Innate idea

The concept of Innate Ideas has its origin in ancient texts such as the Bible and early Greek philosophical writings. Plato's Meno dialogue suggested that the mind contains certain ideas that cannot have been created by empiricism.

Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz suggested that we are born with certain innate ideas, the most identifiable of these being mathematical truisms. The idea that 1 + 1 = 2 is evident to us without the necessity for empirical evidence.

Leibniz argues that all empiricism can show us is that concepts are true in the present, if we see one stick and then another we know that in that instance, and in that instance only, one and another equals two. If, however, we wish to suggest that one and another will allows equal two we require an innate idea, as we are making assumptions about things we have not yet witnessed.

Leibniz called such concepts as mathematical truisms necessary truths. Another example of such may be the phrase, ‘what is, is’ or ‘it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.’ Leibniz argues that such truism are universally assented to (acknowledge by all to be true), this being the case it must be due to our innate ideas.

Often there are ideas that are acknowledged as necessarily true but are not universally assented to. This Leibniz would suggest is simply because the person in question has not become aware of the innate idea, not because they do not possess it. Leibniz argues that empirical evidence can serve to bring to the surface certain principles that are already innately embedded in our minds. This is rather like needing only the first few words of a song to recall the rest of the same song.

The main antagonist to the concept of innate ideas is John Locke, a contemporary of Leibniz. Locke argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth, a blank sheet or tabula rasa. It is argued that all ideas do in fact come via empiricism.

Locke in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding suggests that the concept of universal assent in fact proves nothing, except perhaps that everyone is in agreement; in short universal assent proves that there is universal assent and nothing else. What is more Locke goes on to suggest that in fact there is no universal assent, even a phrase such as ‘What is, is’ is not universally assented to, infants and severely handicapped adults do not generally acknowledge this truism.

Locke also attacks the idea that an innate idea can be imprinted on the mind without the owner realising it. To return to the song analogy, we may not be able to recall the entire song until we hear the first few words, however we were aware of the fact that we knew the song and that upon hearing the first few words we would be able to recall the rest. Lock would not accept the idea that we can know something yet not know that we knew it.

Locke ends his attack upon innate ideas by suggesting that the mind is a tabula rasa and that all ideas come from experience; in that all our knowledge is founded.

The argument over innate ideas is not over though, neither Leibniz nor Locke were able to swing the debate irrevocably in favour of one camp or another. Noam Chomsky’s research into linguistic patterns suggested that we each possess an innate capacity to learn languages (the average three year old can master a language within six months), and that in fact similarities in human behaviour despite cultural and climatic difference suggests that we may have innate ideas that govern such behaviour.

The debate continues….