The Author Replies

The above authors accuse me of misrepresenting their position. Interestingly each is equally guilty of misrepresenting mine; I will therefore attempt to reconcile these problems. For example, no one proposes ‘fully formed, genetically determined algorithms’ that pop up magically in the neocortex without any actively acquired input . Indeed, two-way gene-environment interaction is undeniable; EPists know this: ‘Evolutionary Psychology forcefully rejects a genetic determinism stance [and insteadj invokes the role of the environment at every step of the causal process’ (Confer et al 2010, p. 210; see also ). I have insufficient space to review the many subtleties here; the point is that many robust universals, regardless of proximate cause, appear to ultimately serve inclusive fitness, often in previously unforeseen ways, and EPists are sceptical this is coincidence, particularly after so many successful predictions in the literature and the fact that adaptationist inquiry is uncontroversial in other animals. ‘Just-so stories’ would not produce such predictive validity; neither do post hoc theoretical explanations that emerge whenever EPists uncover previously unlooked-for adaptive behavioural strategies. This predictive validity was never addressed.

But the point is moot, because my question is simply ‘what do we mean by innate?’—innateness of mind does not require the stricter criteria that define DSAs or adaptations. Panksepp's ‘core human psyche’ , for instance, is innate without either. What the above theorists define as ‘innate’ (micro-mechanisms, perceptual biases, etc.) is clinically trivial, since their interpretation of neuroscience convinces them that nearly all therapeutic material except extremely abstract structure is reducible to early experience and essentially unrelated to genetic or evolutionary direction. Merchant's analysis of the soldier's dream, which reduces everything to the mother, is a good example (Merchant 2009, pp. 347-8); others exist elsew