Who is afraid of innate knowledge?

Abstract

The fascinating results of Lorenzi et al. (2025) suggest that the number sense is innate. Many readers might find this conclusion disturbing. Here, I explore the deep cognitive origins of this sentiment. Empiricism, I suggest, is deeply grounded in human nature. This conclusion obviously does not license us to assume that knowledge is innate, but it does suggest caution against heeding our skeptical gut reaction.

Introduction

In their elegant piece, Lorenzi et al. (2025) show that animals can appreciate the analog numerosity of visual arrays. They do so spontaneously, in early development, without training or visual experience, and they rely on neural mechanisms that are remarkably invariant in ontogeny and phylogeny.

As the authors carefully recognize, these results do not imply that the number sense is experience-independent. However, it does appear that animals do not learn their numbers. Since, by definition, concepts that emerge without cognitive inference (e.g. learning) are innate (Samuels 2004), the number sense is likely innate.

I suspect many readers will find this conclusion deeply troubling. Some might even claim that the notion of innateness is inherently bankrupt. In my commentary, I wish to speak to this sentiment.

I first examine the concerns with innateness. I then consider why innate knowledge, in general, and innate number sense, in particular, make us queasy and what we (scientists) can do about it.

A popular argument asserts that “innateness” is an inadequate explanatory construct (e.g. Mameli and Bateson 2011). If all biological traits are experience-dependent, then why single out innate capacities? Moreover, the notion of innateness is premised on the assumption that certain traits (e.g. “having two hands”) are inherent to an organism, whereas others (e.g. “a scratch”) aren’t, and “inherence” smacks of essentialism—an intuitive psychological concept with troubling cognitive and biological baggage (Dar-Nimrod and Heine 2011). Why build science on intuitive psychology?

Essentialism is indeed an intuitive cognitive bias that is present in adults and children (Gelman and Wellman 1991). People believe living things are what they are because they possess some inherent essence. This essentialist bias likely begets our scientific interest in innateness. But I see nothing wrong with that.

Wonder is the engine of scientific inquiry (Keil 2022), and intuitive psychology is its spark (Carey and Spelke 1996). Physics arises from our innate core knowledge of objects (Spelke 2022), mathematics is partly rooted in the number sense (Dehaene 1997), and biology is grounded in essentialism (Dar-Nimrod and Heine 2011). So, grounding the scientific notion of innateness in intuitive psychology is nothing unusual. When used responsibly, essentialism can present biological theory with a useful explanatory framework (Devitt 2018).

But I doubt our concerns with “innate number sense” solely arise from these theoretical worries. Indeed, people have little trouble accepting that “having two hands” is innate. But number sense seems to capture abstract knowledge. The notion of innate knowledge seems weird—an oxymoron. How can numeric knowledge possibly be innate?

Research from my lab has systematically documented such intuitions. Some of our studies presented laypeople with detailed descriptions of published experiments on newborn number cognition (Izard et al. 2009), complete with the rationale and methods, and invited participants to “play scientists”—predict whether newborns could discern numerosity. Participants claimed they could not (Berent et al. 2019). Another study by Wang and Feigonson examined the discrimination of quantities. Participants—adults and children—asserted that this capacity is learned and emerges only as late as age 2–4 (Wang and Feigenson 2019).

In other experiments, we explored participants’ innateness intuitions for other early aspects of knowledge, including a rudimentary understanding of objects, people, morality, and formal operations (e.g. negation)—capacities that are arguably innate. No matter how we probed, people consistently denied that knowledge is innate (Berent et al. 2019).

This was not because people reject innateness altogether. When we asked them about sensations, actions, and emotions (e.g. seeing, walking, love), people were happy to state these are innate. But for knowledge, they stated it isn’t’ (Berent et al. 2019; Berent et al. 2020). So, it appears that people are empiricists.

How does this empiricist stance arise? A priori, there could be many reasons. Perhaps laypeople don’t know better, or maybe they are biased by their own experiences with learning math. These sources (and others) could well play a role. Our research, however, reveals that the empiricist bias is deeper and more sinister. It arises from two cognitive biases that are firmly rooted in human cognition: intuitive dualism and, yes, essentialism.

When we consider which traits are possibly innate, we consult essentialism. Per essentialism, innate traits arise from an inherent essence that lies within our body (Berent 2021b). People, however, also intuit that knowledge forms part of the mind, and they segregate minds and bodies—deep down, they are closet dualists (Bloom 2004).

Putting these two biases together, if what’s innate must be in the body, and if knowledge isn’t there, then it follows that knowledge cannot be innate (Berent 2020).

A series of experiments from my lab directly test this explanation, and its predictions are borne out (Berent 2021a).

These findings explain why the “innate number sense” proposal seems so troubling. Given the biases of human cognition—essentialism, on the one hand, and the dualist mind–body divide, on the other—the notion of innate knowledge (of number or other things) does not compute. And insofar as scientists are only people, they may not spared. Indeed, research has shown they are just as biased as laypeople, even when they have ample training in cognition (Wang and Feigenson 2019).

What to do about these biases?

To be clear, I do not wish to suggest that scientists overcorrect—"jump the gun” and assume “everything is innate.” But I do believe that when we hear “innate knowledge” and our guts “scream murder,” we ought to stop and think. Recognizing our human biases is the first step toward better science.

Author contributions

Iris Berent (Conceptualization, IB; writing, IB).

Funding

This research was not supported by any extramural funding.

Conflict of interest statement: The author declares no conflict of interest.

References