Innateness and the brain
Biology and Philosophy 18 (1):13-40 (2003)
| Abstract | The philosophical innateness debate has long relied onpsychological evidence. For a century, however, a parallel debate hastaken place within neuroscience. In this paper, I consider theimplications of this neuroscience debate for the philosophicalinnateness debate. By combining the tools of theoretical neurobiologyand learning theory, I introduce the ``problem of development'' that alladaptive systems must solve, and suggest how responses to this problemcan demarcate a number of innateness proposals. From this perspective, Isuggest that the majority of natural systems are in fact innate. Lastly,I consider the acquistion strategies implemented by the human brain andsuggest that there is a rigorous way of characterizing these ``neuralconstructivist'' strategies as not being strongly innate. Alternatives toinnateness are thus both rigorously definable and empirically supported. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Brain Innateness Learning Neural Science | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesRon Mallon & Jonathan M. Weinberg (2006). Innateness as Closed Process Invariance. Philosophy of Science 73 (3):323-344.
Muhammad Ali Khalidi (2009). Should We Eliminate the Innate? Reply to Griffiths and Machery. Philosophical Psychology 22 (4):505 – 519.
Jonathan M. Weinberg & Ron Mallon (2006). Innateness as Closed Process Invariance. Philosophy of Science 73:323–344.
Brian J. Scholl (2005). Innateness and (Bayesian) Visual Perception: Reconciling Nativism and Development. In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents. New York: Oxford University Press New York.
Henry Rosemont (1978). Gathering Evidence for Linguistic Innateness. Synthese 38 (May):127-148.
Muhammad Ali Khalidi (2001). Innateness and Domain-Specificity. Philosophical Studies 105 (2):191-210.
Paul Griffiths (2002). What is Innateness? The Monist 85 (1):70-85.
David Wendler (1996). Innateness as an Explanatory Concept. Biology and Philosophy 11 (1):89-116.
Steven Gross & Georges Rey (forthcoming). Innateness. In Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads16 ( #74,716 of 549,122 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,122 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
