Biology and Innateness: Some Critical Comments

Abstract

 In this paper I argue that some relatively recent empirical findings in developmental biology lead us to abandon some concepts of innateness, in particular those which we shall call 'internalist concepts'. I also examine three characterizations of innateness that have been recently proposed —characterizations which take into account those empirical findings and are attempts to explain some of the most important connotations and assertions associated to the word 'innate' as it is used in some empirical disciplines. It is also argued that two of these characterizations are inadequate for various reasons, and that it is more plausible to consider the third characterization as an explication of the concept of an inherited phenotypic trait.