Tabula Rasa? The human mind a blank waiting for....?

Question

Many philosophers have forwarded the theory that the human mind is tabula rasa at birth. Do you believe it is?

Answer 1

Yes, the mind is blank at birth.

Its waiting to be filled with the

memories of a life-time.

Answer 2

In practical terms "yes" I do.  For in considering that the new infant is imprinting life and his new surroundings with all his five senses into his brain and mind simultaneously.  He cannot even control his own body functions or understand what his needs are.  In fact it is up to the outside world like parents or siblings to determine that for him.  And consider also that a human being learns the most in the first six years of his life.

Answer 3

i think that there are certain instincts that people have when born. but i do not believe that infants can yet form their own thoughts and ideas.  but it is through the influences which that person sees that allows them to form ideas, writing in all those thoughts on that tablet.

Answer 4

Junior's mind isn't that tame. He can surmount even this theoretical limitation. He can best his teacher. But he's going to need a teacher who can provide an example of one who can out-finesse those many Yaoi-Rands out there, who say, "This is how it is..."

The teacher lets the student learn; this is not necessarily of human origin. There is going to be a student who will want to break the slate - that's your philosopher. He's going to do something radical and turn inward and start violating the representational model, to do what Hegel mentioned, keeping the wounds open, to resist the unthinking habit of conclusion, of "mending the sock". When the best teachers see this, they step aside, for they have had this experience - they've displayed their own wounds to their best students. What may have been an imprint isn't enough...

Wonder.

Answer 5

The alternative to tabula rasa is "a priori" knowledge, meaning info we are born with. How can we be born with knowledge? Where did it come from? Some claim genetic "knowledge," but the early philosophers who pushed "a priori" had no knowledge of genes. They were mystics who couldn't imagine that the sensory organs of the body, combined with the power of the mind, could possibly provide us with all we needed to know. Some of them even said we were flawed in this area, that perceptions are distorted and the mind is limited.

But it certainly seems to serve us well in science, technology, medicine, and anything else that does not require political bickering.