Discuss whether it is possible to prove we are born with innate ideas
An innate idea is an idea, of which, we are born with. I believe it is possible that we are born with innate ideas, although few. However, I do not believe it to be possible to prove this. G.E. Moore, Chomsky, Plato and Leibniz all tried to prove humans to have innate ideas. Alas, they could not do so without flaws in their arguments.
G.E. Moore had the idea that morality was an innate idea. This is because he believed ‘good’ could be neither taught nor defined, as everyone has different opinions on good. As some people may say it good to kill a serial killer, but many people would argue that this is not. This means our ideas of what is ‘good’ or not must be innate, as they cannot be taught to us, thus our morality is innate. This is unlike a statement such as 2+2=4, as this is a state which can be taught to us and is definitely correct. It cannot be argued against as it is a necessary truth.
‘Good’, conversely, could be something that is picked up through life. That as we grow up and we are told off for doing wrong and praised for doing right, we could learn our morality. This fits in with ‘good’ still being undefinable’, as every child will have a different upbringing with different experiences and learn a different meaning of ‘good’. They will not definitely be born with the sense the idea of morality but learn it from their sense, as Hume would argue. They also learn this from inward expressions- emotions- and these are not innate ideas, but something we learn. This, I believe shows that G.E. Moore cannot prove that we are born with innate ideas, as it is very possible that the idea he argues we are born with, could be learnt. Just like the statement 2+2=4.
Chomsky, an American linguist, also argued that we are born with innate ideas. According to him, we are born with principles, especially those of syntax. This, he says, can be shown by young children. As though there is a finite amount of words they hear from adults, they hear them in an infinite combination of sentences. From this, they are also, before even the age of four able to construct sentence, with correct syntax, that they have never heard before. Noam Chomsky argues that this can only be possible due to an innate knowledge of grammar. Chomsky also argues that a deep grammatical foundation remains similar amongst all languages and that this is how children have a predisposition to use syntax correctly.
This, though, cannot in reality work. Although languages may share a similarity deep into the grammar they are still substantially different. This predisposition could not possibly work for all languages as they are all so very different. Even if they did though, it would be impossible to prove if it were from innate ideas or trial and errors that really taught these young children how to speak. The argument is stronger than that of G.E. Moore’s as we actually see how quickly young children pick up language in everyday life and Chomsky did much research to show it. Despite this, it is still impossible to distinguish whether it really is innate ideas or sensory learning and thus cannot prove that humans have innate ideas.
Plato also had an argument for innate ideas. He used one of Meno’s slaves to show it. Socrates asked the slave boy, who had no education of geometry questions about a square: how to make it twice as large, how much greater the area would be, and how to find an are half as large as this. The boy could answer all of these questions, despite having no education on the subject and before not knowing. This suggests that the ideas must have been innate.
This, however, can be shown to not prove human’s having innate ideas. Firstly Socrates practically gave him the answers in the questions and prompted him to the degree, where it would be hard not to be able to answer the questions. In addition to this, it was only tested on one boy who may have learnt this geometry unknowingly in his experiences, for instance harvesting fields. This argument gives no proof to the debate of whether humans have innate knowledge as it is full of imprecisions, it would need to be done on a much larger scale, on a boy with no experiences and with no prompting.
These arguments show that it is possible to theorise about the existence of innate ideas. They also show that it is impossible to prove. Not one argument cancels out any doubt that the ideas could have been learnt from experiences and senses and it is near impossible to argue that there is any innate knowledge if you there is also a possibility that the things being described could be instinct.