The mind as a tabula rasa Michael Lacewing

The mind as a ‘tabula rasa’ Michael Lacewing enquiries@alevelphilosophy. co. uk © Michael Lacewing

Tabula rasa • Do all our concepts derive from experience or are some of the innate? • Locke: at birth (or when consciousness begins), the mind is a ‘tabula rasa’ (blank slate) – It contains no ideas, thoughts or concepts. • All our concepts derive from – Sensation: perceptual experience of objects outside the mind – Reflection: experience of the internal operations of our minds. © Michael Lacewing

Impressions and ideas • Locke uses the term ‘idea’ to cover both sensations and concepts and thoughts – But these are distinct. • Hume is clearer – Perceptions: what we are immediately and directly aware of. Divide into • Impressions (forceful, vivid, related to feeling and sensing) – Divide into impressions of sensation and of reflection • Ideas (less forceful, vivid, related to thinking). © Michael Lacewing

Impressions and ideas • Ideas are ‘faint copies’ of impressions – Fainter except in disease or madness. • As there are impressions of sensation and reflection, so there are ideas – concepts – derived from sensation and reflection. • Without a particular type of experience, a person can’t form the related concepts – E. g. blind man and colours. © Michael Lacewing

Simple and complex concepts • We start from simple impressions – single colours, shapes, smells, etc. – not distinguishable into different impressions. • We copy these to form simple concepts; we can then construct complex concepts – Unite and combine impressions into a concept of a single object, e. g. ‘that dog’ – Abstraction, ‘dog’ – Do this creatively, e. g. ‘unicorn’. © Michael Lacewing

The missing shade of blue • Are all ideas copied from impressions? • A possible counterexample: A spectrum of blue with one shade missing – We probably can form the idea of the missing shade – So not all ideas are copied from impressions. • Is this the only exception? – Important, because Hume uses the ‘copy principle’ to unpack and criticise complicated concepts. © Michael Lacewing

Solutions • Amend the copy principle: ‘Any ideas that are not copied from impressions are only meaningful if they could be copied from impressions. ’ • Keep the copy principle, but explain why the missing shade is an exception that can’t be generalized – E. g. it only works for impressions that are highly similar. © Michael Lacewing

Objection • Can we derive all complex ideas from simple ideas, and thus from experience? – Hume: yes. E. g. ‘God’ – we extend beyond limits (infinite = not finite) the qualities of knowledge, goodness, etc. , that we experience in ourselves. • Counterexamples? Philosophical concepts, e. g. – – Knowledge Truth Beauty Substance © Michael Lacewing