Abstract

Growing suspicions were raised however that an exclusively language-oriented view of the mind, focussing on the characterization of anhistorical, static mental states through their propositional contents, was hardly compatible with what is currently known of brain architecture and did not fare well when confronted with results from many behavioral studies of mental functions. My aim in what follows is to show that these forms of dissatisfaction stem from the fact that brain evolution and development were either entirely ignored, or insufficiently taken into account in inquiries about the structure of mental contents. I will discuss how evolutionary and developmental approaches to human cognition are now in a position to substantially alter the central paradigms currently used in cognitive science.