Tabula rasa

Tabula rasa (/ˈtæbjələ ˈrɑːsə, -zə, ˈreɪ-/; Latin for "blank slate") is the idea of individuals being born empty of any built-in mental content, so that all knowledge comes from later perceptions or sensory experiences.

In one of the more well-known passages of this treatise, he writes that:[2] Haven't we already disposed of the difficulty about interaction involving a common element, when we said that mind is in a sense potentially whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought?

What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing tablet on which as yet nothing stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind.This idea was further evolved in Ancient Greek philosophy by the Stoic school.

[3] The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as "When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon.

"[4] Diogenes Laërtius attributes a similar belief to the Stoic Zeno of Citium when he writes in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers that:[5] Perception, again, is an impression produced on the mind, its name being appropriately borrowed from impressions on wax made by a seal; and perception they divide into comprehensible and incomprehensible: Comprehensible, which they call the criterion of facts, and which is produced by a real object, and is, therefore, at the same time conformable to that object; Incomprehensible, which has no relation to any real object, or else, if it has any such relation, does not correspond to it, being but a vague and indistinct representation.In the 11th century, the theory of tabula rasa was developed more clearly by Ibn Sina.

"[6] In the 12th century, the Andalusian-Islamic philosopher and novelist, Ibn Tufail (known as Abubacer or Ebn Tophail in the West) demonstrated the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment through his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, in which he depicts the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through experience alone.

The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

[9][10] Descartes, in his work The Search for Truth by Natural Light, summarizes an empiricist view in which he uses the words table rase,[11] in French; in the following English translation, this was rendered tabula rasa: All that seems to me to explain itself very clearly if we compare children's imagination to a tabula rasa on which our ideas, which resemble portraits of each object taken from nature, should depict themselves.

For our senses really perceive that alone which is most coarse and common; our natural instinct is entirely corrupted; and as to our masters, although there may no doubt be very perfect ones found amongst them, they yet cannot force our minds to accept their reasoning before our understanding has examined it, for the accomplishment of this end pertains to it alone.

In Freud's schema of psycho-sexual development, the conflicting drives imprinted by the parents (the id versus the superego) produce ego, and that in spite of his neuroses, the analysand would discuss matters in a non-adversarial manner.

[13] Psychologists and neurobiologists have shown evidence that initially, the entire cerebral cortex is programmed and organized to process sensory input, control motor actions, regulate emotion, and respond reflexively (under predetermined conditions).

For instance, with respect to one's ability to acquire both general and special types of knowledge or skills, Michael Howe argued against the existence of innate talent.

[19] There also have been neurological investigations into specific learning and memory functions, such as Karl Lashley's study on mass action and serial interaction mechanisms.

The social pre-wiring hypothesis was proven correct:[21]The central advance of this study is the demonstration that 'social actions' are already performed in the second trimester of gestation.

These findings force us to predate the emergence of social behaviour: when the context enables it, as in the case of twin fetuses, other-directed actions are not only possible but predominant over self-directed actions.In artificial intelligence, tabula rasa refers to the development of autonomous agents with a mechanism to reason and plan toward their goal, but no "built-in" knowledge-base of their environment.

[citation needed] In reality, autonomous agents possess an initial data-set or knowledge-base, but this cannot be immutable or it would hamper autonomy and heuristic ability.