[athanatos]

Do innate ideas exist? I've been reading Locke's Essay, and he's got a barrage of arguments. Some seem way better than others. For example, "universal assent does not prove innate ideas" (really good point), however "if there are innate ideas, such as justice and God, then there wouldn't be this problem of bands of theives and atheists" (blatently bad argument).

As I was going throughout the arguments, I was thinking about the innate idea of God, and bing. That's what he ends on with this argument series -- no one has an innate idea of God.

Now, I have typically believed that we did have innate ideas, and one in particular being of God.

I am wondering if the following analogy is good: you've got some file cabinets for the brain, and there are a couple files, and you keep adding to them through your life. The innate ideas are the ones that are there already, and one can access then. The way of understanding this kind of thinking would be that everyone has a basic idea without being told or looking at nature to find out. When someone learns someone is talking about the same basic idea, they understand the reference, not acquire a new idea altogether. Now, I am not sure if there is a clear criterion for distinguishing from concepts that are acquired.

People say that no language is innate, but there may be a universal language-learning "device" built into humans. This is just like how there is a specific song bird, I can't remember which species in particular it is, that hears once and learns a song, never forgetting it -- but if he doesn't learn it in a critical period of his life (by hearing it from another song bird of the same species), then he can never learn it later. This is by no means an innate song, but an innate capacity for learning one and only one song.

[JerryLove]

Perhaps not "innate" but "inevitable" (on a generalist scale). The wiring is determined by biology, and there are certain semi-universal experiences. Put those together (the same kinds of stimulus, the same kinds of motives, the same kinds of problems, and the same kinds of brain trying to solve them) and there's going to be a great deal of similarity in solutions.

There are, of course, exceptions: where there's been a large divergence in one of the stimuli (malformed brain, abandoned to wolves at birth, etc).

[athanatos]

I was wondering about the inevitability of forming a belief or an idea too. You put it well.

[Chrysostom]

1) I agree with Jerry.
2) I would add, however, that even though some ideas/beliefs are pretty correlated across the board, they're only correlated; because we carve up the world different, those correlated ideas mean different things, sometimes in merely trivial ways and sometimes in drastically major ways.
3) "Innate ideas" seems like just an attempt to import the category "nature" into epistemology and/or phil of mind.

[Skeeter]

It's been far too long since my British Empiricism class to add too meaningfully to the topic at the moment, but I would recommend reading Hume and Berkeley following your studies of Locke. I found it very interesting to read the three of them consecutively.

[athanatos]

Originally Posted by Skeeter

It's been far too long since my British Empiricism class to add too meaningfully to the topic at the moment, but I would recommend reading Hume and Berkeley following your studies of Locke. I found it very interesting to read the three of them consecutively.

I'm taking Modern Period of phil this semester, and those two philosophers are the ones we follow after Locke. I've already read Berkeley before, not so much Hume (though he has been covered in passing in so many any of my other classes), so reading the Bishop again while having read Locke and Hume might be make it a little bit more clear.