The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine

The "Blank Slate" is a translation of the Latin term tabula rasa, meaning "scraped tablet."
Attributed to John Locke (1632-1704), although he used a different metaphor of "white paper."
Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding posits:
- The mind is initially like white paper, void of all characters and ideas.
- Experience furnishes the mind with a vast store of knowledge.
Locke's empiricism served as both a theory of psychology and epistemology.
Empiricism motivated his political philosophy, which opposed dogmatic justifications for the political status quo.
He argued for social arrangements based on reason and mutual consent.
Locke suggested differences in opinion arise from differing experiences rather than inherent defects.
The blank slate idea undermined hereditary claims of wisdom by royalty/aristocracy and opposed slavery by denying innate inferiority.

In the past century, the Blank Slate doctrine has influenced social sciences and humanities.
Psychology sought to explain behavior with simple learning mechanisms.
Social sciences attributed customs to socialization.
Concepts like emotions, kinship, and gender are considered "socially constructed".

The Blank Slate suggests differences are experiential, not innate.
Changing experiences (parenting, education) can change individuals.
It implies that underachievement, poverty, and antisocial behavior can be ameliorated, and discrimination based on innate traits is irrational.

The concept is attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), originating from John Dryden's work.
It suggests humans are naturally selfless, peaceable, and untroubled in their natural state.
Negative traits like greed and violence are seen as products of civilization.
Rousseau believed humans were gentle in their primitive state.
He thought civilization caused humans to deviate from this ideal state.
Hobbes (1588–1679) presented a contrasting view:
- Life without a common power is a "war of every man against every man."
- Such a life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
- Hobbes felt people need to surrender autonomy to a sovereign (leviathan) to escape this state.
The view on human nature (noble savage vs. naturally nasty) affects views on governance and childrearing.

Rousseau believed savages were solitary and lacked industry/art.
Hobbes envisioned his leviathan as an embodiment of collective will via social contract; similarly, Rousseau's The Social Contract emphasizes subordinating interests to a "general will."
The doctrine of the Noble Savage influences contemporary respect for natural things, distrust of the man-made, and views on childrearing.

Attributed to René Descartes (1596–1650).
Descartes posited a difference between mind and body; the body is divisible, the mind is indivisible.
He argued that the mind is separate from the body.
Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) called this "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine."
Ryle said that according to Descartes, humans have both a body and mind, which are harnessed together but separable after death.
Bodies exist in space and follow mechanical laws; minds are not in space, nor do they follow mechanical laws.

The Ghost in the Machine arose against Hobbes, who argued that life and mind could be explained mechanically.
Descartes rejected the idea that the mind could operate by physical principles.
He thought that consciousness is indivisible.
Descartes found a moral justification for dualism, distinguishing humans from animals.
Thinking of humans as "glorified gears and springs" is upsetting, contrasting with human dignity, rights, and higher purposes.
The separateness of mind allows for concepts like choice, freedom, responsibility, and the possibility of an afterlife.

Most Americans believe in an immortal soul, and even those who don't still see humans as more than electrical/chemical activity.
Terms like