Posted in My thoughts
'That is the definition of philosophy from the Websters dictionary, 1913 edition. So why am I writing about philosophy anyway? Because it's important! Mainly because I've been researching it for debate and I found it interesting. Philosophy is the search after truth, in case you didn't read the definition at the top of the page in small writing (if you did leave a comment so that i can congratulate you
if you didn't leave a comment anyway 
.)So today I'm just going to write about innatism and empiricism two ideas that relate to the branch of philosophy about how we gain knowledge.
Empiricism is the idea that at birth the mind is a blank slate or a white sheet of paper on which experience leaves its mark.
Innatism is the contrasting idea that the mind is born with knowledge and is not a blank slate, it asserts that not all knowledge is gained through experience.
Plato, who believed in Innatism, thought that the soul already existed and was joined to the body at birth.
Empiricists such as Aristotle and John Locke, held that the mind was a
"tabula rasa" the Latin for blank slate. They argued the idea that humans are not born with knowledge, but rather knowledge comes from experience and perception.
Avecianna a Muslim scholar said:
"Human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts"
Later on this idea was further deepened by Ibn Tufail a 12 century philosopher who was the first man to write a philosophical novel. In this novel he writes the story of a boy living alone, he shows how the boy's mind forms from experiences from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society on a desert island, through experience alone.
On the other hand Innatism says that an innate idea is a concept or knowledge which is universal to all humanity. Rene Descart thought that a knowledge of God is innate in everyone. Empiricists argued that we could only find out about God through reason.
Some examples of innate ideas are:
avoindance of harms (such as fear of falling of a cliff)
ethical truths
good and evil
metaphysical notions
God
Souls
So those are two sides of the argument, either we are born with minds like blank slates which experience and education write upon, or ideas are placed in our mind and humans are born with knowledge universely known throughout mankind.
What do you think? Which side do you agree with? Must we gain all knowledge through experience, or are we possibly born with it?
Leave a comment, tell me what you think!
~Ness
Posted by KG
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