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by SamoyedFurFluff 492 days ago
I think your definition of innate is counter to the common definition of innate. The common definition of innate is that there is no thought behind full understanding and capacity to perform- for example, snakes do not generally need to learn how to move without legs or how to open the mouth large enough to consume big food. There isn’t a try/fail cycle while they understand the capacities of their body. I fed my pet snake a baby quail for the first time in its life and it clearly had to learn how to eat it (tried and spat out the leg, wing, etc) even though the core mechanism of big mouth big swallow is there was clearly innate in it. Just because there is a core mechanism to walk existing in babies doesn’t mean the baby doesn’t still need to learn how to perform the behavior voluntarily, on command, consciously according to their own will.
1 comments

What you just described for the baby applies equally to the snake. It's obviously difficult to neatly segment things into innate and non-innate, but the idea that walking is a matter of maturation rather than "learning" is the mainstream view among scientists and has been for a century.

Again, I conceded that you have to "fine-tune" to get good at walking. But the contrast that with say, playing golf. That's something that categorically has to be learnt, we don't see fetus practicing their drive in utero.