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Full Idea
Those who hold forth about the 'blank page' cannot say what is left of it once the ideas have been taken away.
Gist of Idea
What is left of the 'blank page' if you remove the ideas?
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01)
Book Ref
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'New Essays on Human Understanding', ed/tr. Remnant/Bennett [CUP 1996], p.110
A Reaction
This is a decisive criticism of the total tabula rasa idea, but empiricists responded by developing associationism - that what remains is principles of association for incoming experience. Brain mechanisms, we might say.
| 5051 | The intellect has potential to think, like a tablet on which nothing has yet been written [Aristotle] |
| 20803 | Stoics say we are born like a blank sheet of paper; the first concepts on it are sensations [Stoic school, by Ps-Plutarch] |
| 6025 | At birth the soul is a blank sheet ready to be written on [Stoic school, by Aetius] |
| 6230 | If the soul were a tabula rasa, with no innate ideas, there could be no moral goodness or justice [Cudworth] |
| 7723 | The senses first let in particular ideas, which furnish the empty cabinet [Locke] |
| 7507 | The mind is white paper, with no writing, or ideas [Locke] |
| 12474 | The mind is a blank page, on which only experience can write [Locke] |
| 12940 | What is left of the 'blank page' if you remove the ideas? [Leibniz] |