The Debated Mind Evolutionary Psychology versus Ethnography Edited by Harvey Whitehouse 5 er Orford + New YorkFirst published in 2001 by Berg Editorial offices: 150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 11), UK 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA. © Harvey Whitehouse 2001, Al rights reserved, [No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. [Berg is an imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ‘A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data ‘A catalogue record for this book is availabe from the British Library. ISBN 1 85973 4278 (Cloth) 185973 432 4 (Paper) ‘Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants. Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn.Conclusion: Towards a Reconciliation Harvey Whitehouse Ae the arguments about mind, evolution, and culture, advanced in the {wo parts of this volume, fundamentally intractable?! Clearly, some of the contributors think so, Nevertheless, the distance between the perspectives of Parts One and Two, although reflecting widely and deeply held differences of approach between cognitive scientists and social anthropologists respectively, is partly an artefact of style rather than of substance. ‘A certain amount of rhetorical posturing obscures opportunites for exploring middle ground, For instance, in critiquing tabula rasa models of cognitive development, Plotkin claims in Chapter Three that ‘no asychologists worth their salt now believe that previous theorists like Skinner and Piaget contributed much to our understanding of language and language acquisition’ (p. 40). Arguably, however, Plotkin overstates he situation, exaggerating the difficulties of partial compromise or iynthesis between at least some aspects of the approaches in Parts One ind Two. The rather more moderate views of Karmiloff-Smith are nstructive, In place of a notion of mental modularity, she argues for a srocess of ‘modularization’, requiring us to combine certain insights of voth Piagetian and Chomskean/Fodorian models. The resulting picture nvisages learning as a recurrent process of phased development, begin- ling with the achievement of “behavioural mastery’ and involving uccessive processes of ‘representational redescription’ as domains of nowledge become, through experience, progressively more accessible 9 conscious analysis and verbal expression. Although accounting for high degree of domain specificity, consistent with the arguments of ‘art One of this volume, Karmiloff-Smith’s theory of representational description produces a developmental account that strongly recalls ertain aspects of the perspectives advanced (and the terminology referred) in Part Two, Thus, Karmiloff-Smith endorses Piaget’s view rat “both gene expression and cognitive development are emergent roperties of a self-organizing system’ (1992: 9). And she goes on to riticize Fodor's perspective for failing to help us to understand the way ~ 203