Who Still Believes in the Blank Slate?

David Geary says the only place you get a blank slate is among academic social scientists. Outside that group, the structure is already there. He will present the evidence and will probably pare it back a little from the first edition.

After the evidence comes either a second chapter or one basic chapter on big brain networks, like the default mode network. He will get into some details, then move on to problem solving and self-awareness. Toward the end he integrates the work with domain general intelligence, which a lot of people wonder about: the ability to learn novel information easily and the ability to draw inferences about basic patterns.

A final chapter covers how domain general abilities relate to the modern world, including occupational performance and creative innovation. He treats a link to the default mode network and other networks as a maybe, not as a settled part of the chapter.