March 31, 2026; most recent update: April 22, 2026

 

Table of Contents

 

1. Essence of Innate Principles

2. The Principle of Conviction

3. Necessity of Innate Principles

4. True vs False Innate Principles

 

Innate principles are a priori principles that guide the actions of rational, animal, and plant minds. They can also be more restrictive, existing only in a subgroup of any of the groups mentioned above. For instance, we might find certain defense mechanisms in one kind of plant that we don't see in others, or certain instincts in only one type of animal.

 

The actions of innate principles aren't just those seen in behavior but can also include the internal workings of a mind.

 

A well known innate principle is the pleasure-pain principle. Virtually all animals exhibit this principle, by which they seek things that are pleasurable and avoid things that are painful.

 

We can call them principles because they can be understood as propositions guiding the minds in question. In layman's terms, we might express the pleasure-pain principle as something like "pleasure is good and pain is bad," even though animals aren't conscious of it as a proposition. 

 

The ability to think means the ability to make inferences.

 

Relevant to that is an undeniable truth: psychologically, you can make an inference only from something you believe is true. Put differently, you can't believe in one thing based on something you disagree with or aren't sure of. Suppose someone is asked why they think Santa Claus exists and they respond "because there are presents under the Christmas tree."

 

1. There are presents under the Christmas tree.

2. Therefore, Santa exists.

 

The necessary assumption in that argument is that Santa is the one putting the presents under the tree. It would be unintelligible how someone could reach the conclusion above and deny, or be unsure of, the implicit premise that Santa is responsible for the presents being there. Or, even more to the point, they couldn't reach their conclusion and not believe that there were really presents under the tree. They would have to believe that the presents weren't a mirage or a hoax of some type, but truly presents -- the kinds of things Santa deals with. (According to mythology, Santa doesn't trick us with fake or mirage presents when we've been naughty; he just doesn't give us presents.)

 

But what about when you're skeptical of something and infer that the truth on that issue isn't clear? Even then, your inference would still be based upon something you were affirming -- perhaps that several possibilities are still consistent with the evidence or that you still have questions:

 

1. It [is] true that I still have questions.

or

1. Possibilities 1 and 2 [are] still consistent with the evidence.

Etc.

2. Therefore, the truth is unclear.

 

The same goes when you make an inference from something you believe to be false. In such cases, it's that you believe it's true that the premise or premises are false:

 

1. It [is] false that a non-Santa put the presents under the Christmas tree.

2. Therefore, Santa exists.

 

So, a person can make a conclusion only from premises they have convinction of. This is such a fundamental epistemological truth that it applies not just to reasoning but also to similar processes in animal and plant minds. An animal will be scared only with the "conviction" that its instincts have spotted danger. A plant's defense response will be based on the "conviction" that it's detection system is right and has therefore identified a real threat.

 

We'll call this the principle of conviction.

The ultimate consequence of this simple truth is that in order for any action to occur in these respective minds, there must be innate concepts in beings with reason, innate instincts in animal minds, and innate drives in not only plants, but at the basic level of life.

 

If inferences can happen only from premises with conviction, conviction can't always be based on inferences themselves. There must ultimately be a  starting point from which someone had conviction and thus made their first inference.

 

However, why would this ultimate starting point (or points) have to be in conceptual form? It's because inferences are propositions and propositions are comprised of concepts. But, then, where would the conviction of those concepts come from? Only from the concepts themselves claiming something to be true. And they do: concepts are assertions. Since these ultimate concepts would be fundamental to our thinking, we can call them not just assertions, but principles -- innate principles.

 

This requires some clarification. We don't normally think of a concept as a principle or even an assertion. Usually we think of concepts as the elements that form assertions, just as words form sentences. But to have a concept is to already have a definition: to claim (at least subconsciously) what distinguishes the concept's members from other things, whether correctly or not. You don't have a concept without having at least some elementary definition. Since a definition is a proposition then, psychologically at least, so is a concept. Therefore innate concepts really are innate principles.

 

For animals to have any mental responses to their environment and for plants to have any responses to theirs, they must also have innate principles that begin their "conviction" so that they can then act accordingly. While these principles aren't known to them in propositions, since animals lack reasoning or at least conscious reasoning, they act like propositions in the sense that they form "conviction" in their respective mental processes. 

 

True innate principles are not formed from experience but are inherent and eternal in all members of the group being considered. That could mean all rational minds, all animal minds, all plant minds or life in general, or any subgroup within any of those groups.

 

In contrast, a false innate principle is innate at the individual level but ultimately is a result of experience at the collective, species level. For example, some people have proposed that the reason humans have a natural fear of things such as snakes and large cats (e.g. leopard-size and greater) is from our species' frequently tragic encounters with such creatures in the past. Because our ancestors often witnessed fellow humans fall victim to these creatures, or at least were threatened, we formed an instinct to fear creatures that looked like them. But had we not encountered such creatures in our history, this instinct would not exist. Moreover, if for some reason snakes and large cats became non-threatening, eventually the instinct could weaken or even disappear. Thus, false innate principles have an essentially transient nature even though they may exist for a very long time. Their "permanence" is an illusion and held in place by arbitrary conditions.

 

Plants provide easy examples for seeing the difference between true and false innate principles. Hollies have green leaves year round, attracting herbivores in colder months. So they evolved a response for individuals to develop spikier leaves afterwards if they are eaten. But the response to evolve a defense mechanism at all is/was prior to the spikier-leaves response, and is based on the truly innate principle of survival, which is the main guiding principle of all life.

 

Animals and plants evolve and behave a certain way based on the particular challenges they faced historically and perhaps continue to face. Thus many, if not most, of their innate principles are false ones. But the principle of survival is inherent in life. And the pleasure-pain principle mentioned earlier is probably inherent in animals. This is mainly since, unlike plants, they must find their necessary nutrition through locomotion and therefore need some way of telling what to seek and avoid. There are other true innate principles in plants and animals, but those are two of the more obvious ones.