What is the philosophical idea of John Locke?
Q: What is the philosophical idea of John Locke?
A: The philosophical idea of John Locke is known as Blank Slate, or tabula rasa, which means that humans when born are thought not to have any mental experience or knowledge and that everything is learned after they grow. In particular, Locke thought all knowledge came from sense data and the mind is empty at the beginning.
Q: Who was William Godwin?
A: William Godwin was an economist and social liberal who argued for human perfectibility and enlightenment. He believed that our virtues and vices could be traced to the incidents which make up the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency then vice would be cut out from the world.
Q: Who was John B. Watson?
A: John B. Watson was a founder of behaviourism who famously said "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief."
Q: How did ethology prove much animal behaviour was inherited?
A: Ethology proved much animal behaviour was inherited by showing that certain behaviours were instinctual (innate) rather than learned through experience or environment. This ran against Locke's idea that all knowledge comes from sense data.
Q: What is evolutionary psychology?
A: Evolutionary psychology examines how evolution has impacted on our mental life by looking at how certain traits may have been inherited from our evolutionary past. It looks at how unconscious mental activity can help us get through life with an apparatus which performs this activity being inherited from previous generations.
Q: What did Konrad Lorenz argue about aggression in mankind?
A: Konrad Lorenz argued that aggression so obvious in the history of mankind was a playing out of behaviour which had evolutionary advantage in our past. He suggested it had been passed down through generations as part of their genetic makeup rather than being something learnt through experience or environment alone.
