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Innate Ideas—Then and Now*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Harry M. Bracken
Harry M. Bracken
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

John Locke is famous for, among other things, his attack on innate ideas. At one time it was felt that Locke had attacked a straw man. But John Yolton has shown that many of Locke's contemporaries held strange views about innate ideas. Appealing to innate ideas was apparently a popular method of establishing principles that might otherwise be difficult to defend. Locke's attack is in good measure directed at those who preferred not to provide arguments. However, when one tries to sort out Locke's own arguments and to reconstruct what the more articulate defenders of innate ideas were interpreted to hold, matters become complicated.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , December 1967 , pp. 334 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1967

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References

1 Yolton, John W., John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford: 1956).Google Scholar

2 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Fraser, A. C. (Oxford: 1894), I, 40. (I, i, 5).Google Scholar

3 Ibid., I, 47. (I, i, 14).

4 Ibid., I, 16. (I, iii, 25).

5 Ibid., II, 295. (IV, Viii, 3).

6 Cf. Principiorum Philosophiae, I, xlix, and I. (AT VIII, 23–4) in Philosophical Works of Descartes, ed. Haldane, E. and Ross, G. (New York: 1955), I, 238–9. (Abbreviated ‘HR’.)Google Scholar

7 See my “Some Problems of Substance Among the Cartesians,” American Philosophical Quarterly, I (1964), 129–137Google Scholar, for several textual citations. Also, Regulae, Reg. XII, (AT X, 4ig; HR I, 41). Note also that the mind, in intellectual activity, “in some manner turns on itself.” (Meditations VI; AT IX, 58; HR I, 186). The essence-existence distinction is of course drawn not only within the text of Med. V, but in the titles of V and VI. For a general discussion of ideas and the roles they play for Cartesians, see Watson, Richard A., The Downfall of Carlesianism1673–1712 (The Hague: 1966).Google Scholar

8 See Laporte, Jean, Le rationalisme de Descartes (Paris: 1950), p. 85 fGoogle Scholar. See also the provocative discussion of common notions in Gouhier, Henri, La pensée métaphysique de Descartes (Paris: 1962), p. 271 f.Google Scholar

9 Unfortunately, Arnauld's works are difficult to obtain, but a small segment of this discussion may be found in Oeuvres philosophiques de Antoine Arnauld, ed. Simon, Jules (Paris: 1843).Google Scholar

10 See Malebranche, Recherche de la vérité, e.g., Bk. III, Pt. 2, chs. iv f. See also my “Some Problems…”

11 But Descartes also said in the Principles (I, 58) “That number and all universals are simply modes of thought.” In a letter to Mersenne, 6 Mai 1630, Descartes speaks of the existence of God as the most eternal eternal truth. Thomas Hobbes, anticipating Locke, seemed to think that innate ideas must always be present. To this, Descartes responded, “when I say that an idea is innate in us [or imprinted in our souls by nature], I do not mean that it is always present to us. This would make no idea innate. I mean merely that we possess the faculty of summoning up this idea.” (AT IX, 147; HR II, 73). See also Descartes' remarks in “Notes Against a Programme,” (AT VIII, 357 f; HR I, 442 f).

12 Reid, Thomas, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (I, ii) in Works of Thomas Reid, ed. Hamilton, William (8th ed., Edinburgh: 1895), I, 233.Google Scholar

13 Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind (V, vii) in Works, I, 127.

14 Cf. Chomsky, Noam, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge: 1965)Google Scholar. See also Fodor, Jerry A. and Katz, Jerrold J., The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: 1964).Google Scholar

15 Chomsky, Aspects… p. 54.

16 Ibid., p. 4.

17 Ibid., p. 25. See also Chomsky, , “Formal Properties of Grammar,” in Handbook of Mathematical Psychology, ed. Luce, R. Duncan et al. , (New York: 1963), II, 323–418. Esp. sect. 1.1.Google Scholar

18 In this connection, see Eric H. Lenneberg, “The Capacity for Language Acquisition,” in Fodor and Katz.

19 That Descartes so understood geometry may have resulted from his own efforts to provide an algebraic representation of geometry. See my “Some Problems of Substance …” cited in note 7.

20 Chomsky, Aspects… p. 53.

21 A version of this paper was a contribution to a symposium at the American Philosophical Association, Western Division meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May, 1966.