Eh, I've seen my baby sucking on its thumb, and then the baby jerks and the thumb goes away, baby cries, somehow the wild flailing gets the thumb back to the mouth. Baby happy again, sucking on its own thumb.
I agree that we are not born a blank slate, but at the same time, there's a lot of knowledge missing on a newborn baby.
Even if the baby has trouble getting the thumb into the mouth at first, it has no trouble sucking it. Or any of thousands of other instinctive behaviors.
Perhaps born is the wrong word. That freshly-born baby did have nine months of gestation during which it's undoubtedly been exploring how to move about and sense its very limited environment.
Right but what it's doing in the womb is also lots of moving around ("kicking" and "jumping") so I just don't think this argument makes much sense to anyone who has experienced having a baby.
They're capable of movement, I wouldn't say they have knowledge of it though. It can take them a while to even figure out suckling, and deliberate directed movements can take a month or two. Until then they're pretty much flailing randomly and gathering training data.
One thing that makes babies hard to analyze is that it is difficult to tell what they do not know how to do vs what they are not physically able to do reliably vs unlearning coping mechanisms for their limited abilities once they start being able to. Failing randomly could certainly be trying out different movements, but it could also be lack of hand eye coordination making it difficult to apply instinctual knowledge
True, but I think it’s fair to assume that when they’re happily sucking on a finger, suddenly rip their hand away from their face, and then punch themselves in the face repeatedly before starting to cry, that is not deliberate.
I agree that we are not born a blank slate, but at the same time, there's a lot of knowledge missing on a newborn baby.