Epistemology And Innateness

When we are born does our mind already contain knowledge or is knowledge something that we have to be taught throughout out life? This question is one that the studies of epistemology and innateness have questioned throughout time. While clarity can be gained on the subject, like all of philosophy, there are differing opinions on the matter. In philosophy, “epistemology is the study of knowledge” (Truncellito). The study of innateness falls under the idea of epistemology and focuses on the idea that we are all born already having knowledge, rather than being born having to learn everything in life. The theory of innateness is one that has been argued for centuries and it is argued to various extents of presence in the human mind.

Looking at the philosophy of innateness, one begins to question whether knowledge is something that we can come into the world possessing. Samet explains the theory in his article The Historical Controversies Surrounding Innateness as, “in the history of philosophy, the focus of the innateness debate has been on our intellectual lives: does our inherent nature include any

David Truncellito explained in Epistemology from the Internet Encyclopedia of Psychology that “most of our knowledge is non-occurrent, or background, knowledge; only a small amount of one's knowledge is ever actively on one's mind.” (Truncellito) While non-occurrent knowledge does not necessarily mean that the knowledge has been there from birth, it is the idea that we store knowledge in the back of our minds and are not constantly thinking of every piece of knowledge we hold. The same way Plato argues that knowledge is being held in the mind from birth and the mind is waiting to be awakened on different subjects. One is waiting for the outside world to affect them in a way that causes their mind to bring forth this dormant knowledge that has been waiting to be