John Locke's clean sweep theory

One of the main tasks of philosophy is to inquire about the nature of the human being, especially in relation to his mental life. How do we think and experience reality? In the seventeenth century the debate on this issue had two opposing sides: the rationalists and the empiricists.

One of the most important thinkers of the group of empiricists was John Locke, English philosopher who laid the foundations of the mechanistic conception of the human being. In this article we will see what were the general approaches to his philosophy and his clean slate theory.

• Related article: "How are Psychology and Philosophy alike?"

Who was John Locke?

John Locke was born in 1632 in an England that had already begun to develop a philosophical discipline separate from religion and the Bible. During his youth he received a good education, and in fact was able to complete his university training at Oxford.

On the other hand, also from a young age Locke was interested in politics and philosophy. It is in the first field of knowledge in which he excelled the most, and he wrote a lot about the concept of the social contract, as did other English philosophers such as 

Thomas Hobbes. However, beyond politics he also made important contributions to philosophy.

John Locke's clean sweep theory

What follows are the foundations of John Locke's philosophy regarding his conception of the human being and the human mind. In particular, we will see what role did the concept of the tabula rasa play in his thinking.

1. Innate ideas do not exist

Unlike the rationalists, Locke denied the possibility that we are born with mental schemes that provide us with information about the world. On the other hand, as a good empiricist, Locke defended the idea that knowledge is created through experience, with the succession of events that we live, which leaves a mark on our memories.

Thus, in practice Locke conceived of the human being as an entity that comes into existence with nothing in mind, a clean slate in which there is nothing written.

2. The variety of knowledge is reflected in different cultures

If innate ideas existed, then all human beings would share a part of their knowledge. However, in Locke's time it was already possible to know even through several books the different cultures spread throughout the world, and the similarities between peoples paled before the strange discrepancies that could be found even in the most basic: myths about the creation of the world, categories to describe animals, religious concepts, habits and customs, etc.

3. Babies don't show they know anything

This was another of the great criticisms against rationalism that Locke wielded. When they come into the world babies don't show they know anything, and they have to learn even the basics. This is evidenced by the fact that they cannot even understand the most basic words, nor do they recognize such basic dangers as fire or cliffs.

4. How is knowledge created?

As Locke believed that knowledge is built, he was obliged to explain the process by which that process occurs. That is to say, the way in which the clean slate gives way to a system of knowledge about the world.

According to Locke, experiences make a copy of what our senses capture in our mind. With the passage of time, we learn to detect patterns in those copies that remain in our mind, which makes the concepts appear. In turn, these concepts are also combined with each other, and from this process generate more complex and difficult to understand concepts at first. Adult life is governed by this last group of concepts, which define a form of superior intellect.

Criticisms of Locke's empiricism

John Locke's ideas are part of another age, and therefore there are many criticisms that we can direct against his theories. Among them is the way in which he raises his way of inquiring about the creation of knowledge. Although babies seem ignorant about almost everything, they have been shown to come into the world with certain predispositions to associate certain types of information from a determined way.

For example, seeing an object allows them to recognize it using only touch, which indicates that in their head they are already able to transform that original literal copy (the vision of the object) into anything else.

On the other hand, knowledge is not made up of more or less imperfect "copies" of what happened in the past, since memories constantly change, or even mix. This is something that the psychologist Elisabeth Loftus has already demonstrated: the strange thing is that a memory remains unchanged, and not the opposite.