Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa is Latin for: "a blank slate or sheet". The term has primarily been used by empiricists to describe the initial state of the mind: blank and knowledge-less. In this way, the term has been used in the context of epistemology. The empiricists who utilize it critique many rationalists' views in that there is innate knowledge in the human mind - even at birth - which has been supported by Plato, Descartes, and many others. The empiricist argues that no, it is impossible to see how we can get knowledge without sensation/experience, and so any knowledge that we gain in this way will slowly populate our mind, and this in reality is how we get to knowledge. However, the idea of the mind as a total blank slate at birth does have its critiques - including having to overcome the challenge of explaining a priori mathematical and logical truths (which is sometimes done by finely drawing a line between knowledge before experience [a priori] and knowledge at the first moment of birth without any experience [innate]) as well as certain poverty of stimulus arguments. These arguments of the latter argue that we need to have certain innate truths since our sensory experience of the world doesn't seem to adequately account for all of the knowledge we have - Noam Chomsky is a defendant of this view in linguistics.