Biological preparedness and evolutionary explanation
Introduction
Evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena are often thought to imply that the cognitive capacities targeted for evolutionary explanation are innate and modular. We argue that neither of these implications is necessitated by evolutionary explanations of particular cognitive effects. Instead, we argue that issues of innateness should be conceived in terms of canalization, i.e the degree to which the development of a trait is robust across normal environmental variations (Waddington, 1975, McKenzie and O'Farrell, 1993, Ariew, 1996). Evolutionary pressures can affect the degree to which the development of a trait is canalized. High canalization can be the consequence of biasing learning/acquisition processes in ways that favor the development of concepts and cognitive functions that proved adaptive to an organism's ancestors. The end result of these biases is an adult organism that exhibits a number of highly specialized cognitive abilities that have many of the characteristics associated with modules: functional specialization, reliable emergence in spite of considerable environmental variability, and some degree of informational encapsulation.
This perspective makes it evident that criticisms of innate cognitive modules are not ipso facto criticisms of evolutionary explanations of cognitive capacities. Since evidence for modularity in the developed organism is compatible with a high degree of neural placticity in the early stages of development, it is possible to have an evolutionary explanation of cognitive modules that does not assume these modules to be innate in the sense in which this means unlearned or present at birth or coded in the genes. Of course, an evolutionary approach to cognition is compatible with modules that are innate in this sense. Our point is simply that it need not presuppose them.
We begin by discussing two factors that appear to be prominent in motivating interest in evolutionary approaches to cognition. We then characterize how evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena that appeal to innate modules are typically interpreted. We then review some of the criticisms that have been levelled against this approach. Finally, we expound and defend a conception of the relation between natural selection and cognitive development that is responsive to worries about innate modules yet compatible with an evolutionary explanation of specialized and relatively independent cognitive mechanisms in adult organisms.
Section snippets
The motivation for an evolutionary approach to cognition
Two factors appear to be prominent in motivating researchers to adopt an evolutionary approach to cognition. The first is simply that cognitive psychologists are in the business of explaining cognition in biological organisms, and biological organisms are the product of evolutionary forces. To put it more succinctly:
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If you are a materialist, then you are committed (at least implicitly) to the view that The mind is what the brain does.
Characterization of the innate modules view
According to some researchers, the early emergence and domain-specificity of many cognitive capacities is evidence that evolution has produced a mind best characterized as a collection of innate and independent modules, each of which arose in response to environmental pressures during a species’ evolution.
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Our cognitive architecture resembles a confederation of hundreds or thousands of functionally dedicated computers (often called modules) designed to solve adaptive problems endemic to our
Objections to innate modules
The objections to the innate modules view divide into two classes. The first and most fundamental consists of arguments from neural plasticity. The second consists of arguments defending the sufficiency of a few general-purpose learning mechanisms to account for the type of phenomena typically urged on innate modules. We briefly review these two lines of argument in turn.
Objections to general-purpose learning
The widely recognized difficulty with a general-purpose learning approach is that it does not explain the ‘biases’ that are plainly evident in the newborn brain. Although it is possible, for example, to force auditory cortex to acquire the capacity for visual processing, the result is not normal vision (Roe, Pallas, Kwon, & Sur, 1992). Similarly, it is highly unlikely that the hippocampus is suited to do either visual or auditory processing. Thus, there are neurological biases present at birth,
A third interpretation: evolution affects degree to which cognitive traits are canalized
As diametrically opposed as these positions seem to be, there in fact exists a common ground which they occupy and upon which a coherent evolutionary psychology can be founded. The following quotations exhibit this common ground.
There can be no question about the major role played by our biological inheritance in determining our physical form and our behaviors. We are not empiricists. What troubles us about the term innate is that, as it is often used in cognitive and developmental sciences, it
How preparedness and environmental input can constrain higher cognition
As an example of how genetically encoded biases and environmental input can combine to channel the development of higher cognitive functions, consider the development of social reasoning. Newborns (no more than a few minutes old) show a distinct bias for looking at faces as compared to other equally complex stimuli (Goren, Sarty & Wu, 1975). Ten-week-old infants have been found to distinguish among emotional facial expressions (Entremont & Muir, 1997). Within the first year of life, they also
Closing comments
By invoking the concepts of biological preparedness and canalization, one can readily explain how a highly plastic developing brain could end up like a Swiss Army knife. Highly specialized functions need not be present at birth. Instead, the majority of comparative, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence weighs in on the side of fast-track learning through biological ‘biases’ or predispositions that entrain the focus of our attention on the environmental stimuli and contingencies that
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this manuscript. Portions of this paper were presented by the first author at the 10th Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, University of California-Davis, June, 1998.
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