Strengths of the 'Tabula Rasa' Approach

Name: Credible-believable

Explain: Strong intuitive appeal, because it seems right that we are born without any knowledge and that we can gain it through our experience of the world. It also has strong intuitive appeal because it is hard to believe that we are born with knowledge and that we do not gain it through experience making the tabula rasa approach credible because it seems to match up with how we learn. Naive realism- sensations match reality, this makes the tabula rasa approach credible because it seems to match up with the world, it also makes it credible because it is hard to believe that our experiences do not match up with the 'real' world.

Name: Consistenct-coherent

Explain: The Tabula Rasa approach seems to be consistent with our experience of the world as we learn about things after we experience them, this is supported by hume as he said ideas must be tested or checked against experience and that if they correspond they are valid. He said ideas were faint and obscure and that sensory experiences are forceful and vivid this is also consistent as we cannot experience god so we have faint ideas about him, however we can experience cheese so have good knowledge about it.

or:

Intro: empiricist view- an epistemological stance in which knowledge is viewed as being derived ultimately from experience.
Eg. Locke and Hume
Tabula rasa is a blank slate. Our sense experience writes upon this slate.
Strength 1: credible or believable
People will accept it. They find it easy to understand and it has intuitive appeal.
People are comfortable with relying on their senses for information and they are confident that their senses are correct.
Strength 2: consistency, we can check the validity of these ideas.
Hume said that our ideas must be tested against our experiences, if they correspond, they are valid., ideas are only ‘faint and obscure’ whereas sense experiences are ‘vivid and forceful.’
This theory corresponds with our experiences, so it is credible.

or:

1) One of the Tabula Rasa strengths lie with the idea that it is more intuitive than rationalist approaches. Empiricist philosophers such as Locke argue that the approach is more readily acceptable since our sensations must match reality and it is more difficult for us to accept we have knowledge of something before we experience it, which is the basis for the rationalist idea of a priori knowledge. For example if we experience something it must exist because we experienced it. We can’t have had knowledge of it beforehand.

2) Another strength of the Tabula Rasa approach lies with the idea that we are born a blank slate, in Aristotle’s terms. An example of this is feral children. When children who have been abandoned very young and have been care of by animals, they have none of the knowledge that we expect from a child raised in human society. This means that the mind must be a blank slate since it is manipulated by the human’s surroundings.

or:

N – Tabula rasa holds strong intuitive appeal; it feels right to see it as a correct theory
E – Tabula rasa is credible because it’s based on sensations which we all experience. We don’t have to believe anything that we are told by someone else. But with this proposal of our minds being a tabula rasa – a ‘blank slate’ we can see it as credible because we can experience this ourselves.
I – For example we can see an red apple because there is a red apple, therefore we are gaining experience of this red apple and it is our first experience and it is ‘vivid and forceful’.
L – This is a strength of the tabula rasa approach because people are more likely to accept this theory because it feels right and sensations match reality.