Innateness and Canalization

Ariew, André

doi:10.1086/289932

Cited by 202 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Ariew, who argues that traits are innate to the extent that they exhibit environmental canalisation (Ariew, 1996(Ariew, , 1999(Ariew, , 2006. The concept of canalisation derives from the mid-20 th century embryologist and theoretical biologist Conrad H. Waddington.…”

Section: Analyses Of Innateness Based On Fixitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some philosophers have proposed that in these contexts it is primarily a device to say 'not my department -ask a biologist' (Samuels, 2002). But others continue to propose analyses of the concept of innateness, designed to show that there is a single, coherent notion of innateness that either does or should underlie the use of the term in the sciences of the mind (recent examples include Mallon and Weinberg, 2006;Ariew, 2006;Khalidi, 2007). These analyses are typically subject to intuitively compelling counterexamples from the proponents of alternative analyses (see Section 5).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Vernacular Concept of Innateness

Griffiths¹,

Machery²,

Linquist³

2014

Experimental Philosophy

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The proposal that the concept of innateness expresses a 'folk biological ' Innateness and Folk BiologyIt is a truism that the term 'innate' is vague and ambiguous. According to ethologist Patrick Bateson, "At least six meanings are attached to the term: present at birth; a behavioral difference caused by a genetic difference; adapted over the course of evolution; unchanging throughout development; shared by all members of a species; and not learned. … Say what you mean (even if it uses a bit more space) rather than unintentionally confuse your readers by employing a word such as innate that carries so many different connotations" (Bateson, 1991, p. 21-22). The rejection of the term 'innate' . Acknowledgements: Griffiths and Linquist were supported by Australian Research Council grant FF0457917. We thank Patrick Bateson, Ron Mallon, Matteo Mameli and Shaun Nicholls for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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Section: Analyses Of Innateness Based On Fixitymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Vernacular Concept of Innateness

Griffiths¹,

Machery²,

Linquist³

2014

Experimental Philosophy

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“…A different account is given by Ariew (1996Ariew ( , 1999 in terms of the notion of canalization. Waddington defined canalization as ''the capacity [of development] to produce a particular definite end-result in spite of a certain variability both in the initial situation from which development starts and in the conditions met during its course'' (Waddington 1975(Waddington , p. 99, 1957).…”

Section: Non-malleabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Innateness and the Sciences

2006

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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.

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“…By contrast, in a series of important papers, Ariew (1996Ariew ( , 1999Ariew ( , 2007 has suggested that canalization is the biological phenomenon that should be taken to underlie innateness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relativizing innateness: innateness as the insensitivity of the appearance of a trait with respect to specified environmental variation

O'Neill

2014

Biol Philos

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Innateness and Canalization

Cited by 202 publications

References 6 publications

The Vernacular Concept of Innateness

The Vernacular Concept of Innateness

Innateness and the Sciences

Relativizing innateness: innateness as the insensitivity of the appearance of a trait with respect to specified environmental variation

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