Innatism is a
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and
epistemological
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
doctrine that the
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
is born with ideas, knowledge, and beliefs. Therefore, the mind is not a ''
tabula rasa
''Tabula rasa'' (; "blank slate") is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of ''tabula rasa'' disagree with the doctri ...
''
(blank slate) at birth, which contrasts with the views of early
empiricists
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
such as
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
. Innatism asserts that not all knowledge is gained from
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
and the
senses
A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system re ...
.
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
were prominent philosophers in the development of innatism.
[ Both philosophers emphasize that experiences are the key to unlocking this knowledge but not the source of the knowledge itself—essentially, no knowledge is derived exclusively from experience.][Stich, S. P. (1975). ''Innate ideas''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
]
Difference from nativism
''Innatism'' and ''nativism'' are generally synonymous terms referring to the notion of preexisting ideas in the mind. However, more specifically, innatism refers to the philosophy of Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and Descartes, who assumed that God or a similar being or process placed innate ideas and principles in the human mind.[Tad M. Schmaltz, ''Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes'', Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 257.]
Nativism represents an adaptation of this, grounded in the fields of genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...
, cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
, and psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...
. Nativists hold that innate beliefs are in some way genetically programmed in our mind—they are the phenotypes
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological prop ...
of certain genotypes that all humans share in common.
Nativism
Nativism is a modern view rooted in innatism. The advocates of nativism are mainly philosophers who also work in the field of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
or psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...
: most notably Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
and Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modul ...
(although the latter adopted a more critical attitude toward nativism in his later writings). The nativist's general objection against empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
is still the same as was raised by the rationalists
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
; the human mind of a newborn child is not a ''tabula rasa
''Tabula rasa'' (; "blank slate") is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of ''tabula rasa'' disagree with the doctri ...
'' but is equipped with an inborn structure.
Innate ideas
In philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, an innate idea is knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
or a concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
that is considered universal
Universal is the adjective for universe.
Universal may also refer to:
Companies
* NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company
** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal
** Universal TV, a ...
to all humanity; it is something people are born with rather than something learned through experience.
It is a controversial doctrine and can be considered an aspect of the nature versus nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English h ...
debate as it relates to the question of human cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
.
Philosophical debate
Although individual human beings vary in many ways (culturally, racially, linguistically, and so on), innate ideas are the same for everyone everywhere. For example, the philosopher René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
theorized that knowledge of God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
is innate in everybody. Philosophers such as Descartes and Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
were rationalists
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
. Other philosophers, most notably the empiricists
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
, were critical of innate ideas and denied they existed.
The debate over innate ideas is central to the conflict between rationalists (who believed certain ideas exist independently of experience) and empiricists (who believed knowledge is derived from experience).
Many believe the German philosopher Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
synthesized these two early modern traditions in his philosophical thought.
Plato
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
argues that if there are certain concepts that we know to be true but did not learn from experience, then it must be because we have an innate knowledge of it and that this knowledge must have been gained before birth. In Plato's ''Meno
''Meno'' (; grc-gre, Μένων, ''Ménōn'') is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue is taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature. In order to determine whether virtue is teachable ...
'', he recalls a situation where his mentor Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
questioned a slave boy about a geometry. Though the slave boy had no previous experience with geometry, he was able answer correctly. Plato reasoned that this was possible because Socrates' questions sparked the innate knowledge of math the boy had from birth.[Lacewing, M. (n.d.). Innate knowledge''. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group''. Retrieved from http://documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com/9781138793934/AS/ReasonandExperience/Innate-knowledge.pdf]
Descartes
Descartes conveys the idea that innate knowledge or ideas is something inborn such as one would say, that a certain disease might be 'innate' to signify that a person might be at risk of contracting such a disease. He suggests that something that is 'innate' is effectively present from birth and while it may not reveal itself then, is more than likely to present itself later in life. Descartes’ comparison of innate knowledge to an innate disease, whose symptoms may only show up later in life, unless prohibited by a factor like age or puberty, suggests that if an event occurs prohibiting someone from exhibiting an innate behaviour or knowledge, it doesn't mean the knowledge did not exist at all but rather it wasn't expressed – they were not able to acquire that knowledge. In other words, innate beliefs, ideas and knowledge require experiences to be triggered or they may never be expressed. Experiences are not the source of knowledge as proposed by John Locke, but catalysts to the uncovering of knowledge.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
suggested that we are born with certain innate ideas, the most identifiable of these being mathematical truism A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device, and is the opposite of falsism.
In philosophy, a sentence which asserts incomplete truth conditions ...
s. The idea that ''1 + 1 = 2'' is evident to us without the necessity for empirical evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
. Leibniz argues that empiricism can only show us that concepts are true in the present; the observation of one apple and then another in one instance, and in that instance only, leads to the conclusion that one and another equals two. However, the suggestion that one and another will always equal two requires an innate idea, as that would be a suggestion of things unwitnessed.
Leibniz called such concepts as mathematical truisms "necessary truths". Another example of such may be the phrase, "what is, is" or "it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be". Leibniz argues that such truisms are universally assented to (acknowledged by all to be true); this being the case, it must be due to their status as innate ideas. Often there are ideas that are acknowledged as necessarily true but are not universally assented to. Leibniz would suggest that this is simply because the person in question has not become aware of the innate idea, not because they do not possess it. Leibniz argues that empirical evidence can serve to bring to the surface certain principles that are already innately embedded in our minds. This is similar to needing to hear only the first few notes in order to recall the rest of the melody.
John Locke
The main antagonist to the concept of innate ideas is John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
, a contemporary of Leibniz. Locke argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or ''tabula rasa''. He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses.
Locke, in ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title ''An Essay Concerning Humane Understand ...
'', suggests that the concept of universal assent in fact proves nothing, except perhaps that everyone is in agreement; in short universal assent proves that there is universal assent and nothing else. Moreover, Locke goes on to suggest that in fact there ''is'' no universal assent. Even a phrase such as "What is, is" is not universally assented to; infants and severely handicapped adults do not generally acknowledge this truism A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device, and is the opposite of falsism.
In philosophy, a sentence which asserts incomplete truth conditions ...
. Locke also attacks the idea that an innate idea can be imprinted on the mind without the owner realizing it. For Locke, such reasoning would allow one to conclude the absurd: “all the Truths a Man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be, every one of them, innate.” To return to the musical analogy, we may not be able to recall the entire melody until we hear the first few notes, but we were aware of the fact that we knew the melody and that upon hearing the first few notes we would be able to recall the rest.
Locke ends his attack upon innate ideas by suggesting that the mind is a ''tabula rasa
''Tabula rasa'' (; "blank slate") is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of ''tabula rasa'' disagree with the doctri ...
'' or "blank slate", and that all ideas come from experience; all our knowledge is founded in sensory experience.
Essentially, the same knowledge thought to be ''a priori'' by Leibniz is in fact, according to Locke, the result of empirical knowledge, which has a lost origin een forgottenin respect to the inquirer. However, the inquirer is not cognizant of this fact; thus, he experiences what he believes to be ''a priori'' knowledge.
1) The theory of innate knowledge is excessive. Even innatists accept that most of our knowledge is learned through experience, but if that can be extended to account for all knowledge, we learn colour through seeing it, so therefore, there is no need for a theory about an innate understanding of colour.
2) No ideas are universally held. Do we all possess the idea of God? Do we all believe in justice and beauty? Do we all understand the law of identity? If not, it may not be the case that we have acquired these ideas through impressions/experience/social interaction (this is the children's and idiot's criticism).
3) Even if there are some universally agreed statements, it is just the ability of the human brain to organize learned ideas/words, that is, innate. An "ability to organize" is not the same as "possessing propositional knowledge" (e.g., a computer with no saved files has all the operations programmed in but has an empty memory).
Scientific ideas
In his ''Meno
''Meno'' (; grc-gre, Μένων, ''Ménōn'') is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue is taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature. In order to determine whether virtue is teachable ...
'', Plato raises an important epistemological quandary: How is it that we have certain ideas which are not conclusively derivable from our environments? Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
has taken this problem as a philosophical framework for the scientific enquiry into innatism. His linguistic theory, which derives from 18th century classical-liberal
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, econom ...
thinkers such as Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (, also , ; ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after ...
, attempts to explain in cognitive terms how we can develop knowledge of systems which are said, by supporters of innatism, to be too rich and complex to be derived from our environment. One such example is our linguistic faculty. Our linguistic systems contain a systemic complexity which supposedly could not be empirically derived: the environment seems too poor, variable and indeterminate, according to Chomsky, to explain the extraordinary ability to learn complex concepts possessed by very young children. Essentially, their accurate grammatical knowledge cannot have originated from their experiences as their experiences are not adequate. It follows that humans must be born with a universal innate grammar, which is determinate and has a highly organized directive component, and enables the language learner to ascertain and categorize language heard into a system. Chomsky states that the ability to learn how to properly construct sentences or know which sentences are grammatically incorrect is an ability gained from innate knowledge. Noam Chomsky cites as evidence for this theory, the apparent invariability, according to his views, of human languages at a fundamental level. In this way, linguistics may provide a window into the human mind, and establish scientific theories of innateness which otherwise would remain merely speculative.
One implication of Noam Chomsky's innatism, if correct, is that at least a part of human knowledge consists in cognitive predispositions, which are triggered and developed by the environment, but not determined by it. Chomsky suggests that we can look at how a belief is acquired as an input-output situation. He supports the doctrine of innatism as he states that human beliefs gathered from sensory experience are much richer and complex than the experience itself. He asserts that the extra information gathered is from the mind itself as it cannot solely be from experiences. Humans derive excess amount of information from their environment so some of that information must be pre-determined.
Parallels can then be drawn, on a purely speculative level, between our moral faculties and language, as has been done by sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...
and evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
. The relative consistency of fundamental notions of morality across cultures seems to produce convincing evidence for these theories. In psychology, notions of archetypes
The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
such as those developed by Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
, suggest determinate identity perceptions.
Scientific evidence for innate ideas
Evidence for innatism is being found by neuroscientists working on the Blue Brain Project
The Blue Brain Project is a Swiss brain research initiative that aims to create a digital reconstruction of the mouse brain. The project was founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of ''École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne'' (EP ...
. They discovered that neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...
s transmit signals despite an individual's experience. It had been previously assumed that neuronal circuits are made when the experience of an individual is imprinted in the brain, making memories. Researchers at Blue Brain discovered a network of about fifty neurons which they believed were building blocks of more complex knowledge but contained basic innate knowledge that could be combined in different more complex ways to give way to acquired knowledge, like memory.
Scientists ran tests on the neuronal circuits of several rats and ascertained that if the neuronal circuits had only been formed based on an individual's experience, the tests would bring about very different characteristics for each rat. However, the rats all displayed similar characteristics which suggests that their neuronal circuits must have been established previously to their experiences – it must be inborn and created prior to their experiences. The Blue Brain Project research suggests that some of the "building blocks" of knowledge are genetic and present at birth.
Learning vs. innate knowledge
There are two ways in which animals can gain knowledge. The first of these two ways is learning. This is when an animal gathers information about its surrounding environment and then proceeds to use this information. For example, if an animal eats something that hurts its stomach, it has learned not to eat this again. The second way that an animal can acquire knowledge is through innate knowledge. This knowledge is genetically inherited. The animal automatically knows it without any prior experience. An example of this is when a horse is born and can immediately walk. The horse has not learned this behavior; it simply knows how to do it.[DunlapLehtila_umn_0130E_10349.pdf]
In some scenarios, innate knowledge is more beneficial than learned knowledge. However, in other scenarios the opposite is true.
Costs and benefits of learned and innate knowledge and the evolution of learning
In a changing environment, an animal must constantly be gaining new information in order to survive. However, in a stable environment this same individual need only to gather the information it needs once and rely on it for the duration of its life. Therefore, there are different scenarios in which learning or innate knowledge is better suited.
Essentially, the cost of obtaining certain knowledge versus the benefit of having it determined whether an animal evolved to learn in a given situation or whether it innately knew the information. If the cost of gaining the knowledge outweighed the benefit of having it, then the individual would not have evolved to learn in this scenario; instead, non-learning would evolve. However, if the benefit of having certain information outweighed the cost of obtaining it, then the animal would be far more likely to evolve to have to learn this information.[
Non-learning is more likely to evolve in two scenarios. If an environment is static and change does not or rarely occurs then learning would simply be unnecessary. Because there is no need for learning in this scenario – and because learning could prove to be disadvantageous due to the time it took to learn the information – non-learning evolves. However, if an environment were in a constant state of change then learning would also prove to be disadvantageous. Anything learned would immediately become irrelevant because of the changing environment.][ The learned information would no longer apply. Essentially, the animal would be just as successful if it took a guess as if it learned. In this situation, non-learning would evolve.
However, in environments where change occurs but is not constant, learning is more likely to evolve. Learning is beneficial in these scenarios because an animal can adapt to the new situation, but can still apply the knowledge that it learns for a somewhat extended period of time. Therefore, learning increases the chances of success as opposed to guessing and adapts to changes in the environment as opposed to innate knowledge.][
]
See also
* Anamnesis
* Concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
* Fitra
''Fitra'' or ''fitrah'' (; ALA-LC: ) is either the state of purity and innocence in which Muslims believe all humans to be born, or the ability to choose or reject God's guidance, with which both humans and jinn are endowed. ''Fitra'' is an Arab ...
* Idea
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...
* Instinct
Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing both innate (inborn) and learned elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a v ...
* Nature versus nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English h ...
* Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at le ...
* Psychological nativism
In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities ...
* Tabula rasa
''Tabula rasa'' (; "blank slate") is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of ''tabula rasa'' disagree with the doctri ...
References
Citations
Classical texts
* Descartes, René. ''Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies'', translated by John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
* Locke, John. ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. 1690.
* Leibniz, Gottfried. ''Discourse on Metaphysics and Related Writings'', edited and translated by R. N. D. Martin and Stuart Brown (Manchester and New York:Manchester University Press, 1988).
Recent studies
* Carruthers, Peter. ''Human Knowledge and Human Nature. A New Introduction to an Ancient Debate'', New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.
* Chomsky, Noam. ''Aspects of the Theory of Syntax''. (Cambridge, Mass, 1965)
* Kaldis, Byron. "Leibniz' Argument for Innate Ideas" in ''Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy'' edited by M Bruce & S Barbone (Blackwell, 2011).
* Ridling, Zaine (2001). "Philosophy: Then and Now A look back at 26 centuries of thought." ''Types and Expressions of Rationalism'', pp. 514–515. Access Foundation.
* Unger, Wolfgang
"Nativism in the Light of Locke's Critique on Innate Principles."
Term Paper in Phil 702, Locke's Essay. Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amhernt.
University of California Santa Barbara, Department of Philosophy: PowerPoint: Locke's attack on innatism
External links
Samet, Jerry, "The Historical Controversies Surrounding Innateness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* ttp://www.whitworth.edu/core/classes/CO250/Intro/d_innat.htm The Rationalist Tradition
{{Authority control
A priori
Concepts
Concepts in epistemology
Concepts in metaphysics
Epistemological theories
Metaphysics of mind
Ontology
Philosophy of mind
Rationalism
Theory of mind