Reconstructing Reason and Representation (Bradford Books)
Publisher: The MIT Press; MIT Press
Published: July 1, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780262033220
Subjects: Philosophy of mind; Philosophy; Mind & Body; Philosophy / General; General; Evolutionary psychology
First sentence: Not since the advent of sociobiology has an emerging, interdisciplinary subject attracted as much attention as evolutionary psychology.
Description: "In Reconstructing Reason and Representation, Murray Clarke offers a detailed study of the philosophical implications of evolutionary psychology. In doing so, he offers new solutions to key problems in epistemology and philosophy of mind, including misrepresentation and rationality. He proposes a naturalistic approach to reason and representation that is informed by evolutionary psychology, and, expanding on the massive modularity thesis advanced in work by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, he argues for a modular, adapticist account of misrepresentation and knowledge. Just as the reliability of representation can be defended on the basis of an account of the proper function of cognitive modularity, misrepresentation can be explained through an appeal to the "gap theory," by noting the divergence between the proper and actual domains of cognitive modules in a massively modular mind."--BOOK JACKET.