The Nature-Nurture Debate

The nature-nurture debate is not just a scientific debate, but also a political one. It's because traditionally there was at least a strand of left liberalism that seemed to be committed to humans as blank slates as infinitely malleable. On the other hand, we have cognitive faculties such as the very ones that I explored in the books on language in the mind. We can have new ideas by combining old ideas in a combinatorial explosion of possibilities," he says.