 Cowie (1998; 2009) acknowledges a limitation of the special-faculties hypothesis. It applies only to debates in psychology over the kinds of learning process underlying the acquisition of beliefs or behaviors. This is a problem because disputes about nativism are not confined to psychology. For instance, we saw in the previous section that Weismann (1891 (1888)) drew a sharp distinction between hereditary versus acquired traits generally. The special faculties hypothesis apparently cannot explain such non-psychological disputes.