Quotation
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“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.”
John Locke · Empiricism · Early modern · 1689
What does it mean?
He denies innate speculative equipment: the mind starts unfurnished, and sensation together with reflection supplies the materials of thought. The usual reading takes the white paper as a theory of ideas, aimed at the doctrine that moral and theoretical principles are stamped on us from birth. A rival reading hears a claim that infants have no nature and no needs, or a behaviourist blankness he does not assert. The sentence is his own English in the Essay, book two, chapter one, and the label blank slate is later shorthand for it.
Did John Locke really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Locke's own English in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book two, chapter 1, section 2. He immediately asks how the paper comes to be furnished, and answers from experience. The blank-slate label is later shorthand. The sentence is secure.
Where it comes from
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.1.2
Approximate date: 1689.
How to use it
When a column calls an opinion about a school uniform just obvious to any mind, ask whether it was actually learned at a particular kitchen table in Swansea. Locke thinks the obvious ones were learned too, including the ones that feel innate because nobody remembers the lesson. The question does not decide the uniform; It stops a local custom being treated as the furniture the mind was born owning.
A mindset reading
White paper is a picture of the origin of ideas, not a denial that human beings have bodies, appetites, or a capacity to compare. He is not saying infants are featureless animals waiting for slogans. The immediate question in the paragraph is how the paper comes to be furnished, and his answer is experience, which is narrower than a theory of everything a person is.
Understand the philosophy
Book one of the Essay attacks innate principles, and book two builds the materials of knowledge out of experience. The key term is idea, whatever the mind is employed about in thinking, which he says we get from sensation and from reflection on our own operations. Later empiricists start from this page, and their critics start from it too. The English is his, published in 1689.
- knowledge
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
He denies innate speculative equipment: the mind starts unfurnished, and sensation together with reflection supplies the materials of thought. The usual reading takes the white paper as a theory of ideas, aimed at the doctrine that moral and theoretical principles are stamped on us from birth. A rival reading hears a claim that infants have no nature and no needs, or a behaviourist blankness he does not assert. The sentence is his own English in the Essay, book two, chapter one, and the label blank slate is later shorthand for it.
Did John Locke really say this?
Well attested. Locke's own English in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book two, chapter 1, section 2. He immediately asks how the paper comes to be furnished, and answers from experience. The blank-slate label is later shorthand. The sentence is secure.
Which work is it in?
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.1.2 Approximate date: 1689.