ABSTRACT
This book addresses both first-order questions about cognition and second-order (methodological) questions about how best to study cognition. It begins with two cutting-edge contributions to perhaps the 20th century’s most contentious debate in philosophy of cognitive science: the debate over Universal Grammar. The book explains linguistic creativity that humans can generate and comprehend indefinitely many strings of words they have never encountered before, as well as universal availability that given the right experience, any human child can learn any language that any other human child can learn. It engages with the widespread assumption that the methods of neuroscience provide the best way to achieve the goals of cognitive science, as well as with the widespread assumption that the methods of cognitive science are all but irrelevant to moral philosophy. The book also discusses the relative importance of traditional philosophical reflection and new empirical data for adjudicating debates within both philosophy and social psychology.
