Nativism

Nativism is the view that some cognitive abilities are innate, biologically built in rather than learned.

Why posit innate cognition?

If a child can produce sentences they’ve never heard, pure learning from input can’t be the whole story. Something must come pre-wired.

Opposite of Empiricism, which says everything comes from experience. Chomsky’s attack on Behaviorism is a classic nativist move.