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What are the core learning algorithms in brains? Nativists propose that intelligence emerges from innate domain-specific knowledge systems, whereas empiricists propose that intelligence emerges from domain-general systems that learn domain-specific knowledge from experience. We address this debate by reviewing digital twin studies designed to reverse engineer the learning algorithms in newborn brains. In digital twin studies, newborn animals and artificial agents are raised in the same environments and tested with the same tasks, permitting direct comparison of their learning abilities. Supporting empiricism, digital twin studies show that domain-general algorithms learn animal-like object perception when trained on the first-person visual experiences of newborn animals. Supporting nativism, digital twin studies show that domain-general algorithms produce innate domain-specific knowledge when trained on prenatal experiences (retinal waves). We argue that learning across humans, animals, and machines can be explained by a universal principle, which we call space-time fitting. Space-time fitting explains both empiricist and nativist phenomena, providing a unified framework for understanding the origins of intelligence.

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The notion of domain specificity plays a central role in some of the most important debates in cognitive science. Yet, despite the widespread reliance on domain specificity in recent theorizing in cognitive science, this notion remains elusive. Critics have claimed that the notion of domain specificity can't bear the theoretical weight that has been put on it and that it should be abandoned. Even its most steadfast proponents have highlighted puzzles and tensions that arise once one tries to go beyond an initial intuitive sketch of what domain specificity involves. In this paper, we address these concerns head on by developing an account of what it means for a cognitive mechanism to be domain specific that overcomes the obstacles that have made domain specificity seem so problematic. We then apply this understanding of domain specificity to one of the key debates that it has figured prominently in-the rationalism-empiricism debate concerning the origins of cognitive traits-and introduce several related theoretical notions that work alongside domain specificity in helping to clarify what makes a view more (or less) rationalist. This example illustrates how the notion of domain specificity can, and should, continue to play a central role in ongoing debates in cognitive science.

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The author has thought about working memory, not always by that name, since 1969 and has conducted research on its infant and child development since the same year that the seminal work of Baddeley and Hitch (1974) was published. The present article assesses how the field of working memory development has been influenced since those years by major theoretical perspectives: empiricism (along with behaviorism), nativism (along with modularity), cognitivism (along with constructivism), and dynamic systems theory. The field has not fully discussed the point that these theoretical perspectives have helped to shape different kinds of proposed working memory systems, which in turn have deeply influenced what is researched and how it is researched. Here I discuss that mapping of theoretical viewpoints onto assumptions about working memory and trace the influence of this mapping on the field of working memory development. I illustrate where these influences have led in my own developmental research program over the years.

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Although research finds that international medical graduates (IMGs) fill gaps in US health care left by US medical graduates (USMGs), the extent to which IMGs' career outcomes are stratified along the lines of their country of medical education remains understudied. Using data from the 2019 American Medical Association Physician Masterfile (n = 19,985), I find IMGs from developed countries chart less marginalised paths in their US careers relative to IMGs from developing countries; they are more likely to practise in more competitive and popular medical specialities; to attend prestigious residency programmes; and to practise in less disadvantaged counties that employ more USMGs relative to IMGs. These findings suggest IMGs experience divergent outcomes in the United States based on their place of medical education, with IMGs from developing countries experiencing more constraints in their careers relative to IMGs from developed countries. This understudied axis of stratification in medicine has important implications for our understanding of how nativism and racism may intersect to generate inequalities in the medical profession and in US health care more broadly.

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Asians and Asian Americans in the USA have long been a part of a contentious racial history, yet the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted discriminatory stereotypes and beliefs. As revealed through this discourse analysis, Asian international students were simultaneously positioned as scapegoats, bearers of disease, cash cows, and political pawns, all within the context of the pandemic. Asian international students navigated their shifting social positionings within a national context that was heavily influenced by racist nativism. Findings indicated that during a health pandemic, Asian international students were positioned as both the Yellow Peril and cash cows within U.S. higher education. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-022-00814-y.

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White upper middle-class Americans at the turn of the twentieth century were entrenched in a battle with a newly discovered, or invented, mental illness called neurasthenia. This essay examines the ways in which the medical discourse of neurasthenia reflected late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century white Anglo-Saxon men's belief in, as well as anxiety over, American values bolstered by their idea of cultural, racial, and sexual superiority and consolidated through a conjunction of medicine and politics. The idea of neurasthenia as white American men's malady functioned as a mark both of whites' racial superiority to the "new" immigrants and African Americans as well as of women's intellectual inferiority to the opposite sex of their own race. Imposing a subtle distortion on the etiology and diagnosis of neurasthenia and associating it with specific groups of people, the "American disease" constituted the era's representative pathological symptoms which addressed Anglo-Saxon American men's anxieties about overcivilized effeminacy and racial and national decadence which was originated as a response to the racial and sexual heterogeneity. This essay also argues that neurasthenia was an imagined disease which addressed late nineteenth-century American men's spatial anxiety about the decline of the American pastoral ideal caused by the closure of the frontier. Given that the treatment for neurasthenic men was an escape to the frontier in the West in which they could rejuvenate withered American masculinity, their uneasiness about barbarous, unhygienic, and prolific immigrants and unruly white women, in fact, was tied to their spatial anxiety which symptomatically signifies the crisis of American masculinity. Channeled through the medical knowledge of neurology, it made American men's racial, sexual, and spatial anxieties function to act out their racist, misogynist, nativist, and imperialist impulses which legitimized exclusionary political techniques toward the racial and sexual others such as the U.S. imperial expansion in the 1890s and 1900s and a eugenic-influenced immigration policy from the 1900s through the1920s. In this sense, the decline of neurasthenia around 1920 should not be attributed solely to the continued efforts to professionalize American medicine accompanied by recent discoveries of chemical factors such as hormones and vitamins and the rise of psychiatry and psychology which offered physicians with a more specific theory of health built on clinical laboratory science. Like its rise, the decision to move away from the neurasthenic diagnosis was rather a cultural phenomenon, which reflected the American ascendancy to global power in the early twentieth century, particularly after the First World War. Sustaining a political order rested on racial and sexual hierarchies both within and outside the American continent, American men felt that they were no longer liable to specific, time-tested anxiety and somatic symptoms of neurasthenia, which was more an ideological and cultural construct than a clinical entity that dramatizes the racial, sexual, and imperial politics of the-turn-of-the-twentieth-century America.

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Like other aspects of child development, views of the nature and development of morality depend on philosophical assumptions or worldviews presupposed by researchers. We analyze assumptions regarding knowledge linked to two contrasting worldviews: Cartesian-split-mechanistic and process-relational. We examine the implications of these worldviews for approaches to moral development, including relations between morality and social outcomes, and the concepts of information, meaning, interaction and computation. It is crucial to understand how researchers view these interrelated concepts in order to understand approaches to moral development. Within the Cartesian-split-mechanistic worldview, knowledge is viewed as representation and meaning is mechanistic and fixed. Both nativism and empiricism are based in this worldview, differing in whether the source of representations is assumed to be primarily internal or external. Morality is assumed to pre-exist, either in the genome or the culture. We discuss problems with these conceptions and endorse the process-relational paradigm, according to which knowledge is constructed through interaction, and morality begins in activity as a process of coordinating perspectives, rather than the application of fixed rules. The contrast is between beginning with the mind or beginning with social activity in explaining the mind.

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Building on Rinaldi and Bekker's scoping review of articles on the impact of populist radical right (PRR) politics on welfare and population health, this short article formulates three pointers towards a framework that might help structure future research into PRR, populist politics more generally, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other health issues. First, we discuss the centrality of welfare chauvinism to the PRR's impact on health, taking this as a cue for a broader reflection on the importance on distinguishing between the nativist and populist dimensions of PRR politics. Secondly, we turn our attention to the potential moderating effect of the PRR's welfare chauvinism on the welfare cuts proposed by their right-wing coalition partners, comments we see as pointing to the need to focus on nativist, populist, neoliberal and other threats to welfare policy more generally, rather than on the PRR only. Thirdly, we reflect on the paradoxical nature of welfare chauvinism - its negative consequences for the health of the 'own people' it proclaims to defend - as a starting point for a brief discussion of the need to consider carefully the not-so-straightforward relation between the PRR's political rhetoric, its (impact on) policy and institutions, and the outcomes of such policy.

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Nursing in white-majority populations tends to be associated with white women. Yet as Western Europe and North America undergo demographic shifts, such associations are challenged as people of different racial and national backgrounds take on positions in nursing and other professional roles in healthcare. This article explores the work experiences of nurses from diverse backgrounds as they confront intersecting forms of sexism, racism, and nativism in the Netherlands. We use the conceptual framework of "appropriate labor" to help explain these experiences in connection with the wider climate of Dutch native homogeneity and race and racism denial. These findings have implications for work policies that might better support minority nurses in contexts of increasing superdiversity while also challenging wider cultural norms in the Netherlands that continue to associate nursing with whiteness and deny the presence of racism.

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Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodiversity should be guided by compassion for all sentient beings. Critics argue that there are 3 core reasons harming animals is acceptable in conservation programs: the primary purpose of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans. We used argument analysis to clarify the values and logics underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. We found that objections to compassionate conservation are expressions of human exceptionalism, the view that humans are of a categorically separate and higher moral status than all other species. In contrast, compassionate conservationists believe that conservation should expand its moral community by recognizing all sentient beings as persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies the individual is owed respect and should not be treated merely as a means to other ends. On scientific and ethical grounds, there are good reasons to extend personhood to sentient animals, particularly in conservation. The moral exclusion or subordination of members of other species legitimates the ongoing manipulation and exploitation of the living worlds, the very reason conservation was needed in the first place. Embracing compassion can help dismantle human exceptionalism, recognize nonhuman personhood, and navigate a more expansive moral space.

Reconocimiento de la Calidad de Persona en los Animales dentro de la Conservación Compasiva Resumen La conservación compasiva está basada en la posición ética que parte de que las acciones tomadas para proteger a la biodiversidad deberían estar dirigidas por la compasión por todos los seres sintientes. Los críticos de esta postura argumentan que hay tres razones nucleares por las que el daño a los animales es aceptable dentro de los programas de conservación: el principal motivo de la conservación es la protección de la biodiversidad; la conservación ya es compasiva con los animales; y la conservación debería priorizar la compasión hacia los humanos. Usamos un análisis de argumentos para aclarar los valores y la lógica subyacentes al debate en torno a la conservación compasiva. Encontramos que el rechazo a la conservación compasiva es una expresión de la excepcionalidad humana, la visión de que los humanos están en un nivel categóricamente separado y de mayor moral que todas las demás especies. Por el contrario, los conservacionistas compasivos creen que la conservación debería expandir su comunidad moral al reconocer a todos los seres sintientes como personas. La calidad de persona, en un sentido ético, implica que el individuo merece respeto y no debería ser tratado solamente como un medio para otros fines. Si hablamos desde fundamentos científicos y éticos, existen muy buenas razones para extender la calidad de persona a todos los animales sintientes, particularmente en la conservación. La exclusión moral o la subordinación de los miembros de otras especies justifica la continua manipulación y explotación de los seres vivos, la justa razón por la que necesitamos de la conservación desde el principio. La aceptación de la compasión nos puede ayudar a desmantelar la excepcionalidad humana, a reconocer la calidad de persona no humana y a navegar un espacio moral más expansivo.

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Conservation science involves the collection and analysis of data. These scientific practices emerge from values that shape who and what is counted. Currently, conservation data are filtered through a value system that considers native life the only appropriate subject of conservation concern. We examined how trends in species richness, distribution, and threats change when all wildlife count by adding so-called non-native and feral populations to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and local species richness assessments. We focused on vertebrate populations with founding members taken into and out of Australia by humans (i.e., migrants). We identified 87 immigrant and 47 emigrant vertebrate species. Formal conservation accounts underestimated global ranges by an average of 30% for immigrants and 7% for emigrants; immigrations surpassed extinctions in Australia by 52 species; migrants were disproportionately threatened (33% of immigrants and 29% of emigrants were threatened or decreasing in their native ranges); and incorporating migrant populations into risk assessments reduced global threat statuses for 15 of 18 species. Australian policies defined most immigrants as pests (76%), and conservation was the most commonly stated motivation for targeting these species in killing programs (37% of immigrants). Inclusive biodiversity data open space for dialogue on the ethical and empirical assumptions underlying conservation science.

Cuando Toda la Vida Importa en la Conservación Resumen La ciencia de la conservación involucra la recolección y el análisis de datos. Estas prácticas científicas emergen de los valores que forman quién y qué se cuenta. Actualmente, los datos de conservación son filtrados a través de un sistema de valores que considera a la vida nativa como el único sujeto apropiado para el interés de la conservación. Examinamos cómo cambian las tendencias de riqueza de especies, distribución y amenazas cuando se considera a toda la vida silvestre con la adición de las poblaciones denominadas como no nativas y ferales a la Lista Roja de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza y a las evaluaciones de riqueza local de especies. Nos enfocamos en las poblaciones de vertebrados que cuentan con miembros fundadores llevados y extraídos de Australia (es decir, migrantes). Identificamos 87 especies inmigrantes de vertebrados y 47 especies emigrantes. Los informes formales de conservación subestimaron los rangos globales por un promedio del 30% para las especies inmigrantes y del 7% para las especies emigrantes; las inmigraciones rebasaron las extinciones en Australia por 52 especies; las especies migrantes estuvieron amenazadas de manera desproporcionada (33% de las especies inmigrantes y 29% de las especies emigrantes estaban amenazadas o declinando en sus distribuciones nativas); y la incorporación de las poblaciones migrantes a las evaluaciones de riesgo redujeron el estado mundial de amenaza para 15 de las 18 especies. Las políticas australianas definen a la mayoría de las especies inmigrantes como plagas (76%) y se citó a la conservación como la principal motivación para enfocarse en estas especies durante los programas de erradicación (37% de las especies inmigrantes). La información inclusiva de conservación genera un espacio para el diálogo sobre las suposiciones éticas y empíricas subyacentes en la ciencia de la conservación.

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Can we represent number approximately? A seductive reductionist notion is that participants in number tasks rely on continuous extent cues (e.g., area) and therefore that the representations underlying performance lack numerical content. I suggest that this notion embraces a misconception: that perceptual input determines conceptual content.

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The origins of human knowledge are an enduring puzzle: what parts of what we know require learning, and what depends on intrinsic structure? Although the nature-nurture debate has been a central question for millennia and has inspired much contemporary research in psychology and neuroscience, it remains unknown whether people share intuitive, prescientific theories about the answer. Here we report that people (N = 1,188) explain fundamental perceptual and cognitive abilities by appeal to learning and instruction, rather than genes or innateness, even for abilities documented in the first days of life. U.S. adults, adults from a culture with a belief in reincarnation, children, and professional scientists-including psychologists and neuroscientists, all believed these basic abilities emerge significantly later than they actually do, and ascribed them to nurture over nature. These findings implicate a widespread intuitive empiricist theory about the human mind, present from early in life.

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The rise of Bayesianism in cognitive science promises to shape the debate between nativists and empiricists into more productive forms-or so have claimed several philosophers and cognitive scientists. The present paper explicates this claim, distinguishing different ways of understanding it. After clarifying what is at stake in the controversy between nativists and empiricists, and what is involved in current Bayesian cognitive science, the paper argues that Bayesianism offers not a vindication of either nativism or empiricism, but one way to talk precisely and transparently about the kinds of mechanisms and representations underlying the acquisition of psychological traits without a commitment to an innate language of thought.

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Current theory-of-mind research faces the challenge of reconciling two sets of seemingly incompatible findings: Whereas children come to solve explicit verbal false belief (FB) tasks from around 4years of age, recent studies with various less explicit measures such as looking time, anticipatory looking, and spontaneous behavior suggest that even infants can succeed on some FB tasks. In response to this tension, two-systems theories propose to distinguish between an early-developing system, tracking simple forms of mental states, and a later-developing system, based on fully developed concepts of belief and other propositional attitudes. One prediction of such theories is that the early-developing system has signature limits concerning aspectuality. We tested this prediction in two experiments. The first experiment showed (in line with previous findings) that 2- and 3-year-olds take into account a protagonist's true or false belief about the location of an object in their active helping behavior. In contrast, toddlers' helping behavior did not differentiate between true and false belief conditions when the protagonist's belief essentially involved aspectuality. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with a more stringent method designed to rule out more parsimonious explanations. Taken together, the current findings are compatible with the possibility that early theory-of-mind reasoning is subject to signature limits as predicted by the two-systems account.

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Humans and other species have biologically endowed abilities for discriminating quantities. A widely accepted view sees such abilities as an evolved capacity specific for number and arithmetic. This view, however, is based on an implicit teleological rationale, builds on inaccurate conceptions of biological evolution, downplays human data from non-industrialized cultures, overinterprets results from trained animals, and is enabled by loose terminology that facilitates teleological argumentation. A distinction between quantical (e.g., quantity discrimination) and numerical (exact, symbolic) cognition is needed: quantical cognition provides biologically evolved preconditions for numerical cognition but it does not scale up to number and arithmetic, which require cultural mediation. The argument has implications for debates about the origins of other special capacities - geometry, music, art, and language.

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Henry Wellman and colleagues have provided evidence of a robust developmental progression in theory-of-mind (or as we will say, "mindreading") abilities, using verbal tasks. Understanding diverse desires is said to be easier than understanding diverse beliefs, which is easier than understanding that lack of perceptual access issues in ignorance, which is easier than understanding false belief, which is easier than understanding that people can hide their true emotions. These findings present a challenge to nativists about mindreading, and are said to support a social-constructivist account of mindreading development instead. This article takes up the challenge on behalf of nativism. Our goal is to show that the mindreading-scale findings fail to support constructivism because well-motivated alternative hypotheses have not yet been controlled for and ruled out. These have to do with the pragmatic demands of verbal tasks.

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A central debate in cognitive science concerns the nativist hypothesis, the proposal that universal features of behavior reflect a biologically determined cognitive substrate: For example, linguistic nativism proposes a domain-specific faculty of language that strongly constrains which languages can be learned. An evolutionary stance appears to provide support for linguistic nativism, because coordinated constraints on variation may facilitate communication and therefore be adaptive. However, language, like many other human behaviors, is underpinned by social learning and cultural transmission alongside biological evolution. We set out two models of these interactions, which show how culture can facilitate rapid biological adaptation yet rule out strong nativization. The amplifying effects of culture can allow weak cognitive biases to have significant population-level consequences, radically increasing the evolvability of weak, defeasible inductive biases; however, the emergence of a strong cultural universal does not imply, nor lead to, nor require, strong innate constraints. From this we must conclude, on evolutionary grounds, that the strong nativist hypothesis for language is false. More generally, because such reciprocal interactions between cultural and biological evolution are not limited to language, nativist explanations for many behaviors should be reconsidered: Evolutionary reasoning shows how we can have cognitively driven behavioral universals and yet extreme plasticity at the level of the individual-if, and only if, we account for the human capacity to transmit knowledge culturally. Wherever culture is involved, weak cognitive biases rather than strong innate constraints should be the default assumption.

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