Rbz Posts

There are actually many different schools and both the Aristotelian view and the tabula-raSa-hypothesis are so utterly discredited in contemporary scientific discourse that they serve as little more than cheap entertainment.

Knowledge cannot be "inherited" across generations; the only way to transfer knowledge is by way of (direct or indirect) communication of one generation with the other.

What can, however, be transferred by way of inheritance are epigenetic dispositions towards certain behaviour (what a layman would refer to as "instinct"), or certain cognitive structures.

This assumption is grounded in the modern understanding of how how the human mind works; i.e. a post-Fodorian approach to cognitive science, which rightly assumes that the mind is a modular system strongly influenced by a series of parameters. These parameters in turn fall into two divisions; firstly epigenetic predisposition and secondly behavioural imprinting during an individual's formative years, the so-called primary behavioural acquisition window.
These parameters determine the individual's cognitive structure, and thus the way the individual acquires and handles new information - learning.