ABSTRACT
Some people reject the terms of the debate entirely. In fact, some philosophers, biologists, and psychologists have argued that the terms of the debate are so confused, or so poorly defi ned, that we should scrap it without looking back. I agree with this assessment. In this chapter, I’ll tackle the idea of innateness. I agree with those biologists, philosophers, and psychologists who think the idea of innateness borders on meaninglessness, and that the distinction between innate and acquired is a bad way to think about development. Then, I’ll discuss ways that evolutionary approaches to the mind could get on just fi ne without the idea of innateness. Specifi cally, it would be more fruitful to make a distinction between traits that are relatively “robust,” and those that are relatively “plastic.” The distinction between robustness and plasticity captures an important phenomenon but does so without presupposing the idea of innateness.
