King’s Research Portal DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0125 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Shea, N. (2012). New thinking, innateness and inherited representation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 367(1599), 2234-2244. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0125 Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. 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B 2012 367, 2234-2244 doi: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0125 References This article cites 45 articles, 15 of which can be accessed free http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1599/2234.full.html#ref-list-1 Article cited in: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1599/2234.full.html#related-urls This article is free to access Subject collections Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections cognition (237 articles) Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article - sign up in the box at the top Email alerting service right-hand corner of the article or click here To subscribe to Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B go to: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/subscriptions Downloaded from rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org on June 25, 2012 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2012) 367, 2234–2244 doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0125 Review New thinking, innateness and inherited representation Nicholas Shea* Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, 10 Merton Street, Oxford OX1 4JJ, UK The New Thinking contained in this volume rejects an Evolutionary Psychology that is committed to innate domain-specific psychological mechanisms: gene-based adaptations that are unlearnt, developmentally fixed and culturally universal. But the New Thinking does not simply deny the importance of innate psychological traits. The problem runs deeper: the concept of innateness is not suited to distinguishing between the New Thinking and Evolutionary Psychology. That points to a more serious problem with the concept of innateness as it is applied to human psycho- logical phenotypes. This paper argues that the features of recent human evolution highlighted by the New Thinking imply that the concept of inherited representation, set out here, is a better tool for theorizing about human cognitive evolution. Keywords: evolutionary psychology; innateness; inherited representation; genetic information; cognitive evolution; cultural inheritance 1 INTRODUCTION of interdependent adaptive changes, but it is not (a) New Thinking versus Evolutionary Psychology adapted to any one particular task or outcome. It It is standardly assumed that innate psychological mech- appears to have been selected instead for its facility anisms should be the central focus of an evolutionary as a generalist: to perform an open-ended range of account of human cognition. One version of this tasks with great skill, where the concrete outcomes approach is the ‘Evolutionary Psychology’ (capitalized) that contribute to fitness vary widely. of Tooby and Cosmides with its series of special-purpose Two domain-general changes in hominin evolution modules, each evolved to solve a particular problem in are central here. The first is a marked increase in plas- the Pleistocene [1]. Even outside high church Evolution- ticity: in how quickly human individuals and social ary Psychology, for example among those who point to groups adapt to different ways of life in different more general-purpose evolved human faculties like the ecological niches [6]. These developmentally plastic capacity for fine-grained visuomotor control, an evol- innovations depend for their development on rich utionary approach to human cognition is usually allied support from the environment: information about with a commitment to innate capacities. particular variable features of the developmental A strong theme emerging from the papers in this environment, including resources and information volume puts pressure on the idea that there are derived from the ecological niche, from parents and innate psychological capacities at all. These are not from the wider culture [7]. blank slate empiricists or cultural determinists who The second change is a much greater reliance on deny the importance of evolution for explaining why culturally transmitted information. Among the we are as we are. If the New Thinking is on the right adaptively-significant information on which develop- track, however, then innateness is not a useful concept ment depends, some concerns facts that individuals for theorizing about recent human cognition. could not learn for themselves in their own lifetime. Many papers in the volume emphasize domain- In these circumstances individuals do not test and con- general adaptations: improved physical/causal under- firm for themselves that the developmental path they standing, increased visuomotor skill, and an extended are adopting is adaptive; they rely on the information childhood coupled with increased parental investment in their culture being a reasonably reliable guide to [2,3]. At a recent conference on the new thinking, Eva adaptive outcomes. So human behavioural develop- Jablonka argued that the hand is a much better meta- ment is extremely plastic, and some of that plasticity phor than the Swiss-army knife for the special features involves sensitivity to culturally transmitted infor- of recent human cognition [4,5]. The hand is exqui- mation [7,8]. More strongly still, it is plausible that sitely complex and highly adapted, involving a suite humans have adaptations for the cultural transmission of information, including through teaching and learn- ing [9]. So, if cognition has evolved to be like the hand, *[email protected] it is a hand that was partly shaped by a culture of other One contribution of 15 to a Theme Issue ‘New thinking: the hands, and which in turn plays a role in shaping other evolution of human cognition’. hands, being itself partly adapted to passing on the 2234 This journal is q 2012 The Royal Society Downloaded from rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org on June 25, 2012 Review. New thinking and innateness N. Shea 2235 kind of cultural resources on which it depended on for (b) Deeper troubles with innateness its own development. Inutility is bad enough, but the troubles with the innate- An evolutionary approach is often coupled with the ness concept run deeper. As philosophers, we want to thought that adaptive traits are innate. An innate trait is know what property the concept of innateness refers prototypically1 an adaptation that has evolved by gene- to. That is, we want a theoretical reconstruction of the based natural selection, and is thereby coded in the claim that a trait X is innate—we want to know what genes. Its development does not depend on learning, it is about a trait that determines whether the innateness and it would develop even if experience were impover- claim is true or false. This exercise is not merely of phi- ished in certain ways. Correlatively, it is relatively losophical interest. It is continuous with the scientific developmentally fixed in the face of environmental project of trying better to understand the properties variations, and perhaps canalized against such vari- that are appealed to in a scientific theory. To do so, ations. Indeed, on some views an innate trait is we can observe the pattern of inferences in which a genetically determined from birth. And it is universal theoretical concept such as innateness is deployed, and in the species, either in the sense that all members seek to understand what the property is that underpins have it apart from non-typical cases in which there is those inferences: that makes them defeasible but an explanation of their exceptional status or, if there reasonably reliable ways of reaching true conclusions is typical variation in how the trait is manifested, then from true premises. The deeper problem with the con- some shared basis for that variation is universal. cept of innateness is that there is no good account of Evolutionary Psychology aims to account for the what the property of being innate could be, so as to distinctive features of human life by appealing to underpin the ways that the concept is used in relation special-purpose psychological capacities that have to human psychological capacities. exactly those features: they are prototypically the The concept of innateness is used to make inferences result of gene-based natural selection, do not depend between various properties like those mentioned ear- upon learning for their acquisition (and so admit of a lier: developmental fixity, lack of learning and genetic poverty of the stimulus argument), are relatively coding—‘i-properties’ (adapting the terminology of developmentally fixed and hence culturally universal.