: 418) point out that the research tradition in developmental psychology from which DST comes from is carried on by some authors, like Bjorklund (see among others Bjorklund and Blasi 2005, where DST is explicitly defended), but that these lessons have been forgotten in the evolutionary study of the brain and that an official “comeback” of this tradition would not be a bad thing. This view appears indeed to make a come back in the Evolutionary Psychology literature, see for instance Tooby et al. (2003) and Barrett (2007). For an admittedly much rarer example of the possibilities of psychological externalism in Evolutionary Psychology, see Kosslyn (2007).

  12. 12.

    See Bredeche, Chap. 29, this volume.

  13. 13.

    See Schoenauer, Chap. 28, this volume.

  14. 14.

    In what follows, when we say a robot’s capacity is “genetically determined,” we mean that it is encoded in the artificial genome of the genetic algorithm that generates the evolution of the robot population and that, given the simple genotype-phenotype relationship specific to this sort of simulation, the capacity is present at the beginning of the robot’s life.

  15. 15.

    For examples of this approach, see Johnson (2005), Johnson et al. (2009), Sirois et al. (2008), as well as articles in Nelson and Luciana (2008).

  16. 16.

    For a recent overview of the literature, see Pascalis and Kelly (2009).

  17. 17.

    The fusiform gyrus is not the only region activated during face recognition. Other areas such as the occipital face area (OFA) as well as the posterior regions of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) are implicated in face recognition. Furthermore, as noted by Forest (2010), there appear to be some prosopagnosia cases that do not involve damage to the fusiform gyrus (Rossion et al. 2003). This leaves open the possibility that the fusiform gyrus is necessary but not sufficient for facial recognition, and that we could be better off saying the fusiform gyrus is part of a specialised face recognition system.

  18. 18.

    There are three types of information in facial features (Beaudoin et al. 2009: 8). Firstly, information about facial features, also called componential information. For instance: a nose with a distinctive wart or sporting spectacles. Secondly, “first-order” relational information, which is information which defines the position of facial features relative to one another. In humans, such information is extremely stable: eyes are above the nose and the nose is above the mouth. Thirdly, “second-order” relational information about the distance between features, such as distance between the eyes.

  19. 19.

    The inversion effect is not the only effect discovered by researchers (see Baudoin et al. 2009; Duchaine and Yovel 2008; McKone et al. 2007). Other effects have been suggested which can be grouped under the label “holistic effects”, for instance, “composite effects” or “effects of the whole on the parts”. The composite effect is demonstrated by taking two halves (one upper, one lower) of two different celebrities’ faces. The two halves (either aligned or slightly misaligned) are then presented to a subject. The subject is then asked to determine to whom the upper (or lower) half belongs. Subjects are faster in recognising the half-face in the misaligned condition than they are in the aligned condition. The effect of the whole on the part comprises cases in which the recall or perception of a feature is improved when presented in a normal face rather than in a face in which features are scrambled or, simply, when the feature is presented alone.

  20. 20.

    Duchaine and Yovel (2008: 351) discuss the case of children born with cataracts and who receive corrective operations between 2 and 6 months after birth. Despite their subsequent experiences with faces, these subjects display problems with facial recognition which are carried into adulthood (for instance, they do not experience the composite effect). These cases suggest that there is a window during which learning occurs. Some believe these sorts of windows are typical of psychological capacities that rely on maturation rather than on information from the environment. A cognitive capacity relies on maturation if its development is primarily determined internally (by genes, for instance) rather than externally (by relying on environmental input, for instance). For example, Chomsky (1979) compares linguistic development to that of an arm: Chomsky asserts that the growth of an arm does not depend on information external to the arm (even though growth requires environmental input). The arm’s growth is therefore not the result of learning; it is a result of maturation.

  21. 21.

    There is more than one definition available; for an overview of some of these definitions, see Poirier et al. (2008).

  22. 22.

    See among others Quartz and Sejnowski (1997), Quartz (1999), Sirois et al. (2008).

  23. 23.

    Johnson and his colleagues sometimes refer to “embrainment” (Sirois et al. 2008: 224) to indicate that development is not only the product of interaction between a brain and the environment, but also of the brain’s structures among themselves.

  24. 24.

    Greebles are a category of novel object used as stimuli in some psychological studies. They share a small number of parts that are arranged in different configurations. It thus makes it difficult to recognise an individual greeble on the basis of a single feature and encourages the subject to use the relationships between features instead.

  25. 25.

    We should therefore nuance Tarr and Cheng’s assertion that facial recognition should be seen as a case of perceptual expertise acquired by most people (Tarr and Cheng 2003: 23). Instead, we should say it partially depends on an expertise acquired by most people. Bukach et al. (2006) cite an experiment that clearly demonstrates the role of expertise in facial recognition. We know that when subjects are asked to process two faces simultaneously, a subject’s performance is affected, which is not the case if one of the faces features have been randomly distributed. Subjects were then asked to process a face and the object of their expertise (greebles or cars, for instance) at the same time. In this manipulation, experts in car recognition to whom cars were presented at the same time as faces show a lower holistic face processing than those who are car recognition novices. This suggests that demands on expertise and demands on holistic face information processing involve the same cognitive resources.

  26. 26.

    In this section, we will discuss facial recognition in babies as if it was conducted independently from other sensory modalities. Nevertheless, it appears that the mother’s voice as heard during foetal gestation is also a part of “mother recognition”. If we deprive a child from the auditory input of their mother’s voice, the child’s facial recognition of their mother is impeded (Pascalis and Kelly 2009).

  27. 27.

    In the latest edition of his book (2005), Johnson mentions a face detector using lower spatial features which involves not only the superior colliculus but also the pulvinar nuclei and the amygdala. The idea that this subcortical system is widely responsible for the control of juvenile visual behaviour thus remains valid in his view.

  28. 28.

    See more recently Macchi-Cassia et al. (2004).

  29. 29.

    This precision is important, as will be demonstrated. It draws our attention to the children’s bias, which alone is probably insufficient to distinguish between faces and other objects which share structural properties with faces. It is necessary to involve another mechanism to sufficiently explain children’s interest in faces; such a mechanism is described in Sect. 3.3.

  30. 30.

    They propose that prosopagnosia cases could be explained not by the unresponsiveness of the fusiform gyrus to face-type stimuli (it sometimes is responsive), but by a lack of specificity in activation patterns as well as by the activation of regions not normally activated during facial recognition (i.e. inferior frontal gyrus). If this was the case, prosopagnosia patients would have activation patterns similar to those of children.

  31. 31.

    This would explain some atypical capacities of autistics, such as their capacity to abstract a local component from its general context. See Happé and Frith (2006) view this as part of the cognitive profile of autism.

  32. 32.

    Pierre Poirier and Luc Faucher benefited from a research grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and L.F. of a research grant from the Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CRÉUM). We thank the editors of this volume for their comments.

References

  • Anderson, M. L. (2008). Evolution, embodiment and the nature of the mind. In B. Hardy-Vallee & N. Payette (Eds.), Beyond the brain: Embodied, situated & distributed cognition (pp. 25–28). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar’s Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ballard, D. (1991). Animate vision. Artificial Intelligence, 48, 1–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, H. C. (2007). Development as the target of evolution: A computational approach to developmental systems. In S. Gangestad & J. Simpson (Eds.), The evolution of mind: Fundamental questions and controversies (pp. 186–192). New York: Guilford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 577–609.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baudoin, J.-Y., Chambon, V., & Tiberghien, G. (2009). Expert en visages? Pourquoi sommes-nous tous des experts en reconnaissance des visages. L'Evolution Psychiatrique, 74, 3–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bechtel, W., & Richardson, R. C. (1992). Discovering complexity: Decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, M. R., & Hacker, P. M. (2003). Philosophical foundations of neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bickle, J. (2008). Vous avez dit réalisation multiple? Je réponds neurosciences moléculaires. In P. Poirier & L. Faucher (Eds.), Des neurosciences à la philosophie. Neurophilosophie et philosophie des neurosciences (pp. 181–204). Paris: Syllepse.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bjorklund, D. F., & Blasi, C. H. (2005). Evolutionary developmental psychology. In D. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 828–850). New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bukash, C. M., Gauthier, I., & Tarr, M. J. (2006). Beyond faces and modularity: The power of an expertise framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(4), 159–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burge, I. (1979). Individualism and the mental. In P. French, T. Uehling, & H. Wettstein (Eds.), Midwest studies in philosophy IV (pp. 73–121). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cartwright, N. (1994). Nature’s capacities and their measurements. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, N. (1979). On cognitive structure and their development: A reply to Piaget. In M. Piattelli-Palmarini (Ed.), Language and learning (pp. 35–54). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Churchland, P. S. (1986). Neurophilosophy: Toward a unified science of the mind-brain. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Churchland, P. S., Ramachandran, V. S., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1994). A critique of pure vision. In C. Koch & J. Davis (Eds.), Large-scale neuronal theories of the brain (pp. 23–65). Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (1997). Being there. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen Kadosh, K., & Johnson, M. H. (2007). Developing a cortex specialized for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(9), 367–369.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1997). Evolutionary psychology: A primer. www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html

  • Dannemiller, J. L. (2001). Brain-behavior relationships in early visual development. In C. A. Nelson & M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (pp. 221– 235). Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Haan, M., Oliver, A., & Johnson, M. H. (1998). Electrophysiological correlates of face processing by adults and 6-months-old infants. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience annual Meeting, Supplement, 36.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Schonen, S. (2009). Percevoir un visage dans la petite enfance. L'Evolution Psychiatrique, 74, 27–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dretske, F. I. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duchaine, B., & Yovel, G. (2008). Face recognition. In A. I. Basbaum, A. Kenoko, G. M. Shepherd, & G. Wetheimer (Eds.), The senses: A comprehensive reference, 2 (pp. 329–358). San Diego: Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duchaine, B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2001). Evolutionary psychology and the brain. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 9(1), 88–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duchaine, B., Yovel, G., Butterworth, E., & Nakayama, K. (2006). Prosopagnosia as an impairment to face-specific mechanisms: Elimination of the alternative explanations in a developmental case. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 714–747.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Easterbrook, M. A., Kisilevsky, B. S., Muir, D. W., & Laplante, D. P. (1999). Newborns discriminate schematic faces from scrambled faces. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 53(3), 231–241.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Elgar, K., & Campell, R. (2001). The development of face-identification skills: What lies behind the face module? Infant and Child Development, 10, 25–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Farah, M. J., Wilson, K. D., Drain, M., & Tanaka, J. N. (1998). What is ‘special’ about face perception? Psychological Review, 105, 482–498.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Farah, M. J., Rabinovitz, C., Quinn, G. E., & Liu, G. T. (2000). Early commitment of neural substrates for face recognition. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 1(2/3), 117–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faucher, L. (2006). What’s behind a smile. Synthese, 151(3), 403–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faucher, L., & Poirier, P. (2001). Psychologie evolutionniste et theories interdomaines. Dialogue, XL, 453–486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fisette, D., & Poirier, P. (2000). Philosophie de I’esprit, État des lieux. Paris: Vrin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor, J. A. (1981). Representations. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forest, D. (2010). Reconnaissance des visages et analyse fonctionnelle. In J. Gayon (Ed.), Les fonctions: des organismes aux artefacts (pp. 319–332). Paris: Presse Universitaire de France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2006). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gauthier, I., & Nelson, C. (2001). The development of face expertise. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11, 219–224.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gauthier, I., Tarr, M. J., Anderson, A. W., Skudlarski, P., & Gore, J. (1999). Activation of the middle fusiform ‘Face Area’ increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nature Neuroscience, 2(6), 568–573.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Grelotti, D., Klin, A. J., Gauthier, I., et al. (2005). fMRI activation of the fusiform gyrus and amygdala to cartoon characters but not to faces in a boy with autism. Neuropsychologia, 43, 373–385.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths, R. E., & Gray, R. D. (2005). Three ways to misunderstand developmental systems theory. Biology and Philosophy, 20, 417–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Happe, F., & Frith, U. (2006). The weak coherence account: Detail-focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36(1), 5–25.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hirstein, W., Iversen, P., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2001). Autonomic responses of autistic children to people and objects. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 268, 1883–1888.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hurley, S. L. (2002). Consciousness in action (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. (2005). Evolution in four dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic variation in the history of life. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H. (1997). Developmental cognitive neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H. (1998). Developmental cognitive neuroscience: An overview. Early Development and Parenting, 7, 121–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H. (1999). Ontogenetic constraints on neural and behavioral plasticity: Evidence from imprinting and face processing. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53, 77–90.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H. (2000). Functional brain development in infants: Elements of an interactive specialization framework. Child Development, 71(1), 75–81.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H. (2003). Development of human brain functions. Biological Psychiatry, 54, 1312–1316.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H. (2005). Developmental cognitive neuroscience. London: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. H., Grossmann, T., & Cohen, K. K. (2009). Mapping functional brain development: Building a social brain through interactive specialization. Developmental Psychology, 45(1), 151–159.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kanwisher, N. (2000). Domain specificity in face perception. Nature Neuroscience, 3(8), 759–763.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. (1997). The fusiform face area: A module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for the perception of faces. Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 4302–4311.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1995). Annotation: The extraordinary cognitive journey from foetus through infancy. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36(8), 1293–1313.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1998). Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(10), 389–398.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kosslyn, S. (2007). On the evolution of human motivation: The role of social prosthetic systems. In S. Platek, J. P. Keenan, & T. K. Shacelford (Eds.), Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience (pp. 541–554). Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirsh, D., & Maglio, P. (1995). On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic actions. Cognitive Science, 18, 513–549.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Labuyere, N., & Hubert, B. (2009). Traitement de I’information faciale dans I’autisme. L'Evolution Psychiatrique, 74, 65–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langton, C. (1996). Artificial life. In M. A. Boden (Ed.), The philosophy of artificial life (pp. 39–94). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macchi Cassia, V., Turati, C., & Simion, F. (2004). Can a nonspecific bias toward top-heavy patterns explain newborns’ face preference? Psychological Science, 15, 379–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mccauley, R. N., & Bechtel, W. (2001). Explanatory pluralism and the heuristic identity theory. Theory and Psychology, 11, 736–760.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKone, E., Kanwisher, N., & Duchaine, B. C. (2007). Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(1), 8–15.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Milner, D., & Goodale, M. A. (1995). The visual brain in action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moscovitch, M., Winocur, G., & Behrmann, M. (1997). What is special about face recognition? Nineteen experiments on a person with visual object agnosia and dyslexia but normal face recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(5), 555–604.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, C. A., & Luciana, M. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd ed., pp. 221–235). Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noe, A. (2006). Vision in action. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nolfi, S., & Parisi, D. (1997). Learning to adapt to changing environments in evolving neural networks. Adaptive Behavior, 5(1), 75–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oyama, S. (2000). The ontogeny of information: Developmental systems and evolution (2nd ed.). Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Oyama, S., Griffiths, P. E., & Gray, R. D. (Eds.). (2003). Cycles of contingency: Developmental systems and evolution. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pascalis, O., & Kelly, D. J. (2009). The origins of face processing in humans: Phylogeny and ontogeny. Perspectives in Psychological Sciences, 4(2), 200–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pascalis, O., De Haan, M., & Nelson, C. (2002). Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life? Science, 296, 1321–1323.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poirier, P. (2008). Evolutionary embodied cognitive science. In B. Hardy-Vallée & N. Payette (Eds.), Beyond the brain: Embodied, situated and distributed cognition (pp. 29–46). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poirier, P., Faucher, L., & Lachapelle, J. (2008). The concept of innateness and the destiny of evolutionary psychology. Mind and Behavior, 29(1–2), 17–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. (1975). The meaning of meaning. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7, 131–193.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quartz, S. (1999). The constructivist brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(2), 48–57.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Quartz, S. (2002). Innateness and the brain. Biology and Philosophy, 18, 13–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quartz, S., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1997). The neural basis of cognitive development: A constructionist manifesto. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20, 537–596.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ridley, M. (2004). Evolution (3rd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rossion, B., Caldara, R., Seghier, M., Schuller, A.-M., Lazeyras, F., & Mayer, E. (2003). A network of occipito-temporal face-sensitive areas besides the right middle fusiform gyrus is necessary for normal face-processing. Brain, 126, 2181–2395.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schultz, R. T. (2005). Developmental deficits in social perception in autism: The role of the amygdala and fusiform face area. International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience, 23, 125–141.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schultz, R. T., Gauthier, I., Klin, A., Fulbright, R. K., Anderson, A. W., Volkmar, F., Skudlarski, P., Lacadie, C., Cohen, D. J., & Gore, J. C. (2000). Abnormal ventral temporal cortical activity during face discrimination among individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome. Archives General of Psychiatry, 57, 331–340.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Simion, F., Cassia, V. M., Turati, C., & Valenza, E. (2001). The origins of face perception: Specific versus non-specific mechanisms. Infant and Child Development, 10, 59–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sirois, S., Spratling, M., Thomas, M. S. C., Westermann, G., Mareshal, D., & Johnson, M. H. (2008). Precis of neuroconstructivism: How the brain constructs cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 321–356.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, E. R., & Semin, G. R. (2007). Situated social cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(3), 132–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sterelny, K., & Griffiths, P. E. (1999). Sex and death: An introduction to the philosophy of biology. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarr, M. J., & Cheng, Y. D. (2003). Learning to see faces and objects. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(1), 23–30.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., & Barrett, C. (2003). The second law of thermodynamics is the first law of psychology: Evolutionary developmental psychology and the theory of tandem, coordinated inheritances: Comment on Lickliterand Honeycutt (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129(6), 858–865.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Turati, C. (2004). Why faces are not special to newborns: An alternative account of the face preference. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(1), 5–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Gelder, T. (1995). What might cognition be, if not computation? Journal of Philosophy, 92(7), 345–381.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1992). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and the human experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt, W. C. (1980). Reductionistic research strategies and their biases in the units of selection controversy. In T. Nickles (Ed.), Scientific discovery: Case studies (Boston studies in the philosophy of science, Vol. 60, pp. 213–259). Dordrecht: Reidel.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt, W. (1986). Developmental constraints, generative entrenchment, and the innate-acquired distinction. In W. Bechtel (Ed.), Integrating scientific disciplines (pp. 185–208). Dordrecht: Martinus-Nijhoff.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wimsatt, W. C. (2006). Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest. Synthese, 151(3), 445–475.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pierre Poirier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Poirier, P., Faucher, L. (2015). Externalist Evolutionary Cognitive Science. In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_32

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics