Innateness and the Sciences

Abstract

The concept of innateness is a part of folk wisdom but is also used by biologists and cognitive scientists. This concept has a legitimate role to play in science only if the colloquial usage relates to a coherent body of evidence. We examine many different candidates for the post of scientific successor of the folk concept of innateness. We argue that none of these candidates is entirely satisfactory. Some of the candidates are more interesting and useful than others, but the interesting candidates are not equivalent to each other and the empirical and evidential relations between them are far from clear. Researchers have treated the various scientific notions that capture some aspect of the folk concept of innateness as equivalent to each other or at least as tracking properties that are strongly correlated with each other. But whether these correlations exist is an empirical issue. This empirical issue has not been thoroughly investigated because in the attempt to create a bridge between the folk view and their theories, researchers have often assumed that the properties must somehow cluster. Rather than making further attempts to import the folk concept of innateness into the sciences, efforts should now be made to focus on the empirical questions raised by the debates and pave the way to a better way of studying the development of living organisms. Such empirical questions must be answered before it can be decided whether a good scientific successor -in the form of a concept that refers to a collection of biologically significant properties that tend to co-occur -can be identified or whether the concept of innateness deserves no place in science.

Hardwiring: innateness in the age of the brain

“…After most connotations were rejected on these grounds, Mameli and Bateson (2006) identified eight of the 26 connotations that could potentially constitute scientifically useful candidates to replace the folk concept of innateness. They included connotations such as reliably appearing in a specific stage of the life cycle, species-typical, adaptive, developmentally canalized, etc.…”

“…This type of mapping would render the distinction between "hardwired" and "non-hardwired" meaningless and therefore ill-suited for scientific investigation. Furthermore, synonyms as "inherent" and "innate" are semantically opaque (Mameli & Bateson, 2006) and therefore do not help clarify what "hardwired" means. As a consequence, they do not constitute acceptable operational definitions that can be used productively in science.…”

“…More recently, Mameli and Bateson (2006) identified and analyzed 26 different meanings associated with innateness (see their Table 1, p. 177). Their goal was to establish whether this concept could be replaced by a proper scientific candidate based on the premise that "The innate/non-innate distinction has a legitimate role to play in science only if it relates to a coherent body of evidence and is able to play an important and positive role in the development of scientific theories" (p.…”

The innate and the acquired: Useful clusters or a residual distinction from folk biology?

“…All normal individuals have such an attachment, but they all acquire this attachment through their social experience, despite attachment being a Darwinian adaptation. Other examples are provided by the acquisition in birds and mammals of hunting and migratory skills both of which may be crucial for survival (Mameli & Bateson, 2006).…”

“…Another view is that normal development has to be defined in terms of what is evolutionarily normal for a given species. We have argued elsewhere (Mameli and Bateson, 2006;Mameli and Papineau, 2006) that neither of these two views provides a notion of developmental normality that can be used in a scientifically unproblematic account of innate/acquired dichotomy.…”