EXPLAIN THE VIEW THAT THE MIND IS A TABULA RASA (15 marks)

(four good attempts)

‘Tabula rasa’ meaning blank slate, is the thought that the human mind has no innate knowledge...
It is an empirical epistemological view
Tabula rasa shows that memories and truths are established ‘a posteriori’, or through experience.
The physical world writes upon the blank slate of the mind, establishing faint memories of the ‘bright and vivid’ real thing.
This view was first put forward by Locke in his book ‘An Essay Concerning The Human Mind’
Another concept of this thought is that imaginary images are established through comparing things already written upon your mind . Hume used the example of a golden mountain. Although no-one has ever seen a golden mountain, most people have seen mountains and gold. Therefore, these images are combined to create the image of a golden mountain.
This implies that you cannot imagine what you cannot create from your own memories, reinforcing the ‘Tabula rasa’ view, as you can only create through experience .

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The view that the mind is born a tabula rasa is the idea that it is born a blank slate with no knowledge at all. This view dates back as far as Aristotle who described the mind as an ‘unscribed tablet’ over two thousand years ago. A more recent philosopher, Locke, also believed in this theory. He believed that our experiences of the physical world write upon the blank slate and this is how we obtain knowledge. ’A posteriori’ is a truth gained through experience and the idea of empiricism suggests that these experiences are through our senses.
However, it was suggested that knowledge cannot only be obtained through our sensory experiences as we have knowledge of things that we can’t possibly have experienced. A philosopher who responded to this was Hume . He believed that our experiences of the physical world were ‘vivid and forceful’ and our ideas of that world are ‘faint and obscure’ He suggested that our knowledge is made up of our ideas of the physical world which we have through experience, OR our mind combines two of our ideas which makes an idea of something we haven’t necessarily experienced.
Hume used the idea of a ‘golden mountain’. It is clear that none of us have physically experienced a Golden Mountain , yet we can imagine it. This is because we have experienced gold and a mountain separately and our mind is simply merging them together.
All these theories are examples of empiricism, which is the suggestion that knowledge is gained through experiences of the physical world. (I wish this sentence specifically linked back to the ‘tabula rasa’ issue raised in the question )

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The view that the mind was a tabula rasa was first mentioned by Aristotle over 2 thousand years ago when he described the new born mind as a blank slate. This view was later adopted by the two british empiricists Locke and Hume. Locke wrote a book on the subject and Hume followed by saying that ideas in the mind are formed by impressions of the real world or by the combination of impressions eg gold and mountain – gold mountain.
The main argument about tabula rasa is that your behaviour and knowledge is not formed by nature (you are not born with it) but that it is instead nurtured and learned )(how you are brought up) . The main theory is that when you are born you know nothing.’ Tabula rasa’ is part of an empirical approach to epistemology where ideas are viewed as ‘a posteriori’.
Tabula Rasa is a completely contradictory idea to the rationalist movement, who believe that we are given certain, basic knowledge when we are born.

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Tabula rasa or blank slate is how empiricists, such as Hume and Locke, describe the human mind from birth. The world then writes itself upon this slate. Empiricists reject the view that we have innate ideas. The epistemological approach is empiricism and it says all of our knowledge is gained through our experiences and physical sensations of the world, in other words ‘a posteriori’ knowledge.
Aristotle was the first to compare the mind to an ‘unscribed tablet’ over two thousand years ago. Hume came up with the ‘golden mountain ‘ analogy. He said that we have sensed gold and a mountain, so they are in our knowledge. We can then cross-reference these two ideas to imagine what a golden mountain would be like, by reflecting upon previous experience.
Another such experiment would be that of a feral child such as in the book by Ibn Tufail, and whether this child had ideas of things like God without being exposed to or experiencing them. The tabula rasa approach is similar to that of the nurture argument – that our morals come from experience rather than instincts or nature.

problems with analogy

N – A problem with analogy argument is that we as human beings have no experience of world making.
E – We cannot reasonably claim that our world has been made because we have nothing of a similar making to compare it; we have not experience worlds being made. We can however do this with most objects because we can compare them to other manufactured objects. But e cannot use these objects to justify the creation and design of the earth.
I – From understanding and observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything about the creation of man/woman?
L – Analogy isn’t coherent because, just because there is objects that have been designed (like a watch), they cannot justify the design of the world because we have no other experience of a designed universe.

N – It can also be argued that the arguments for analogy are weak.
E – The argument for analogy is that the world is designed just like a machine. Hume however argues that this is not a correct comparison because the world is far greater and more complex than a machine.
I – it is more sensible to compare the world to an animal or a plant, in the sense that a plant just grows and has not been designed. This example is still flawed though as to make comparisons they have to be alike in all relevant ways.
L – There are flaws with analogy because we cannot compare the complex world which we do not totally understand with something that isn’t a relevant comparison

or

Explains: Arguments from analogies are only reliable when the things being compared are similar.
Illustrate: Paley’s watch analogy is weak. Because a watch does not have many similarities to the universe. Hume argued that a better analogy would in fact be a vegetable because the earth is organic, like a vegetable and not mechanical like a watch. It would also be a better analogy because vegetables just grow and are not designed and we have no reason to suppose the universe is designed so this would be a better analogy. Hume said that the vegetable analogy was equally flawed but that we cannot infer on the basis of an analogy with a machine that the universe was designed.
Link: This is a problem because there are no good analogies to fit the universe so all arguments using analogies in this area will be weak.