The term Tabula Rasa suggests that we are born as a “blank slate”, which implies that we are born without any form of conscious knowledge whatsoever, and that we get our information through sensory experience of the world. In this essay I will argue in support of 'Tablua Rasa', providing what I believe are the strongest arguments, but also comparing them to counterarguments and explaining why they are wrong. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Empiricism is the main topic of Tabula Rasa. John Locke, a popular empiricist, tells us that we are born without any innate knowledge or concepts, but only with the innate ability to reason. Locke states that knowledge and ideas can only be acquired through sensory experience of the world. For example, we cannot have the idea of color (i.e. red) until we have perceived it, which is why a person blind from birth cannot imagine what it is. Locke also argues that if innate knowledge existed, then it would be universal and all humans would have it, but there is no evidence of universal knowledge, so, according to Locke, we can infer that innate knowledge does not exist. Another famous empiricist was David Hume. Hume agreed with Locke on the basis that innate knowledge does not exist and that we acquire all ideas through sensory experience, but he disagreed that the mind has the capacity to reason. Hume argues that our minds are completely empty and that we acquire all ideas and concepts, even the ability to reason, through sensory experience of the world. Hume even says that our idea of "falling things" was discovered at some point in our lives. Many supporters of innatism disagree with Hume, stating that we can conjure up new ideas that we have never conceived, for example, and the unicorn. We have never experienced a unicorn, yet we still have the idea of one. Hume responds by explaining that we have external and internal impressions of the world. The external impression would be represented by simple ideas such as smell, shape and taste, while the internal ideas would be a combination of all our simple ideas, for example a unicorn. Hume argues that although we have never experienced the unicorn itself, we have experienced all the aspects and qualities that make up the unicorn, such as the animal's white color or horse-like structure. Overall, Hume tells us that we can combine our ideas about what we have already experienced to produce more complicated and vivid concepts and ideas, but the aspects that make up these developed ideas must have already been experienced, once again, for the blind not they can imagine color, and deaf people cannot imagine sound. The main argument against Tabula Rasa is the Concept Inatism. Conceptual innatism holds that we are born with certain ideas and concepts. Plato supported this claim and, in his "Meno" writings, Socrates uses one of Meno's uneducated slaves to demonstrate that someone without any mathematical training can derive simple geometry and abstract principles, apparently supporting the claim of innatism. Another topic raised by many nativists is that of instinct, arguing that animal instincts, such as why birds fly south in winter and why a baby nurses, are not formed through experience and exist in the mind without being created (i.e. not new or old), so innate ideas and concepts exist. A counterargument to this would be that instinct does not count as knowledge. So that something can.
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