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Innatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Innatism is a philosophical doctrine that holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a 'blank slate' at birth, as early empiricists such as John Locke claime...
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The debate between innate ideas and the mind being more of a "blank slate," as John Locke put it in the 1600s, has been raging since the time of Aristotle and Socrates. So what are psychologist and philosophers saying now? ... For the purpose of information, I will argue on the side of innate ideas; however,
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To do this they have relied upon two central concepts: innate ideas and a priori knowledge. ... 1) Innate Ideas. When we are born, so the Rationalists argue, we already have a store of ideas that we draw upon in order to help make sense of the world. These ideas are called "innate", meaning "in born".
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The rationalists hoped to show that the origin of our innate principles somehow guarantees their truth (e.g. in Descartes, God as the origin of innate ideas is perfectly trustworthy), but this attempt was mistaken: In fact there are two problems with innateness as justification: (1a) how can we know that an innate...
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God is therefore innate within a thinking thing, a human being. Descartes goes on to argue that this being would be ‘no deceiver, therefore we can have faith in the minds ideas and thoughts.
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This aside, he offers a simpler account on the actual innateness of at least some ideas. Unlike other proponents of innate ideas who often rely on universal assent for proof, Leibniz states that his claims rest upon the foundation that ‘their certitude comes from what is in us’.
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