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7570
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Innate ideas are trivial (if they are just potentials) or absurd (if they claim infants know a lot) [Locke, by Jolley]
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Full Idea:
Locke says the doctrine of innate ideas is either reduced to triviality (that we have the potential to acquire knowledge and concepts, which makes all ideas innate), or to the absurd thesis that new-born children know logic, maths and metaphysics.
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From:
report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.4
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A reaction:
A very effective attack. The defence would have to be the claim that there is no way for certain ideas to have entered the mind (because they are too basic, or too abstract, or too huge), so they could only arise from within the mind.
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12472
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If the only test of innateness is knowing, then all of our knowledge is innate [Locke]
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Full Idea:
If the capacity of knowing be the natural Impression contended for, all the Truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this Account, be, every one of them, innate.
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From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.02.05)
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A reaction:
It seems to be a nice empiricist's question, what experience involved in thinking an idea gives a hallmark that it is innate rather than acquired? Perhaps only 'I couldn't have thought of that myself', as Descartes says of several ideas.
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4018
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Innate ideas were followed up with innate doctrines, which stopped reasoning and made social control possible [Locke]
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Full Idea:
Once innate ideas were established, it was necessary for their followers to receive some doctrines as such, to put them off using their own reason, so that they might be more easily governed.
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From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 1.03.25?), quoted by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §9.1
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A reaction:
Presumably anti-Catholic, though it sounds Marxist. It is hard to challenge innate ideas, but it is hard to challenge Hume's 'natural beliefs'.
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7507
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The mind is white paper, with no writing, or ideas [Locke]
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Full Idea:
Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.
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From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02)
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A reaction:
This is normally referred to as Locke's 'tabula rasa' idea, and is his denial of the existence of innate ideas. It is generally thought to be absurd, but note that he only 'supposes' it, presumably as a theoretical strategy, to investigate empiricism.
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12474
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The mind is a blank page, on which only experience can write [Locke]
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Full Idea:
Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? ..To this I answer, in one word, from Experience.
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From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.01.02)
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A reaction:
The simple objection is that minds could make nothing of their experience if they were totally blank. But if we add principles of association, we might still say that there are no actual ideas imprinted in the original mind, only functions or faculties.
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