Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought

Rating:
Summary: Brings latest arguments in the lit together in one place
Review: Horst Hendriks-Jansen demonstrates a clear understanding of all the modern arguments about the nature of intelligence and how they relate to each other. He has a clear and logical writing style that explains and debunks many important theories. Although many of these theories and criticisisms have appeared in other places, this book brings them all together and relates them. He describes his theory of interactive emergence and the notion of language as scaffolding for learning. This weaves together many contemporary ideas into a consistient whole. A great deal of the book is devoted to debunking existing theories - I would have liked to see a more detailed exploration of interactive emergence and how language as scaffolding might work. Definitely worth a read, especially if you are interested in clear arguments against symbol-systems hypothesis etc.