East Pole–West Pole divide
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The East Pole–West Pole divide in the fields of
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
and cognitive neuroscience is an intellectual schism between researchers subscribing to the nativist and
empiricist In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
schools of thought. The term arose from the fact that much of the theory and research supporting nativism,
modularity of mind Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have b ...
, and computational theory of mind originated at several universities located on the East Coast, including Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts University. Conversely, much of the research and theory supporting
empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
,
emergentism In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their int ...
, and
embodied cognition Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
originated at several universities located on the West Coast, including the University of California, Berkeley, the Salk Institute, and, most notably, the University of California, San Diego. In reality, the divide is not so clear, with many universities and scholars on both coasts (as well as the Midwest and around the world) supporting each position, as well as more moderate positions in between the two extremes. The phrase was coined by Jerry Fodor at an MIT conference on
cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
, at which he referred to another researcher as a "West Coast theorist," apparently unaware that the researcher worked at Yale University. Very few researchers adhere strictly to the extreme positions highlighted by the East Pole–West Pole debate. That is, there are very few empiricists who believe in the Lockean ideal of the '' tabula rasa'' (namely, that children are born with no innate knowledge or constraints), and there are very few nativists who agree with Fodor's assertion that all concepts that are learned over the course of life are present in the mind prior to birth. Nevertheless, most scholars within the fields of cognitive science and
developmental psychology Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...
affiliate themselves with one of the two positions through the means of their research. The two books best known for espousing the empiricist and nativist positions within the context of cognitive psychology are ''
Rethinking Innateness ''Rethinking Innateness: A connectionist perspective on development'' is a book regarding gene/environment interaction by Jeffrey Elman, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Elizabeth Bates, Mark Johnson, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett published in 199 ...
'' by
Jeffrey Elman Jeffrey Locke Elman (January 22, 1948 – June 28, 2018) was an American psycholinguist and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He specialized in the field of neural networks. In 1990, he introduce ...
et al. and ''
The Modularity of Mind ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in En ...
'' by Jerry Fodor, respectively. Incidentally, the authors are affiliated with the two institutions on which the East Pole–West Pole metaphor is based, UCSD and MIT, affirming the relevance and pervasiveness of this moniker for the intellectual divide.


Notable scholars with affiliations

Nativists * Jerry Fodor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology * Steven Pinker, Harvard University * Lila R. Gleitman, University of Pennsylvania *
Leda Cosmides Leda Cosmides (born May 1957) is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped develop the field of evolutionary psychology. Biography Cosmides originally studied biology at Radcliffe College/Harvard Univ ...
, University of California, Santa Barbara * Elizabeth Spelke, Harvard University *
Thomas Bever Thomas G. Bever (born December 9, 1939) is a Regent's Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience at the University of Arizona. He has been a leading figure in psycholinguistics, focusing on the cognitive and neu ...
, University of Arizona *
Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
, Tufts University * Nancy Kanwisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Empiricists *
Elizabeth Bates Elizabeth Ann Bates (July 26, 1947 – December 13, 2003) was a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. She was an internationally renowned expert and leading researcher in child language acquisition, psyc ...
, University of California, San Diego *
George Lakoff George Philip Lakoff (; born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguistics, cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his thesis that people's lives are significantly influenced by the conceptual metaphors they use to explain comple ...
, University of California, Berkeley * Brian MacWhinney,
Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
*
Jeffrey Elman Jeffrey Locke Elman (January 22, 1948 – June 28, 2018) was an American psycholinguist and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He specialized in the field of neural networks. In 1990, he introduce ...
, University of California, San Diego *
Ronald Langacker Ronald Wayne Langacker (born December 27, 1942) is an American linguist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is best known as one of the founders of the cognitive linguistics movement and the creator of cognitive ...
, University of California, San Diego *
Dan Slobin Dan Isaac Slobin (born May 7, 1939) is a Professor Emeritus of psychology and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Slobin has made major contributions to the study of children's language acquisition, and his work has demonst ...
, University of California, Berkeley *
David Rumelhart David Everett Rumelhart (June 12, 1942 – March 13, 2011) was an American psychologist who made many contributions to the formal analysis of human cognition, working primarily within the frameworks of mathematical psychology, symbolic artif ...
,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
* James McClelland,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...


See also

*
Nature and nurture Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English h ...
*
Empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
* Psychological nativism * Computational theory of mind *
Embodied cognition Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
*
Reductionism Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical pos ...
*
Emergentism In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their int ...


References


External links


Recipe for a Brain: Cups of genes or a dash of experience? NY Times article
{{DEFAULTSORT:East Pole-West Pole divide Cognition Cognitive science Knowledge representation Arguments in philosophy of mind