If you listen to Merleau-Ponty, there are “fads” and “fashions” in science. One of these trends is an obsession with calling things innate.

Looking all over cognitive research, (especially developmental research), it seems as though every piece of evidence indicates that some characteristic is innate. The work comes up with various interesting conclusions (part of the brain has a localization of a given process or babies can do the same process too, etc.), and then BAM- at the end- there is a claim of innate-ness.

The word gets thrown around all too often.

Is it about Biological Sufficiency or Biological Potential?

I would suggest that you should stop for a minute and think about a definition for the word innate. No. Don’t look it up- just try to define it for yourself. Are you thinking something along the lines of inborn or already there or evolutionary consistent? So:

If a baby is born with a specific characteristic does that make the characteristic innate?

If a baby can learn to do something (ex: speak a language) does that make that something innate?

Do all human babies have to have had this capability throughout history for it to be considered innate?

The last one posits an important larger question: does the entire human species have to hold the same capacity? Keep this thought on hold for a moment. The first two, however, are the focus right now. Most of us are born with the capacity to hear, see, breathe etc. We are also born with the capacity to learn hundreds and thousands of abilities and skills and pieces of information. As we know our brain has the ability to expand and mold and create and re-create neural pathways with each skill and piece of exposure. It is all about the environment that we are in.

This is why children of low socio-economic backgrounds have a harder time developing literacy skills. They are not exposed to as many words as their high social-economic status friends are. Likewise, this is why children deprived of language until late ages have a harder time learning to speak properly, if at all [re: Genie.] The brain has the capacity to learn all this language- but if that capacity is not used, it atrophies. The brain is a muscle.

So then do we cap off the term innate at what we can do biologically without any environmental exposure? As in, all of the processes our organs do from birth. Or do we expand the term innate to include everything we have the capacity to learn with exposure? But then this brings us to another issue- society determines what we learn for the most part.

Most people speak a language or can read because they live in a society that mandates all of these. Their society develops all of these “constructs” and their brains develop in such a manner due to the exposure to these constructs, that they develop these skills, as well. It is rare to find cases where people are kept out of isolation with society [again, re: Genie] and then do not gain these abilities.

I personally would like to draw the line between 1. innate and 2. innate by society, because there must be some distinction between what we are naturally born doing and what we have the potential to do.

For the last question- “Do all human babies have to have had this capability throughout history for it to be considered innate?”- this distinction between the two types of innate is imperative. Throughout history, the human species has had the same basic capacities due to their same organs (breathe, circulate blood, smell) (with the obvious existence of certain differences), but all members of the species has not had the same exposure to a society in order to gain the same capabilities, even if they had the capacity too.

Not all Homo sapiens have needed to speak a language.

Not all Homo sapiens have needed to read.

Not all Homo sapiens have processed music.

But- I suppose- all Homo sapiens have had the capacity to learn to perform all of these tasks.

However, all functioning Homo sapiens circulate blood.

And all functioning Homo sapiens breathe.

Homo sapiens tend to generally be able to eat, smell, touch, hear and even- cough.

What exactly does it mean to be “innate”- is it the ABILITY or the cap-ABILITY.