The babies, the representations, and the nativist–empiricist bathwater. Commentary on “Stepping Off the pendulum: Why only an action-based approach can transcend the nativist–empiricist debate” by J. Allen & M. Bickhard

Abstract

Various versions of the ‘nativist–empiricist debate’ have been with us at least since John Locke formulated some of the basic principles of empiricist philosophy in the 17th century (Locke, 1690). As Allen and Bickhard suggest in their target article (this issue), empiricist and nativist perspectives have dominated the scientific landscape in pendulum-like alternation across the centuries. Most recently, from the 1970s into the present, theories and data consistent with nativism have assumed positions of prominence in the Developmental Psychology literature (Baillargeon, 1987; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977; Spelke & Kinzler, 2007; Wynn, 1992). However, for more than 50 years, several theorists have been arguing forcefully that nativism in all its variations is inherently non-developmental (Beach, 1955; Blumberg, 2005; Gottlieb, 1981; Johnston, 1987; Moore, 2001). Although there are nativists who disagree with this assessment (Carey, 2009; Spelke & Newport, 1998), the rise of nativism has been accompanied by a growing number of critics. Among these critics have been those arguing that systems theories such as Dynamic Systems Theory (Thelen & Smith, 1994), Connectionism (Elman et al., 1996), and Developmental Systems Theory (Oyama, Griffiths, & Gray, 2001; Spencer et al., 2009) can help us dispense with the nativist–empiricist debate, and thereby facilitate the study of development. I, too, believe transcendence of the nativist–empiricist debate is a worthy goal (Moore, 2001, 2009), so Allen, Bickhard, and I agree on this point. But even though achieving transcendence is likely to entail utilizing an approach similar in some ways to Allen and Bickhard’s, certain aspects of their arguments could nonetheless hinder progress toward our goal. In their introduction, Allen and Bickhard define emergent-constructivism as “the assumption that representational knowledge can be emergent in the construction of action systems” (Allen & Bickhard, this issue, p. 97). Emergence and construction are concepts that now seem likely to be essential elements of any comprehensive theory of psychological development; certainly it has become clear