Psychological nativism

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For nativism as a political force, see Nativism.

In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are 'native' or hard wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to Empiricism, the 'blank slate' or tabula rasa view which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but does not contain content such as innate beliefs.

Some nativists believe that specific beliefs or preferences are hard wired. For example, one might argue that some moral intuitions are innate or that color preferences are innate. A less strong argument is that nature supplies the human mind with specialized learning devices. This latter view differs from empiricism only to the extent that the algorithms that translate experience into information may be more complex and specialized in nativist theories than in empiricist theories. However, it is important to note that empiricists largely remain open to the nature of learning algorithms and are by no means restricted to the historical associationist mechanisms of behaviorism.

In Philosophy

Nativism has a history in philosophy, particularly as a reaction to the straightforwardly empiricist views of John Locke and David Hume. Hume had given persuasive logical arguments that people cannot infer causality from perceptual input. The most one could hope to infer is that two events happen in succession. One response to this argument was to posit that concepts such as causality that are not supplied by experience must exist prior to any experience and hence are innate.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant reasoned in his Critique of Pure Reason that the human mind knows objects in innate, a priori ways. Kant claimed that humans, from birth, must experience all objects as being successive (time) and juxtaposed (space). His list of inborn Categories are predicates that the mind can attribute to any object in general. Schopenhauer agreed with Kant, but reduced the number of innate Categories to one, namely, causality, which presupposes the others.

Modularity

Nativism is most associated with the work of Jerry Fodor, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Pinker, who argue that we are born with certain cognitive modules (specialised genetically inherited psychological abilities) that allow us to learn and acquire certain skills (such as language). They argue that many such abilities would otherwise be greatly impaired without this genetic contribution. For example, children demonstrate a facility with acquiring spoken language but require intense training to learn to read and write. In The Blank Slate, Pinker cites this as evidence that humans have an inborn facility with speech acquisition (but not with literacy acquisition).

It is important to note that modularity and nativism are conceptually distinct, and one does not imply the other. A system can become modular through experience if the system's structure is sufficiently plastic. Psychologist Annette Karmiloff-Smith has put forward a theory known as the representational redescription or RR model of development which argues against such strict nativism and which proposes that the brain may become modular through experience within certain domains (such as social interaction or visual perception) rather than modules being genetically pre-specified.

Criticism

Nativism is sometimes perceived as being too vague to be falsifiable, as there is no fixed definition of when an ability is called innate. In addition, research has focused on crude measures of innateness, such as using 3 to 6-month old babies as proxies for organisms without experience. Similarly, attempts are rarely made to replicate studies across cultural groups.

Some people argue that the premises of nativism were motivated by outdated considerations and need reconsidering. Nativism was partially motivated by the perception that statistical inferences made from experience were insufficient to account for the complex minds humans have. In part, it was a reaction to the failure of behaviorism to account for why some associations were easier to learn than others. With the advent of more complicated mathematics such as complexity theory, however, scientists are now able to see that extremely complicated systems can evolve from agents with few pre-programmed rules.

For example, several nativist arguments were inspired by the success of Chomsky in advocating the existence of an innate language-learning module called a language acquisition device. Chomsky's arguments were based partially on the assertion that children could not learn complicated grammar based on the input they typically receive. It is now known that many of the claims in Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument are empirically false and that complicated grammars can indeed be developed. Similar arguments extend to other modules. The very idea of innate modularity can also be explained by simultaneous learning at multiple scales or hierarchy, as several researchers have pointed out.

Psychological nativism

In Philosophy

Modularity

Criticism

See also