Innate ideas

Innate ideas are ideas or principles claimed to be present in the mind from birth or by nature, rather than acquired through experience.

Empiricism: The view that knowledge derives primarily from sensory experience. Empiricists reject innate ideas as unnecessary, treating experience as the source of knowledge.
Plato: An ancient Greek philosopher whose dialogues explore knowledge, reality, and the soul. His theory of recollection is an early account of knowledge not acquired through ordinary experience.
A priori and a posteriori: A distinction between knowledge independent of experience and knowledge grounded in experience. Innateness concerns a possible origin of ideas, while this distinction concerns how knowledge is justified.
Universal grammar: A proposed set of innate constraints underlying the grammars of human languages. It applies nativist thinking to the acquisition of language.
Tabula rasa: The idea that the mind begins as a blank slate, shaped by experience. It directly opposes the claim that the mind begins with built-in ideas.
Meno: A dialogue by Plato examining whether virtue can be taught and how inquiry is possible. Its questioning of an enslaved boy illustrates Plato’s account of recollection.
Nature versus nurture: A framework for examining how inherited factors and environments shape human traits. Innate ideas are one philosophical version of the broader question about inborn influence.
Language acquisition: The process by which people learn to understand and use language. Its speed and developmental patterns have been used to argue for inborn linguistic structure.
Nativism: The view that some knowledge, abilities, or mental structures are inborn. Nativism is the broader position that can include innate ideas.
René Descartes: A seventeenth-century French philosopher who helped establish modern rationalism. He argued that some ideas, including the idea of God, are innate.

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