The concept of the innate is erected theoretically in opposition to that of the acquired , forming the space in which both create a complementary duality on which the human being is erected.

Understanding the importance of the innate and the acquired allows us to understand the various mechanisms that underlie the expression of one’s individuality and the influences that can act on it during development.

The meaning of the word ‘innate’

The word innate comes from the Latin word inatus . On the etymological level it can be divided into two constituent elements: the prefix in, which alludes to an inherent or interior reality; and the suffix natus, whose meaning is “born”.

Therefore, it is understood as innate any expression of a living being that forms part of its potential baggage from the moment of birth , without having mediated a direct learning experience with the natural environment.

Thus, it is generally understood that what is innate is everything that an individual expresses without the need to have learned it through personal experiences with the environment, solely because he has a genetic baggage that shapes his biology and the corresponding emotional or behavioral substrate that could depend on it. For Psychology, this is a concept that is central to its objective of understanding the mind and behavior of human beings.

Three different perspectives have been postulated to explain innatism throughout the historical evolution of the construct. All of them are still important, since it is a matter that is subject to debate today, with evidence for and against all cases. We will now review the basic aspects of all these approaches.

1. Extreme innatism or modularity

From this perspective, the mind is understood as a relatively organized set of specialized modules in specific domains or skills, which are sensitive to certain types of information.

When it is in the environment, a pre-programmed form of processing is set in motion, automatically and without the will of the individual. It is for this reason that, in the result of these learnings, the innate acquires a special relevance.

The best known example is that of language . Different authors have defended the existence of a universal grammar, that is, a series of rules common to all human beings that allow the acquisition of verbal and symbolic codes as they interact with others in their social environment. Some examples of theorists who have postulated explanatory models from this perspective are Chomsky or Fodor.

2. Moderate innatism

In this position are those authors who share a modular vision for the structure of the mind but who conceive of its innate potential as being limited, so that it is the individual through his or her exploratory behavior who will be responsible for complementing and enriching it with the nuance of his or her individual experience. There would be, therefore, a basic previous knowledge that would require contact with the environment to provide it with adaptive properties.

This prism would integrate the innate with the acquired in a comprehensive unit, giving each of these realities an important role in the acquisition of the knowledge and skills that are ours as a species, as well as in the construction of our way of being in the world.

3. Representational innatism

This perspective is the most lax view possible on the question of innatism, although it does not completely eliminate it from the equation. While retaining certain innate capacities, the most important weight of individuality would fall on the ability to explore and explain the world through the formulation of symbolic representations that depend on experience.

This way of understanding innatism defends the capacity of individuals to generate explanatory theories as they live different situations, in such a way that a final result would not be achieved, but rather a constructive process would be passed through that would last a lifetime. From this perspective, there would not be a previous programming or a sequence of innate automatisms , but the individual would be the one who would rise as the only architect of himself.

Biology and Psychology in the face of innatism

Biology and Psychology have built, throughout their respective histories as scientific disciplines, a set of theoretical models that have often contemplated the innate aspects from an ethological and evolutionary perspective. This scientific search connects with some of the main questions to which philosophers and thinkers devoted their time earlier, trying to scrutinize the very nature of knowledge and identity.

Innatism and Biology

Biology plays a key role in understanding the innate, as it refers to the concept of design . In this context, natural selection would be responsible for perpetuating the presence of certain traits through the screening of survival, so that the individuals most apt to deal with the threats of the environment could transmit their particularities from generation to generation, forming an evolutionary baggage sculpted by sexual reproduction and the passing of time.

This background would provide successive descendants of any species with a series of attributes that would improve their chances of survival, without having to face the rigours of real danger. The theory of preparedness, which describes how people tend to develop phobias more quickly towards potentially life-threatening stimuli, would be consistent with innate facilitation.

Beyond the evolutionary perspective, the innate has also been contemplated as a matter of genetics and inheritance . Thus, the presence or absence of a trait would be determined by the sequence of genes that each individual might present in the specific configuration of his DNA. However, there is evidence to the contrary to this theoretical postulate, since phenotypic expression requires the participation of epigenetic factors (environmental, e.g.).

Since the biological and the psychological form an indissoluble reality, due to the organic substrate that underlies thoughts and behaviors, a certain degree of influence of genetic adaptations on these would be predictable.

Innatism and Psychology

The debate between the innate and the acquired emerged naturally as a result of one of the first questions that human beings asked themselves. Philosophy, represented by the rationalists and the empiricists, raised the question a long time ago without being able to resolve it in favour of either of them. Today the concept of innate is especially championed by the theorists of Evolutionary Psychology , coexisting in certain harmony with what has been acquired.

In its study, Evolutionary Psychology brings together the different forces that build the particular way a person expresses and feels. While recognizing elements intrinsic to the organism that contribute to its maturation, these are complemented by equally influential forces, such as the social and natural environment. The person is therefore the product of the intersection between the organic and the cultural, between phylogeny and ontogeny, between what is acquired and what is learned.

From Psychology it is understood that every cognitive mechanism has an adaptive function , in such a way that its first aim was to give an advantage to the animal that wields it in contrast to the one that does not, in evident parallelism with what we know about organic qualities. The fact that a group of living beings adopted common strategies to solve a problem, as occurred in the collective hunting of predators, is an example of this.

Human reality: a question of confluences

The human being is a biopsychosocial reality of extreme complexity, which implies the existence of multiple forces that act on him during the process of gestation of his individuality. Our central nervous system developed over millennia in a physical and social context full of threats to life, different to that which currently exists for most people in the world, and this has resulted in a phylogenetic imprint on our most primitive brain.

Measuring the extent of this footprint is by no means simple, but it involves a number of mechanisms that influence many basic processes, such as emotional and perceptual ones. We cannot therefore avoid the relevance of the innate in the range of our thoughts and emotions, since the substrate on which they rest was formed through the avatars that Homo sapiens had to live through for countless generations.

The human being is not, therefore, a tabula rasa . He does not arrive in the world without the tools with which to solve the first puzzles that existence will place before him. The communication, perceptive and motor functions already have a nucleus of organization in the child’s mind; requiring only the stimulus of experience to build a body of sophisticated skills that will contribute to his or her capacity to live a full life.

Without a doubt, the human being is also an animal endowed with extraordinary creative and symbolic capacities, which allow him to transcend to a great extent the yoke of innate conditioning in order to construct himself from personal experience. As he is scourged by his evolutionary history and his life story, he continues to unravel the enormous mystery of his own mind and the space he occupies in nature.

Bibliographic references:

  • Garcia, C.L. (2005). Innatism and Biology: towards a Biological Concept of the Innate. Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia, 20(2), 167-182.
  • Enesco, I. and Delval, J. (2006). Modules, Domains and other Devices. Childhood and Learning, 29(3), 249-267.