Innatism

Define innatism

Innatism is the view that knowledge is not gained from experience, but somehow part of the in-built structure of the mind

• a priori and therefore rationalism

Outline the slave boy argument

• S draws a square on the grihnd that is 2 feet x 2 feet

• M’s slave agrees it’s area is 4 square feet

• S draws another square, area = 8 square feet

• S “what are the length of the sides?”

• M’s S incirrectly guess 4 f

• S asks M’s S a series of questions

• M’s S answers the question correctly and realises that the sides of the square with an areas of 8 square feet will be equal to the disgonal of the original 2 f x 2f

M’s S has no experience of geometry, his correct knowledge here must be innate.

Outline Leibnuz argument for innatism based on necessary truths

Necessary truth: must be the case, true in every world (e.g 2+ 2 = 4)

Experience only teaches us how things are on occassion.

It is hard to see how necessary truth could be established a posteriori

2 + 2 = 4, sense experience only provides info about particular instances,

But ‘ however many instances confirm a gneral truth, they aren’t enough to establish its universal necessity’

If we reject this, and argye ‘2..4’ is just a generalisation of our experiences so far, we are saying it is possible that ‘2 + 2 may eaqual 5’ someday.

But thus is inconveivable

Leibnux argues we should regard such a prior knowledge of necessary truth as innate

Discivered by ‘attending carefully snf methodically to what is already in our minds’

Outline Locke’s Tabula Rasa

John locke argues that at birth th emind is a tabla rasa which us latin for blank slate

The mind at birth contains no ideas - no thought or concepts

All ideas, then, derive from one of two sources

• sensation: our experience of objects outisde the mind, perceives through the sense. This guves us ideas of ‘sensible qualities’

• Reflection: our experiences of the ‘internal operations of our minds’, gained through introspection or awareness of what the mind is doing. This provides the idea of perception, thinking, willing, and so on. These ideas may well arrive later in childhood.

What is john locke’s definition oinnate knowledge?

How does Locke use his defintion of innate knowledge as an objection to innatism

• if there is innate knowldge, it is universal

• For an idea to be a part of the mind, the mind must know or be conscious of it

• T, IK is K that every human being is or has been consciousbif

• Children and disabled people do not know theorems in geometry or ‘it is impossinle for the same thing to be and not to be’

• T, these claims are not innate

• There are no claims that are universally accepted, included by children and ‘idiots’

• T, there is no innate knowledge

Response