Innateness and ( Bayesian ) Visual Perception

Because innateness is such a complex and controversial issue when applied to higher level cognition, it can be useful to explore how nature and nurture interact in simpler, less controversial contexts. One such context is the study of certain aspects of visual perception—where especially rigorous models are possible, and where it is less controversial to claim that certain aspects of the visual system are in part innately specified. The hope is that scrutiny of these simpler contexts might yield lessons that can then be applied to debates about the possible innateness of other aspects of the mind. This chapter will explore a particular way in which visual processing may involve innate constraints and will attempt to show how such processing overcomes one enduring challenge to nativism. In particular, many challenges to nativist theories in other areas of cognitive psychology (e.g., ‘‘theory of mind,’’ infant cognition) have focused on the later development of such abilities, and have argued that such development is in conflict with innate origins (since those origins would have to be somehow changed or overwritten). Innateness, in these contexts, is seen as antidevelopmental, associated instead with static processes and principles. In contrast, certain perceptual models demonstrate how the very same mental processes can both be innately specified and yet develop richly in response to experience with the environment. In fact, this process is entirely unmysterious, as is made clear in certain formal theories of visual perception, including those that appeal to spontaneous endogenous stimulation, and those based on Bayesian inference.