Emma Sylvester 1

Innate Ideas

The concept of innate ideas is one tied up in debate of a possibly unknowable ontological

and religious nature. Regardless, many philosophers have attempted to tackle the question and

prove or disprove their existence definitely, only to be argued with at a later date. The subject of

examination in this essay was not the first nor the last in this chain of discussion, but did bring

some strong counterpoints to the discussion. This paper deals with ideas presented by John

Locke, in his work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, regarding epistemology – the

study of the nature and limits of human knowledge - from an empiricist viewpoint. It will

attempt to compare empiricism and rationalism, and outline the arguments given for and against

the notion of innate ideas.

The text examined is divided into four books (of which this paper will discuss two), the

first of which attempts to disprove the notion of innate ideas. This section is an attack on

Cartesian rationalist philosophy, which asserts that some of our ideas, such as the concept of an

omnipotent god, are innate and exist in our minds from birth. Locke brings up the concept of

universally assented ideas and not only endeavors to disprove the entire idea, but to separate and

disprove its causal relationship with innate ideas as a second argument for the sake of certainty.

In Book II, Locke tackles the nature of ideas - how they are formed and from where they

originate in the absence of innate ideas. Locke posits that our minds at birth are blank slates, or

tabula rasa, and that all ideas are henceforth gained either from sensory experience or reflection,

a term that describes the operation of the mind. He divides ideas into two types, simple and

complex, explaining that simple ideas originate from the physical world, containing the concepts

of shapes, colors, textures and sensations, etc. These concepts are translated into ideas through

the experience of our senses, and then are combined and woven together by our minds in the
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process of reflection to create complex ideas. He declares that every idea is either simple or

complex, and shows it is impossible for the mind to create an idea that has no origin in

experience.

Following the given proof, many questions can be raised regarding the strength of the

argument. Does Locke provide answers that stand up to scrutiny and conclusively refute the

notion of innate ideas? This paper will seek to examine flaws in Locke’s attack on innate ideas,

and present conflicting reasoning. Locke bases his argument on the concept of universal assent,

but why must it be that all people must share the same innate ideas? With the advent of modern

science regarding genetics, neuroscience, and developmental psychology, we know that the

human mind at birth is in fact not a blank slate – that there are psychological organizations and

limited instinctual knowledge already. Can this be used as an argument for the existence of

innate ideas?

Book I, titled “Neither Principles nor Ideas Are Innate,” attempts to disprove the theory

of innate ideas specifically as presented by René Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy.

He first states that the general argument for innate ideas is the existence of ideas that mankind

universally agrees on, such as the statement "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to

be", but goes on to say that “this argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in

it, that if it were true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all mankind agreed,

it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown how men may come to that

universal agreement . . .” (1). His first disproof of innate ideas considers those who have little to

no faculty of reason, i.e. children and the mentally disabled. Their lack of knowledge of a

seemingly universal truth leads him to the conclusion that “it [seems] to me near a contradiction

to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not:
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imprinting, if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain truths to be

perceived. For to imprint anything on the mind without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me

hardly intelligible.” (2). Locke then addresses his critics, who he supposes might answer his

deduction with the explanation that universally assented ideas only require being understood

through reason to be assented to, claiming that that is proof of their innateness. In response, he

voices his disagreement, claiming that even “if reason discovered them, that would not prove

them innate,” (3) since it would follow that all things discovered by reason, such as mathematical

theorems, were equally innate. In any case, he asserts that the notion that reason discovers innate

ideas is false to begin with, since if reason is necessary to discover innate truths, which were

supposedly already known, then “it is in effect to say, that men know and know them not at the

same time,” (3). Finally Locke seeks to provide explanation for the perceived universal assent to

some truths. He gives an example of a child who, when learning arithmetic, would not assent to

the fact that 3 plus 4 is 7 until he understood the concept of numbers, equality, addition and so

forth, even though he has surely shown the capability to reason beforehand. Therefore, having

disproved both capability to reason and innateness as causes of universally assented ideas, it

follows that “assent to supposed innate truths depends on having clear and distinct ideas of what

their terms mean, and not on their innateness,” (5).

If ideas are not innate, the question of where ideas actually originate quickly follows;

thusly Book II, titled “Of Ideas” deals with the nature of ideas - how they are formed and from

where do they emerge. Locke begins by asking the reader to suppose the mind at birth as a blank

sheet of paper, completely void of ideas, and poses the question of how ideas come to reside in

the mind. His simple answer is through the process of experience – either that of the outside

world sensed through the body, or of “the internal operations of our minds perceived and
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reflected on by ourselves,” (7). He calls these two processes sensation and reflection,

respectively, and asserts that “all our ideas are of the one or the other of these,” (8), and that we

can find no idea in our minds that does not eventually trace back in some fundamental way to

experience. Furthermore, Locke divides all ideas into two types – simple and complex. He

defines simple ideas as those ideas “which, being each in itself uncompounded, contains in it

nothing but one uniform appearance, or conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into

different ideas,” (11). Simple ideas are the basic, indivisible attributes of our perception of reality

- cold, soft, yellow, shape, smell, motion, texture, and so on. Locke asks the reader to attempt to

think of a simple idea that he has never experienced, proving the link with the physical world and

our senses by the impossibility of the task. Finally, he goes on to show how the mind comes

about original ideas – by endlessly imagining possible combinations of simple ideas to form

complex ones.

The main issue that plagues Locke’s attack on innate ideas is that he bases all his

arguments off of the assumption that it is true that “. . . there are certain principles . . . universally

agreed upon by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must needs be the constant impressions

. . . which [men] bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their

inherent faculties,” (1), otherwise stated that universal assent is the defining quality of an innate

idea. In truth an innate idea is only defined by its innateness, and has no requirement of being

applicable to every single person. If the assumption that innate ideas necessarily cause universal

assent is called into question, all reasoning built upon that assumption is also called into

question. It is a possible reality that all people are born with different innate ideas, just as they

are born with different physical appearances, personalities, and inclinations. Even the

interpretation of what an idea has to mean is up for debate as well. Are instincts ideas? If we
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accept them as such we can examine a path of logic based on scientific fact unknown in Locke’s

time. The influence of genetics on nearly every aspect of a person certainly meets the definition

of innate, but at the same time, what are genes if not experiences of many previous generations?

Fear of predators – of any danger or harm for that matter – is a very common instinct that is

caused by the intrinsic structure of our brains. One does not even have to know what a spider or

snake is or that it could be dangerous to perhaps feel fear as a result of seeing a small, dark

creature moving around quickly; the idea that we should be afraid of a specific visual stimuli can

be physically built into our brains. Following this biological viewpoint, we must consider

Locke’s primary example of people who are incapable of reasoning fully. Though a child may

not be able to consciously be aware of an idea that exists in him in some capacity, it does not

mean that the idea does not exist at all, though Locke states: “and if they are notions imprinted,

how can they be unknown?” (2). If ideas can arise from our biology, in other words from within,

then ideas can be innate regardless of whether they are in the conscious mind at a particular time

because they can arise at a later date with physical development – independent from reason,

understanding, or a developed mind or consciousness. This is not the same as saying that “. . .

truths may be imprinted on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall know; for a man may live

long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths which his mind was capable of knowing,” (2), as

we can predict what kinds of ideas may arise from genetics in a person with more certainty than

the set of all possible ideas. Another counterpoint afforded to us by modern science is the

knowledge of the subconscious – that one can have ideas in some capacity and yet not be aware

of them at all. This knowledge directly refutes Locke’s claim that “no proposition can be said to

be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of,” (2).
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Ultimately, Locke’s realization of the lack of need for innate ideas to exist is one of his

essay’s stronger points. In his philosophy of empiricism, the important questions are the ones

that can be answered by the physical and the empirically certain, and not the dubious nature of a

separate mind and body as in Cartesian philosophy. Aside from more modern objections, he does

a very good job for his time in refuting rationalist beliefs in innate ideas, and the major problems

that seem more obvious now can be forgiven in context of the time period and its contemporary

philosophies.