1 Some background on empiricism and nativism
Issues of current interest concerning the extent to which human cognition
is innately structured also exercised the philosophers of the scientiWc
revolution in the seventeenth century. In one of the most inXuential
philosophical texts written in English,An Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing, John Locke argued vigorously that there are ‘no innate principles
in the mind’, and tried to show how all the materials of our thinking
(‘ideas’, as he called them) are derived from experience (Locke, 1690). At
that time Locke undoubtedly did a service to the advancement of science,
since the sort of nativism advocated in his day was all too often associated
with reactionary appeals to authority – ‘it was of no small advantage to
those who aVected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of
principles:that principles must not be questioned’ (1690, I.iv.25).
What we want to insist on is that the merits of empiricism as an
epistemological position (epistemological empiricism) – which is a view
about how theories and knowledge claims are to be justiWed – should not
be confused with its plausibility as a general hypothesis concerning cog-
nitive development (developmental empiricism). In other words, claims to
knowledge need to be defended by appeal to experience and experiment.
But that does not mean that everything we know has beenlearnt through
experience. On the contrary, one of the major insights of cognitive science
has been the extent to which we depend upon a natural cognitive endow-
ment, which assigns processing tasks to modular structures with quite
speciWc and restricted domains and inputs. This makes excellent sense in
evolutionary terms, as we shall see in a moment, and yet it remains diYcult
for us to accept about ourselves.
First, there is a natural inclination to suppose that cognition is integ-
rated into a single system, available for the individual to survey. We are all
subject to this illusion, the illusion of the ‘transparent mind’. It is, indeed, a
concomitant of consciousness, since as we shall be explaining in our
concluding chapter, conscious mental states are surveyable and integrated
in just this way. But a great deal of cognitive processing – in fact, most of it
- goes on at a level beneath conscious awareness, and there is a con-
siderable body of evidence testifying to its modular structure.
Moreover humans are, of course, intensely interested in diVerences
between individuals. Some of our evolved special systems may themselves
have the function of being sensitive to these diVerences. Social and econ-
omic competitiveness have also made us keen on grading slight diVeren-
ces in skills and intelligence. So when we think about thinking we are
biased towards concentration on spectacular achievements paraded in a
public arena. Yet if we consider the matter from a less partial and par-
50 Modularity and nativism