Review of Creations of the Mind, ed. Margolis and Laurence [Book Review]

Mind 121 (481):200-204 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This fascinating collection on artifacts brings together seven papers by philosophers with nine by psychologists, biologists, and an archaeologist. The psychological papers include two excellent discussions of empirical work on the mental representation of artifact concepts – an assessment by Malt and Sloman of a large variety of studies on the conflicting ways we classify artifacts and extend our applications of artifact categories to new cases, and a review by Mahon and Caramazza of data from semantically impaired patients and from neuroimaging on concepts of living kinds versus artifact kinds. Following these are three papers on the development of artifact concepts in children, including a short but provocative piece by Keil, Greif, and Kerner arguing that there is a mismatch between the patterns of development for our concepts of artifacts and the patterns of representation we end up developing. The final part of the book includes authoritative papers on artifact use by insects, birds, and mammals, by primates, and by Australopithecines and Neanderthals

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-07-01

Downloads
350 (#52,480)

6 months
50 (#73,711)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Brian Epstein
Tufts University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references