What is a blank slate?

0:00 Welcome to Philosophy is not boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. If you haven't already, tap follow wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Now, Finn, I want you to picture a brand new tiny baby, maybe just a few days old.

0:19 Oh, I love babies. They're so small and squishy, but they mostly just sleep, cry, and drink milk. Exactly.

0:28 They don't do much on the outside. But have you ever looked closely into a newborn's eyes and wondered what is actually going on in their head?

0:37 I guess I always figured there wasn't much going on yet. Like elevator music in their brain. They don't know any words, and they don't even know they have hands.

0:46 It's true, but that leads to one of the biggest questions humans have ever asked. How much of you was already there on the day you were born?

0:55 What do you mean? Like, did I already know things?

0:59 Right. Are we born knowing absolutely nothing at all, like an empty notebook? Or do we arrive in the world with some ideas and rules already built into our minds?

1:10 Oh wow, I've never thought about that. If I didn't know anything, how did I get to be me?

1:17 That is the exact puzzle we are diving into today. Get ready, because we are going to explore the mind of a baby. To understand this, we need to travel back to the year 1689. That is way back. Did they even have pencils then? They used quills and ink. And in England, there was a very famous philosopher named John Locke.

1:41 And he was really chewing on this exact question.

1:45 Did John Locke have a lot of babies to study?

1:48 He didn't have any children of his own, actually. But he was fascinated by how human beings learn things. And he wanted to push back against a very popular idea at the time. What was the popular idea? Back then, powerful people, like kings, believed that certain ideas were planted in us from birth, including the idea that kings were naturally meant to rule over everyone else.

2:15 Wait, they just told people, you were born knowing I'm the boss. That doesn't seem fair at all.

2:22 Locke agreed. He argued that nobody is born with special ideas already inside them. He said that a baby's mind is like a completely blank sheet of white paper. Totally blank. Nothing written on it at all. Exactly. Today, this idea is known by a famous Latin phrase, tabula rasa, which means blank slate.

2:48 So he thought a newborn baby is just completely empty on the inside.

2:53 He said the baby arrives knowing nothing. And every single idea, memory, or thought that baby will ever have is written onto that white paper by their experiences in the world.

3:07 By what happens to them?

3:09 Yes. By what they see, hear, touch, smell, and taste.

3:14 Okay, but what does that actually mean for me? How does a blank slate learn everything?

3:20 Well, think about tasting a super sour lemon. You know how your face automatically squishes up from the sourness?

3:28 Yeah, it makes my eyes water just thinking about it.

3:32 But Locke would say a newborn has no idea what sour is. That idea doesn't exist in their mind until they literally taste a lemon. The world has to write it on their slate.

3:43 I guess that makes sense. You can't know sour if you've never tasted it. If I never saw a strawberry in my whole life, I could never dream about a strawberry.

3:53 Exactly. Locke also pointed out that if someone is born completely blind, they can never truly imagine what the colour red looks like. Oh wow. Because their mind never got that visual experience drawn onto their paper. Right. If the world doesn't show it to you, you can't think it.

4:20 But hold on, that can't be 100% right. Why not? What about crying? Babies cry really loudly the very second they are born. Nobody taught them how to do that. They haven't experienced anything yet.

4:34 That is a brilliant catch, Finn. Loc knew babies had physical instincts, like breathing, swallowing, and crying.

4:43 Good, because I was really worried. It would be terrifying if they had to learn how to breathe from scratch.

4:49 Totally! But Locke meant they have no thoughts or ideas built in. According to him, your actual personality is entirely created by the things that happened to you. But let's fast forward almost 300 years to the 1950s.

5:05 Did someone figure out that Locke was wrong?

5:08 An American linguist named Noam Chomsky definitely thought so. A linguist? That's someone who studies languages, right? You got it. Chomsky watched how little kids learn to talk, and he noticed something weird that completely broke the blank slate idea. Ooh, what was it?

5:27 Did babies secretly know words before they were born?

5:31 Not words, but grammar. Chomsky pointed out that children learn the complicated rules of language far too fast to be starting from a blank page.

5:41 Wait, but it takes toddlers years to talk properly.

5:44 Sure, but think about how they do it. Toddlers don't just act like parrots, repeating exactly what they hear. They invent brand new sentences.

5:54 Oh, like when I was little, my mum said I used to say things like, I eated all my peas, or, look at the mouses.

6:03 Yes, that is the perfect example. No adult ever says eated or mouses.

6:10 Right, my parents would say ate and mice, so I couldn't have copied eat it from them. The world didn't write it on my slate.

6:17 Exactly. You figured out the invisible rule for the past tense, adding an E D sound, and you applied it yourself. Chomsky said you couldn't do that if you were just a blank slate copying the outside world. So how did I do it? Chomsky argued that human brains come with a built-in app for language. He called it universal grammar.

6:40 The slate isn't blank, it comes with some invisible lines already printed on it.

6:45 I really like that idea. It means a little piece of me was already there when I was born.

6:50 Yes, and that's why this old debate is so important to how you see yourself today. How do you mean? Well, the next time you react to something, maybe you get really mad about something being unfair, or you find you are just naturally good at drawing.

7:06 Oh, I can ask myself, did I learn this from the world around me, or was this built into my hardware from day one? Was I born with extra bravery built into my heart?

7:17 Exactly! Philosophers and scientists call this the nature versus nurture debate, and they are still arguing about it right now.

7:26 That is kind of amazing. Nobody actually knows the complete answer.

7:30 Nope, but here's a mind-bending fact to chew on. Scientists sometimes study identical twins who were separated at birth and raised in totally different families.

7:42 Oh, to see if they end up the same anyway, even with a different world writing on their slate.

7:48 Yes, and they found that even though their lives were completely different, separated twins often share weirdly similar habits, like sneezing the exact same way, or loving the exact same unusual foods?

8:03 That is spooky. That makes it seem like Chomsky was right, and a lot of things are just completely built in from the start. Alright, Finn, it's quiz time. Okay, I'm ready. My slate is definitely not blank anymore. First question.

8:18 Which English philosopher argued that a baby's mind is like a completely blank piece of white paper? Next one. What is the famous Latin phrase used to describe this idea, which means blank slate? Question three. According to John Locke, where do all of our ideas and thoughts come from? Here's number four.

8:51 Which American linguist argued that humans actually have built-in rules for language? Last question. What did this linguist call the built-in language app in our brains? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is John Locke. For question two, the phrase is tabula rasa. The answer to question three is from our experiences, like seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting.

9:27 Question four, that was Noam Chomsky. And the final answer is universal grammar.

9:34 Wow! So Locke thought we were a totally empty page, and Chomsky thought we came with an instruction manual already inside us. Pretty much.

9:43 It's so cool to think about how much of your mind was already waiting there, and how much is completely yours to write every single day.

9:51 I'm going to go write some more awesome stuff on my slate right now.

9:55 Before you do, listeners, if you loved wondering about the blank slate with us today, please leave us a five-star review. Yeah, just scroll down and tap the stars. It really helps out the show. And make sure you tap follow wherever you are listening, so new episodes turn up on their own.

10:12 Oh, and we have sister shows too. History and science is not boring, and maths is not boring. Go give those a listen and a follow as well.

10:21 Want your name on the show? Send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com. See you next time on Philosophy is not boring. Bye, everyone!