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Tabula rasa (/ ˈ t æ b j ə l ə ˈ r ɑː s ə,-z ə, ˈ r eɪ-/; Latin for "blank slate") is the idea of individuals being born empty of any built-in mental content, so that all knowledge comes from later perceptions or sensory experiences.
Such usage is similar to multiword file names written for operating systems and applications that are confused by embedded space codes—such file names instead use an underscore (_) as a word separator, as_in_this_phrase. Another such symbol was U+2422 ␢ BLANK SYMBOL. This was used in the early years of computer programming when writing on ...
Blank slate is the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content. Blank slate may also refer to: "Blank Slate" (The Outer Limits), a 1999 television episode; The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, a 2002 psychology book; Blank Slate, a 2005 manga written and illustrated by Aya Kanno
In the philosophy of mind, innatism is the view that the mind is born with already-formed ideas, knowledge, and beliefs. The opposing doctrine, that the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth and all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses, is called empiricism.
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He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa, although he did not use those actual words) filled later through experience. The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley .
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in which the author makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social sciences, arguing that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations.