Resumo

SKIDELSKY, Liza. The Poverty of the Stimulus Argument Once Again. Anal. filos. [online]. 2016, vol.36, n.2, pp.143-170. ISSN 1851-9636.

The best-known argument in favor of the innatism of certain mental structures is still the 'Poverty of the Stimulus Argument' (POSA). The general idea of the POSA is that the knowledge which needs to be acquired to develop a certain cognitive capacity vastly exceeds the information available in the environment, so the organism contributes innate information. A review of the literature on linguistic POSA shows that it is not yet fully clear what kind of argument this is and what it really shows. This paper is intended as a diagnosis of the innateness strategy that makes use of the POSA. I will distinguish three types of POSA and argue, first, that the most appropriate type of POSA, according to certain empirical and theoretical criteria, does not seem to be sufficient for linguistic nativism and, second, that for it to be sufficient, it is usually supplemented with an armchair argument which weakens the empirical nature of the innateness hypothesis.

Palavras-chave : Innatism; Domain-Specificity; Universal Grammar.

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