Doğuştan düşünceler üzerine Rene Descartes,John Locke ve Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz

Abstract

In Descartes' Third Meditation, the meditator makes an inventory of the ideas he discovers within him, and observes that some appear to be 'innate', some 'adventitious', and some 'fictitious'. In.his critique of the innateness doctrine, Locke was to urge the objection that many people like idiots and children seem quite unaware of the relevant truths; yet 'to imprint anything on the Mind without the Mind's perceiving it', he stated, 'seems to me hardly intelligible'. Leibniz expresses his view of innateness by claiming that the ideas and truths are innate in us as 'inclinations, dispositions, tendencies or virtualities'. What are the meanings of these statements? The purpose of this article as a whole is to examine from the viewpoint of the analytic history philosophy the doctrine of innateness in the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. Moreover, the aim of this study will be to expose the particular value of Leibniz's contribution to this topic.