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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2023
This chapter is about the category of innateness, which is a feature often associated with a range of cognitive phenomena, including concepts, cognitive capacities, behavioral dispositions, and mental states. Arguing against a number of recent critiques of the notion, this chapter tries to show that innateness can be identified with a cluster of properties that are causally interrelated in various ways and proposes a tentative causal model of the kind. In individuating innateness, it is important to distinguish proximal from distal causation. Some of the causal properties associated with innateness are involved in individuating innate cognitive capacities synchronically, while others are etiological in nature, responsible for making those capacities innate in the first place. This complex causal network is robust enough to warrant considering innateness to be a real kind as used in contemporary cognitive science.
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