Nevertheless, infants clearly lack ‘innate principles’. This is highly beneficial in Locke’s quest to show that the mind is empty at birth. Locke used this to strongly challenge the existence of ‘innate knowledge’ , innate knowledge must be acquired at birth, but this is not present with babies. This simplistic approach leads him to declare that innate knowledge could therefore not exist. The implications of Locke‘s proposal is that innate knowledge must be present from birth or cannot exist. This undoubtedly highlights the flaws in the innate knowledge argument, as it is hard to understand how knowledge can be ‘innate’ when it is not explicitly present from birth. However, rationalists claim that it is not necessarily the case. They believe that, in the case of language , a child requires the right kind of environment to allow his/her innate knowledge to come to fruition. Leibniz is essentially claiming that from birth you possess the ability to acquire knowledge and not that you are born with knowledge. The case of ‘feral children’ heavily supports this view, as they are deprived of the required environment and are in an contrasting culture. Noam Chomsky’s claim of a ‘universal grammar’ is controversial to say the least. It suggests that children of different cultures adopt grammar so rapidly that it must be innate. This doesn’t provide much proof to suggest that grammar is indeed ‘innate’. Instead we may just have the capacity to acquire the use of a language. However, this doesn’t fall into the catergory of knowledge. Therefore, triggers cannot be classified as knowledge, which Locke’s baby argument highlights. Nevertheless, rationalists are adamant that innateness is the only viable option to spark knowledge acquisition, as experience alone can only be ineffective. Also, the likes of Descartes would point to the fact that a dog would never be able to pick up the human language, regardless of the amount of time it spent around humans, whereas a baby would. This is a vital point, but the likes of Locke would suggest that we may just be wired differently, and have different attributes, but this does not then mean that ‘innate knowledge’ must exist.
In addition, the presence of propositional knowledge without sufficient sense experience is problematic for the likes of Hume and Locke. The existence of God is often described as ‘innate’ despite a lack of empirical evidence. Descartes claims that knowledge of God’s existence is innate and present within everyone. However, Atheists pose a problem for Descartes. Nevertheless, he claimed that they must not have sufficiently searched their soul. Therefore, if knowledge of God is a prior then the likelihood of possessing ‘innate knowledge is relatively high. Despite this, Descartes claim is disputable as it is hard to define why some people have to search harder than other to enable themselves to believe in God. Also, the dependence of God is worrying, as it can be easily dismissed and is flaw-ridden. If God is the reason behind our innate knowledge, then it would be assumed that he would have implanted the knowledge of his act firmly into our minds. Essentially, the presence of ‘innate knowledge appears unlikely, but the processes of knowledge may be ever present. It would be good to mention Descartes trademark argument here. Also maybe the most we can say of Descartes argument is that god is an innate idea rather than knowledge
Moreover, the presence of ‘innate knowledge’ is likely to evade scepticism. ‘Innate knowledge is undoubtedly distanced from the external world, and succeeds where empirical knowledge fails by escaping scepticism. Ultimately, this is due to innate knowledge being true a priori. Locke would claim that this was trivial, and not of importance and that scepticism was not necessarily a bad thing. Nevertheless, it cannot be disputed that experience is required to uncover the characteristics of our sense data. Hume says maths is trivial – be specific here.
To conclude, there are two contrasting views, when it comes to the discussion of the existence of ‘innate knowledge’. Descartes and Chomsky are integral in the bid to prove ‘innate knowledge, the cognito and universal grammar theories are both instrumental in highlighting the possibility of innate knowledge. The alleged presence of universal grammar would account for the reasoning behind the fact that animals are incapable of picking up the human language/ However, the argument for ‘innate knowledge’ is not without it’s flaws. The inability to explain why infants lack innate principles suggests that we do infact possess a blank slate at birth. This suggests ‘innate knowledge’ may simply be a ‘myth’ because by definition it should be present at birth and if it is not, then it cannot exist. Also, the universal grammar debate proposal is disputable, as this appears to be know-how, rather than propositional. Therefore, it is only fair to assume, that there is a possibility of innate knowledge. However, the likelihood of this will vary depending on whether or not the rationalists or empiricists provide the most compelling argument to the perceiver. But which do you find convincing? Answer the question specifically.
Junaid O’Balogun
There are some good aspects to this essay, it is fluent, answ.rs the question. I think there were a few places that could have received a little more detail such as Descartes argument for God. And it would have been good to see maybe one more argument – maybe from Plato or Kant. But good answer. I did feel that your conclusion could have been more specific to the question whereby you could argue which account you felt was more convincing.
Good effort.
AO1 = 2, AO2 = 14, AO3 = 6