Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2019
The cognitive gadgets theory proposes to reform evolutionary psychology by replacing the standard nativist and internalist approach to modularity with a cultural constructivist one. However, the resulting “cultural evolutionary psychology” still maintains some controversial aspects of the original neo-Darwinian paradigm. These assumptions are unnecessary to the cognitive gadgets theory and can be eliminated without significant conceptual loss.
In compliance with specifications of the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, we clarify that Marco Fenici has written the first four (and the last) paragraphs and that Duilio Garofoli has written the remaining five paragraphs.
Target article
Précis of Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking
Related commentaries (17)
Cognitive gadgets and cognitive priors
Cognitive gadgets and genetic accommodation
Cognitive gadgets: A provocative but flawed manifesto
Could nonhuman great apes also have cultural evolutionary psychology?
Cultural evolutionary psychology is still evolutionary psychology
Culture in the world shapes culture in the head (and vice versa)
Executive functions are cognitive gadgets
How is mindreading really like reading?
Imitation: Neither instinct nor gadget, but a cultural starting point?
Instincts or gadgets? Not the debate we should be having
Keeping cultural in cultural evolutionary psychology: Culture shapes indigenous psychologies in specific ecologies
Language is not a gadget
Mending wall
Mills made of grist, and other interesting ideas in need of clarification
Sociocultural memory development research drives new directions in gadgetry science
Tinkering with cognitive gadgets: Cultural evolutionary psychology meets active inference
Twenty questions about cultural cognitive gadgets
Author response
Cognition blindness and cognitive gadgets