Kantian apriorism in the debate between empiricists and nativists in cognitive science

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, N. Chomsky gave a new impetus to the debate be­tween empiricism and nativism by proposing the concept of a universal grammar. Today this discussion is unfolding within the framework of cognitive science and consists in determining the peculiarities of cognitive mechanisms necessary to create a cognitive agent. The disagreement between the proponents of empiricism and nativism is whether these mechanisms are domain-general or domain-specific. At the same time, modern sci­entific literature on this issue does not take into account, on the one hand, Kantian intu­itions about a priori cognition and, on the other hand, the results of the discussion be­tween philosophers and physiologists in the second half of the 19th century. The aim of this article is to actualize the potential of the Kantian concept of apriorism in modern discussions between empiricism and nativism, for this purpose the concept of Kantian apriorism is analyzed and its influence on different stages of the discussion between em­piricists and nativists is considered. The study concludes that Kantian apriorism allows us to adjust the strategy of realization of a cognitive agent, which cannot leave out the idea of conditioning of experience by a priory cognitive mechanisms and their pecu­liarities as innate potencies, as well as the specificity of their development in direct in­teraction with experience.