Department of Philosophy, King's College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Feb 12;366(1563):436-43. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0174.
The concept of innateness is often used in explanations and classifications of biological and cognitive traits. But does this concept have a legitimate role to play in contemporary scientific discourse? Empirical studies and theoretical developments have revealed that simple and intuitively appealing ways of classifying traits (e.g. genetically specified versus owing to the environment) are inadequate. They have also revealed a variety of scientifically interesting ways of classifying traits each of which captures some aspect of the innate/non-innate distinction. These include things such as whether a trait is canalized, whether it has a history of natural selection, whether it developed without learning or without a specific set of environmental triggers, whether it is causally correlated with the action of certain specific genes, etc. We offer an analogy: the term 'jade' was once thought to refer to a single natural kind; it was then discovered that it refers to two different chemical compounds, jadeite and nephrite. In the same way, we argue, researchers should recognize that 'innateness' refers not to a single natural kind but to a set of (possibly related) natural kinds. When this happens, it will be easier to progress in the field of biological and cognitive sciences.
内在性的概念在生物学和认知特征的解释和分类中经常被使用。但是，这个概念在当代科学话语中是否有合法的作用呢？实证研究和理论发展表明，简单直观的分类特征的方法（例如，由遗传决定的与由环境决定的）是不充分的。它们还揭示了各种有趣的科学分类特征的方法，每种方法都捕捉到了内在/非内在区别的某些方面。其中包括特征是否被固定，是否具有自然选择的历史，是否在没有学习或没有特定环境触发的情况下发展，是否与某些特定基因的作用存在因果关系等。我们提供一个类比：“玉”这个词曾经被认为是指一种单一的自然种类；后来发现它指的是两种不同的化学化合物，翡翠和软玉。同样，我们认为，研究人员应该认识到“内在性”不是指单一的自然种类，而是指一系列（可能相关的）自然种类。当这种情况发生时，生物学和认知科学领域的进展将变得更加容易。
