Tabula rasa Latin: "scraped tablet", though often translated "blank slate" is the notion that individual human beings are born "blank" with no built-in mental content , and that their identity is defined entirely by events after birth. Thomas Aquinas was the first to assert the tabula rasa theory in the 13th century, though it was John Locke who fully expressed the idea in the 17th century.
In John Locke 's philosophy, tabula rasa was the theory that the human mind is at birth a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences. The notion is central to Lockean empiricism. As understood by Locke, tabula rasa meant that the mind of the individual was born "blank", and it also emphasized the individual's freedom to author his or her own soul. Each individual was free to define the content of his or her character - but his or her basic identity as a member of the human species cannot be so altered.
It is from this presumption of a free, self-authored mind combined with an immutable human nature that the Lockean doctrine of "natural" rights derives. Tabula rasa is also featured in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. In recent times, however, tabula rasa has come to be understood fundamentally differently. While the idea that the individual can be changed remains, the power to effect that change is now ascribed to society, not the self - and that power extends to the whole of human nature.
Under this view, one can almost without restriction shape the individual by changing the individual's environment, and thus sensory experiences. In computer science, tabula rasa refers to the development of autonomous agents which are provided with a mechanism to reason and plan toward their goal, but no "built-in" knowledge-base of their environment.
Locke was an observer of nature who focused much of his work on natural philosophy. Based on the concept of tabula rasa, blank slate theory argues that we are born without any thoughts or opinions already developed.
This leaves a lasting effect on who they become. Modularity of the Mind : also known as mental modules and cognitive modules as described by Jerry Fodor, is a functional cluster of cognitive mechanisms that work together in the low levels of the mind to achieve certain low-level cognitive functions dedicated to information-processing, sensations and automatic motor functions.
Modules are fast, sparse of information, not under conscious control, and are specialized to handle one or two specific functions. For Example : A common system of all cognitive modules is known as Information Encapsulation. Information encapsulation is the idea that a system has restricted access to information that is stored outside of itself. An example of this is the muller-lyer illusion. Even if you know that both lines are the same length, our visual system of our brain that is modulated will still see the lines as different lengths beca use that system is affected by information encapsulation and thus has no access to the outside information telling us that the lines are in fact the same length.
As a cognitive scientist, Jerry Fodor was a proponent of nativism — a concept opposite of blank slate theory. Rather than agreeing with blank slate theory, Fordor believed that skills and abilities are present in the brain from birth , and that many of them would be impossible without genetic contribution prior to environmental experience.
The Modularity of Mind may have been his most impactful work. Style: MLA. More from Merriam-Webster on tabula rasa Britannica. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Love words? Need even more definitions? Just between us: it's complicated. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs.
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