But there are two very different kinds of innateness. Chomsky proposed that we are born with specific, genetically determined neural and cognitive structures, structures that go far beyond a few general learning mechanisms. This kind of innateness has become the established wisdom in cognitive science. The brain is not a blank slate.

However, the other, more significant, kind of innateness concerns not the history of the mind but its future. Chomsky also argued that innate structure places very strong constraints on the human mind. Evolutionary psychologists who echo Chomsky say we are stuck with the same brains as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, with just a little tinkering around the edges.