Magic in the Alley

"Rethinking Innateness" asks the question, "What does it really mean to say

that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which

interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and

behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet

are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way.

One of the key contributions of "Rethinking Innateness" is a taxonomy of ways

in which a behavior can be innate. These include constraints at the level of

representation, architecture, and timing; typically, behaviors arise through

the interaction of constraints at several of these levels. The ideas are

explored through dynamic models inspired by a new kind of "developmental

connectionism, " a marriage of connectionist models and developmental

neurobiology, forming a new theoretical framework for the study of behavioral

development.