Abstract
This paper maintains that neither a domain-general nor a domain-specific framework is appropriate for furthering our understanding of human evolution and ontogenesis. Rather, as we learn increasingly more about the dynamics of gene-environment interaction and gene expression, theorists should consider a third alternative: a domain-relevant approach, which argues that the infant brain comes equipped with biases that are relevant to, but not initially specific to, processing different kinds of input. The hypothesis developed here is that domain-specific core knowledge/specialized functions do not constitute the start state; rather, functional specialization emerges progressively through neuronal competition over developmental time. Thus, the existence of category-specific deficits in brain-damaged adults cannot be used to bolster claims that category-specific or domain-specific modules underpin early development, because neural specificity in the adult brain is likely to have been the emergent property over time of a developing, self-structuring system in interaction with the environment.
Highlights
Are there only two alternatives––domain-specific/domain-general––for theorising about human evolution and ontogenesis? I argue that there is a third alternative: a domain-relevant framework––one which would likely be endorsed by several theorists working within a more domain-general framework
Instead of invoking a start state of innate, domain-specific modules handed down by evolution, the neuroconstructivist framework would argue that evolution may be driven predominantly by increased plasticity for learning [93,94,95,96], rather than increased genetic complexity, i.e., for a limited number of domain-relevant biases, which become domain-specific over developmental time via their competitive interaction with each other when attempting to process different kinds of environmental stimuli [45,51]
Theorists have several options to explain the start state of the human brain and its subsequent development, amongst which the four frameworks discussed in this paper: (1) the domain-general framework of an initially undifferentiated brain which gains its structure solely from interacting with the environment; (2) the core knowledge or conceptual representations framework where the brain
Summary
The Nature or Nurture debate is obviously not new. It already raged in the 4th and 5th centuries amongst the ancient Greeks. The existence of brain-damaged adult patients presenting with uneven neuropsychological profiles and very specific deficits led many researchers to divide the mind/brain into separate modules for number, face processing, space, semantics, syntax and so forth, each cognitive domain being processed within a specialized region of the brain, characterized as either intact or impaired. This view is not one endorsed by all neuropsychologists.
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