Do humans have innate knowledge?

John Locke was a key opponent of Descartes and rationalism. He argued that if certain ideas were innate they would be universally held and used, which is not the case. As throughout history attitudes and what is generally excepted have changed continuously. Even in today’s society our ideas will be very different to those of people who live in very remote places. Therefore it must be our experiences that make us who we are and not innate knowledge. A child bought up in a mountain tribe will quickly adapt to their surroundings and become experienced at survival, whilst a child born into the aristocracies of the English will not. This is Locke’s “Tabula Rasa” argument, meaning blank slate. Our minds are empty at birth to be filled with knowledge fed to us through education and experience. Locke also argued that there are two sources of our ideas which are sensation and reflection. A distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are undisputable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are essential for the object in question to be what it is. Without specific primary qualities, an object would not be what it is. Primary qualities are those that convey fact such as motion and solidity. Whereas secondary are those that are thought to bring about properties that produce sensations in observers, such as colour, taste, smell, and sound. Locke also argued that if we were born with an understanding of everything or at least some things then even the most dim-witted person would have the ability to understand things such as geometry, which unfortunately they don’t.

Per contra to John Locke’s belief was another rationalist, a philosopher of the modern day, Noam Chomsky. As well as being a philosopher he is a linguist and is often regarded as the father of modern day linguistics. His ideas on innate knowledge come from his deep understanding of language. Chomsky argues that all human languages are far too complicated for the undeveloped brain of an infant to understand and then to learn near to completion. He goes on further to say that there is simply a “poverty of stimulus” meaning that grammar is unlearnable given the relatively limited data available to children learning a language, and therefore that this knowledge is supplemented with some sort of innate linguistic capacity. Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages and are assisted by LAD’s, which are metaphorical language acquisition devices in our brains. Based on Chomsky’s ideas many experiments went ahead, to test if other intelligent animals who are thought not to have access to innate knowledge could also pick up language. The experimenters tried to communicate with animals using very simplified language that the animals could be able to physically do, the experiment was not a complete failure and did have limited success. A famous grey parrot named Alex learned 150 words and could put pairs of words together to identify up to 50 objects, chimpanzees have also learnt sign language to an extent. However no species except us have been able to master all different concepts of language. This shouldn’t be since a dolphins IQ is far higher than that of an infant. So the main limitation of language in animals lies in their inability to form abstract symbol vocabulary which they can then subject to manipulation, reorganisation into meaningful patterns. The capacity of humans to systematically turn conceptual ideas into limitlessly creative word sequences is truly unparalleled in nature. This led Chomsky to the conclusion that human beings unlike all other animals must have been gifted with innate knowledge. On the other hand, many do not agree with Chomsky and his linguistically theories, as they believe that he has not taken all factors in to account. Some may say that Chomsky’s statement that children are faced with poverty of stimulus s whimsical and completely false. As unlike the minds of adults, the minds of children are not cluttered. Non-cluttered minds, or as John Locke argued brain with a blank slate, can take more input and absorb it quickly. This may be the reason that children can pick up language so fast without a language acquisition device. Therefore language can be picked up purely from sensory experience rather that from innate ideas of language.

In conclusion, even though rationalism has one more entity, in innate knowledge that exists therefore going against Occam's Razor whom believed that the simplest explanation is the correct one, I believe in a rationalist point of view. As from a young age humans are capable of extraordinary things such as the mastery of a language which may not be possible without innate ideas of language. Furthermore our five sense of which empiricists rely cannot give us a sense of right and wrong or morality in general. This knowledge must be built in before birth. Finally our knowledge of perfection, whether in nature or perfect triangularity has not come from our experience for we have never seen two completely straight lines, yet we can still identify what two perfectly straight lines would look like. This is where my opinion of innateness comes from, or maybe it was always there…