Tabula rasa

{{philosophy}}
In [[philosophy]] and [[psychology]], the '''tabula rasa''' ([[Latin]] for "erased writing tablet"<ref group=note>Since paper and parchment were expensive luxuries, the [[Rome|Romans]] used boards covered with wax for jotting down notes.  They would scrape away the topmost layer of the wax to erase it.</ref>) or '''blank slate''' refers to a belief that [[humans]] are born without any innate mental content.  Everything they know, and everything their [[mind]]s and [[brains]] are able to do, is learned from perception and experience.  It isn't true.  

==History==
The phrase ''tabula rasa'' enters [[European]] philosophy with the translation of the works of [[Avicenna]], but the idea of the mind as an "unwritten tablet" or "blank slate" goes back to [[Aristotle]], who said it this way: "there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses."<ref>Aristotle, ''De anima'' iii.4</ref> It is particularly associated with the tradition of [[British]] [[empiricism]], and specifically the thought of [[John Locke]], whose ''Essay concerning human understanding'' begins with an extended argument favoring the idea.<ref>John Locke, [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding/Book_I An Essay Concerning Human Understanding], book I.</ref>  It was largely in this form that it was passed through and became a fundamental assumption of [[B. F. Skinner]] and the [[behaviorism|behaviorists]].

==Inborn qualities==
[[Steven Pinker]] in a ''[[TED Talks|TED Talk]]''<ref>Steven Pinker, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c  Steven Pinker: Human nature and the blank slate ] (YouTube link), Feb. 2003)</ref> summarized the case in favor of a number of innate and unlearned traits in the human mind.  He observed that:
*Parents of multiple [[children]] observe that their personalities appear to develop from certain varying and preset values that are reliable over their entire development.
*People must usually have some innate ability to acquire [[language]]; this faculty does not exist in other species and seems to be hereditary (though a minority of linguists, including {{wpl|Geoffrey Sampson}}, have vociferously argued against this)
*[[Sexual orientation]] and [[gender identity]] are by all reports involuntary, immutable, and fixed at [[birth]]. [[Reparative therapy]] reliably fails. 
*Human social structures have [[Frans de Waal|identifiable analogues]] in the behavior of other primates and related mammals (a consequence of [[common descent]] in [[evolution]]).
*Humans seem to share a [[moral]] sense and a number of other inherent social concepts.

==Refutation==
Challenges to this received idea came first from the field of [[linguistics]].  [[Noam Chomsky]], reviewing Skinner's 1959 book ''Verbal Behavior'', concluded that "The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or "[[hypothesis]]-formulating" ability of unknown character and complexity."<ref>[[Noam Chomsky]], [http://chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm A Review of B. F. Skinner's ''Verbal Behavior''], rev. 1967.</ref>  Were the ''tabula rasa'' hypothesis true, it would be computationally impossible for human beings to acquire their native languages, much less acquire them with the speed and facility they do. Human children are able to speak well before they are able to handle other complex mental tasks. It therefore must be the case that normal human brains come equipped factory-standard with a facility for processing and using language. Other inborn human abilities can be easily demonstrated by the structure of the typical human body.  No one had to teach you, nor did you have to figure out yourself, how to use the [[Parallax method|parallax]] of your two horizontally separated [[eyes]] for the purpose of depth perception, for example. Your brain came pre-equipped with a module to process binocular vision.  

The [[cognitive revolution]] in psychology concluded that, just like the complex innate mental structure that must underlie language, that human minds have a number of properties that emerge from the structure of the brain. Unsurprisingly, we are built to process binocular vision and our motor cortex is kludged to allow us to walk bipedally. [[Jonathan Haidt]] has shown that human [[morality]] is preverbal and instinctual; and that it appears to be modular, modulated by specific moral dynamics such as "help versus harm" and "purity versus disgust." [[Twin study|Twin studies]] have suggested both that personality traits such as shyness or sociability have a strong inherited factor, while the raising of unrelated children under the same roof does little to harmonize their temperaments or belief systems.<ref>Gregory Casey, ''[http://psych.colorado.edu/~carey/hgss/hgsschapters/HGSS_Chapter22.pdf Human Genetics for the Social Sciences]'' (Sage, 2000), ch. 22</ref>

==See also==
*[[Feral child]]

==Further reading==
*[[Steven Pinker]], ''The Blank Slate'' (2002) ISBN 0-670-03151-8

==Notes==
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==References==
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[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Psychology]]

Categories: Philosophy, Psychology