John Locke begins his denial of innate ideas by stating a fact: humanity has the capacity to acquire knowledge through the application of the body's faculties. These faculties include our sensory perceptions and reflections. This fact is "sufficient to prove it not innate" [I,i,1] because God is perfect in every way, thus unable to make the mistake of over-equipping his creation, humanity, with innate ideas. In essence, Locke is posing a rhetorical question: Why would God give us the capacity to acquire knowledge if we already have innate ideas? God could not possibly do this because it would be redundant, superfluous and disproportionate - all descriptions of an imperfect act; and as stated previously, God is infallible. To attack this argument is to attack the concept of God [something that was usually avoided, even during the age of

The concept of innate ideas stems from universal truths. Locke attacks this claim by arguing that such universal truths are non-existent because nothing can be universally agreed upon. The traditional moral rule 'do not kill' is usually thought to be innate, however, it is over-looked that people exist in the world who believe murder is not immoral, namely cannibals. Ideas can be extremely commonplace, but not universal. Hypothetically, if a truth existed that all consented to, this still would not be sufficient to prove it innate - a point explainable through consideration of the existence of children.

Childhood, starting from birth, is primarily dedicated to experiencing simple ideas (i.e. heat, cold, light, darkness, etc) since complex ideas are incomprehensible without first developing such basic ideas. In fact, to develop more complex ideas it is necessary to combine basic ideas together (the mind does this naturally).

To suggest otherwise is nonsensical or the term knowledge itself is being defined in terms of a trivial truth: to have innate knowledge of x is to have the capacity to come to know that x - yet capacity for knowledge is a faculty of the mind, not knowledge itself. [Bakhurst,class12]

Our ideas are successfully explained to originate in a manner entirely empirical. Thus we don't need the doctrine of innate ideas.

The capacity of a newborn's mind for knowledge (a faculty of the mind) is too weak and simple to hold any idea typical of the innate doctrine (example - Plato's concept of morals) because they are too complex to exist in an undeveloped or 'just beginni

Some common words found in the essay are:
Iii5 Children, Ii1 God, Darwin Infants, God Iii1, Human Understanding, John Locke, innate ideas, basic ideas, doctrine innate, doctrine innate ideas, faculty mind, mind birth, Essay Human, sufficient prove innate, ideas mind naturally, ideas mind, mind knowledge, capacity acquire knowledge, knowledge faculty, knowledge experience, exist mind birth, sufficient prove,
Approximate Word count = 1085
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)