The Epigenesis of Mind

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 these themes are: - 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.

Susan Carey, Rochel Gelman

Contents: Preface. Part I: Biological Contributions to Cognition.C.R. Gallistel, A.L. Brown, S. Carey, R. Gelman, F.C. Keil, Lessons From Animal Learning for the Study of Cognitive Development. P. Marler, The Instinct to Learn. A. Diamond, Neuropsychological Insights into the Meaning of Object Concept Development. E.L. Newport, Contrasting Concepts of the Critical Period for Language. Part II: Innate Knowledge and Beyond.E.S. Spelke, Physical Knowledge in Infancy: Reflections on Piaget's Theory. A. Karmiloff-Smith, Beyond Modularity: Innate Constraints and Developmental Change. K.W. Fischer, T. Bidell, Constraining Nativist Inferences About Cognitive Capacities. F.C. Keil, The Emergence of Theoretical Beliefs as Constraints on Concepts. S. Carey, Knowledge Acquisition: Enrichment or Conceptual Change? R. Gelman, Epigenetic Foundations of Knowledge Structures: Initial and Transcendent Constructions.