Are we products of nature or nurture?

Nature is more important than nurture because the way we learn is innate

Question: Are we products of nature or nurture?
Position1 of 4›: Nature is more important than nurture
Argument1 of 2›: Nature is more important than nurture because the way we learn is innate

Noam Chomsky determined that linguistic ability is predetermined by the genetic "initial state" of the Language Acquisition Device. This shows that nature influences our traits and behaviors more than nurture does.

The argument

The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is how babies learn to speak. No matter how language develops with experience, there is a genetic predisposition for language acquisition, and it is that predisposition rather than the input itself that determines what a child does with what they hear. The evidence for it lies in the gap between what a child is exposed to and what a child knows. As Noam Chomsky suggests, "A careful look at the interpretation of expressions reveals very quickly that from the earliest stages, the child knows vastly more than experience has provided". If the knowledge exceeds the experience, then experience cannot be its source; something must already be in place for experience to act upon. Language and how it develops is all determined by the child's initial language state. Genetics predetermines the LAD and it grows much like the body's organs do — following a course set in advance, prompted by conditions rather than created by them. It is something that the child develops because of something which happens to them rather than something that they themselves experience. The behaviour of very young infants makes the same point. For example, a baby can learn both spoken and signed language by the time they are 8-10 months old, at an age when they have had very little experience of anything at all. Before an infant can truly comprehend the correlation between hunger and its satiation via food, one can teach the child the sign for "drink" when they want a bottle: the symbol is acquired before the experience it refers to has been understood, which is the reverse of what a purely experience-driven account would predict. Genetics, and therefore Nature, determine something as fundamental as how a child learns language, proving that Nature is more important than Nurture.

Context

People are a summation of their habits, temperaments, and experiences. However, where do these things that define us come from? Psychology has long been debating whether they stem from our genes or our environment. Settling the debate will expand our currently limited understanding of human development.

Premises

[P1]Babies learn language through an innate Language Acquisition Device, a genetic predisposition rather than pure experience. [P2] As Chomsky noted, from the earliest stages a child knows vastly more than experience could have provided, and the LAD grows like a bodily organ. [P3] Infants can even learn signs like "drink" before they comprehend the experience of hunger, showing the capacity is innate. [C] Therefore, because the very way we learn is innate, nature is more important than nurture.

Counter-arguments

If the LAD was determined by genetics, children in multi-lingual households would tend to favor one language over the other, based upon their genetic makeup. If a child's genetic makeup was predominantly Japanese, for example, but the child grew up in a household which spoke Japanese and English equally, the child would learn Japanese more easily because the child's "initial state" of language would be Japanese. However, in a study conducted comparing monolingual and bilingual children, a preferential listening task demonstrated that the bilingual children did not show preference to one language over another when exposed to both languages in utero.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Language acquisition does not rely on the initial language state, but rather exposure.