What brains won't tell us about the mind: A critique of the neurobiological argument against representational nativism

In their recent and influential book Rethinking Innateness, Jeffrey Elman a nd his co-authors argue that evidence from neurobiology provides us with gr ounds to reject representational nativism (RN). I argue that Elman et ai.'s argument fails because it makes a series of unwarranted assumptions about RN and about the extent to which neurobiological data constrain claims abou t the innateness of mental representations. Moreover, I briefly discuss how we ought to understand RN and argue that on two prima facie plausible appr oaches, far from refuting nativism, the evidence from neurobiology may not even be relevant to the question of whether or not RN is true.