How we come to know things is a matter which has been debated for centuries. In the discussion that is to follow I will aim to outline what it means to say that some fact is innately known and also discuss whether John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding shows that nothing is innately known. I find that Locke’s argument stands up well against the principles of innate knowledge however I still find myself unable to reject the concept of innate knowledge totally.

For the sake of this discussion I will refer to those who believe in the principles of innate knowledge as Rationalists, although in reality not all rationalists adhere to this idea. Some well known rationalists are Descartes, Plato and Leibniz. Let us firstly focus on what defines innate knowledge.

It is said that innate knowledge is attained via intuition and deduction. This is to say that you assent to some principles by intuition alone and then deduce further truths from these intuited principles. This is all done in the mind and thus provides a priori knowledge. This is in many ways is what Descartes claimed. Descartes claimed that sensory experience could not be trusted as it could just be a dream or demon orchestrated experiences. So the claim is that knowledge gained by means of reasoning is far superior and more reliable than any reliant on sense experience. Descartes said that that which could be clearly and distinctly perceived was true and also necessarily true. Therefore it would seem that innate knowledge which is attained by intuition/deduction would have to be necessary truths. The problem I see with this is that it could also be said that your intuitions and deductions are also demon orchestrated and therefore also not reliable.

Another claim is that knowledge of some truths is part of our nature (again sensory independent). This would be in keeping with Carruthers claim that we are, through evolution disposed to know certain truths and as we develop these truths reveal themselves to us. The third popular and Platonic theory is that knowledge may be brought into consciousness by experience. The experience does not itself provide the knowledge but triggers something in the mind which enables it to recollect what it to already knew. Plato thought that the soul brought with it knowledge from prior lives and on unification with a new body it forgets some of this knowledge and therefore needs provocation to remember. In general it would seem that to have innate knowledge is to have knowledge which is not acquired through experience and that is 100% certain. Also to know something innately would mean that the concepts of any true proposition are also innate.

Locke, an empiricist, argues against the idea of innate knowledge and claims that all which is said to be innately known can in be in fact shown to be acquired through experience. Rationalists claim that when you come to the use of reasoning you come to know things already in the mind. Locke defines reason as “the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles or propositions that are already known” and this would seem to imply that if you do have innate knowledge then you would come to know (by use of reason) what you already knew, but did not know you knew. This means that you would be in a state of both knowing and not knowing at the same time

which does not seem possible as Locke says. This seems to me to be a valid point because if reason, is as Locke defines it, then you cannot use the truths you don’t perceive to come to other truths, also which you do not perceive. There is also another problem here in that if what the rationalists says is correct you must be able to come to have knowledge of many things as soon as you come to the use of reasoning but this is clearly not the case with many people (Locke uses the examples of idiots and children). In response to this some rationalists may say that there are many truths which we will not come to know even though we are capable of knowing them. I, like Locke agree that no one would deny that we have the capacity to know many things but this does not stand as an argument for having innate knowledge of facts.

As another argument against the principle of reasoning in coming to know things, Locke uses the propositions to which we assent to as soon as we are told/hear them. Surely we cannot come to the use of reasoning and assent to ideas at the same time? Locke does not deny that reasoning is important in coming to know things but denies that when you reason it is the first time you take notice of this knowledge as he thinks that you have some knowledge even before you come to the use of reasoning. Reasoning just allows for the connection between the experiences you have had to be made.

Empiricists such as Locke often think that what is considered innate is simply a case of understanding the meaning of words and therefore analytic knowledge. From what I understand of Locke argument he says that when you learn certain words and come to understand the ideas they stand for you can then assent to propositions described in these words but this requires sensual exposure to the ideas so that they can be known. Locke says that children and idiots are unable to assent to certain ideas as they have not yet been exposed to them. But the rationalist who feels that it is part of our development/evolution to know things innately may say that a child will only assent to certain ideas once they have reached a certain stage of their development. This idea would seem to carry some weight as it has been found that we have innate language skills as has been shown by studies conducted by Noam Chomsky. May be our genetic make up as a species predisposes us to know certain things without external stimulus and this is why there are many truths man universally assents too.

The idea of universal assent is not something Locke agrees with. He does not feel there is any such thing as universal assent as there are no principles that all mankind agree upon. He says even if there was such a thing as universal assent this itself does not prove the existence of innate knowledge as there are those, children and idiots, who are ignorant of them. G.W.Leibniz, who thinks that there are some innate principles, responds to Locke’s argument against universal assent. Leibniz feels that universal assent does exist and that experiences would only ever provide us with knowledge of individual instances which would not hold true for every similar instance and therefore experience alone cannot provide us with this universally assented to knowledge. I feel inclined to agree with Leibniz here as it would see to me that experience of one thing does not necessarily provide you with sufficient knowledge for another similar thing and as many people seem to react in the same way to many things there must be some inbuilt ideas which guide us.



Locke goes on to talk about the idea of “truths imprinted on the soul which it perceives to or understands not”. He argues that if the mind is ignorant of a fact then how can this make an impression upon it? Surely if something impresses itself upon you then you are aware of it? Locke sees the mind as a blank slate upon which experiences makes their mark and says that only the natural faculties of men are needed to attain knowledge. I would agree with Locke in his argument of how someone can be ignorant of a fact which has apparently imprinted itself on your mind. But if we adhere to Plato’s recollection thesis of innate knowledge then it would seem that this problem can be overcome. Locke addresses this point and says that if experience is needed to strengthen the impression we already have then nature cannot have impressed upon us strongly enough. So if we need to be taught what the impressions should in themselves teach us, they cannot be innately known. I also feel that Plato’s idea of experience triggering what we know already is flawed. For if sense experience cannot be relied upon and your knowledge itself is of what these experiences provide it would seem that you cannot entirely trust what you know innately, if anything at all.

A problem I have here is that we would all appear to know our names and since our names are given to us after our birth it cannot stand that this knowledge is innate. Children are able to immediately assent to this knowledge without the use of reason, and it cannot be said that it is part of their nature or knowledge from a previous life because how would it be possible to have knowledge associated with this life in a a prior one?

It also, to me, does not follow that if indeed knowledge is imprinted on our soul why there should be a need for reason or experience to reveal it to us. Leibniz says that we have certain principles which need no proofs but without the senses would not occur to us, this to me seems to be a paradox. If something needs no proof it should be immediately clearly and not need any external stimulus. It could be argued that there are many things we know but often forget, like the words to a song and on hearing the first few lines we are able to recall them and the idea of innate knowledge recollection is possibly a similar one. I would argue that you often do not discover that you know things that you didn’t think you knew until the opportunity to use the knowledge arises but this would not seem to make this knowledge innate as it could be that this knowledge too has been deduced from principles acquired by other experiences. Some rationalists would agree that there are some truths that are acquired, but how is it that you distinguish between that which acquired knowledge and that which is innate? Clearly the knowledge which is shown to be innately attained can just as equally be shown to be acquired.

Another issue which troubles me when thinking about innate knowledge is if our innate knowledge is only in accordance with the truths of this world or if it would be true to call it knowledge in any other world? If we do have innate knowledge and we were suddenly transported to a world different to our own, would the innate knowledge we have, still hold true? Or would all our knowledge have to be acquired?


Locke does not in any way accept that having innate knowledge is possible. He concludes his arguments by saying that he finds it unintelligible to have innate truths which are not assented to and if you need to be told or exposed to certain propositions to know them then it would seem that they cannot have been in mind already; therefore must be learnt or acquired through experience. It seems to me that Locke presents a good case against the existence of innate knowledge; if what it means to say to that some fact is innately known is that it must be attained by the use of reason, immediately assented too or recollected on exposure to external stimuli.

Locke may not show that nothing is innately known as this would no doubt require looking into every thing we take to be knowledge and enquiring into how it has come to be known, which would be somewhat impossible. But he does show that many of the ways which rationalists explain how we come to know things (i.e. the use of reason, immediate assent, recollection of knowledge from previous lives) does not necessarily show that they are innate and it would seem that if such things could only be known innately there would be no room for doubt. However, even though I find Locke’s argument an agreeable one I find it difficult to completely disregard the idea that we have innate knowledge but I am unsure as to the reasons why.