There are arguments for and against the possibility of infants knowing anything before coming into the world.
The argument centres on the fact that certain things are known intrinsically/innately by infants. For this view, it is believed that the idea of God for instance is intrinsic/innate.
The idea of fear, happiness and smiling are something infants do without being taught. Or can it be argued that a child who has no experience with life knows what needs to happen in his/her life before his/her ability to smile is triggered?
These things comes naturally. There are instances where infants are sleeping but smiled in the process. You wonder if anyone taught the baby how to smile.
With the above, some are of the view that humans have intrinsic/innate knowledge. By innate knowledge, they mean we come to the world with certain knowledge.
This is not a knowledge we learn after being born into the world but something we came into the world with.
This idea is sometimes used to justify our idea of God. Some believe that the idea of God is something we are born with.
This idea is linked with the rationalist scholars. By rationalist, i mean those who believe we know things by reason and intuition. For them, every of our knowledge are independent of what we perceive.
This view was later rejected by John Locke. Locke, an empiricist, finds this argument absurd.
Empiricism is the view that knowledge is obtained via perception/experiences/senses. It is the believe that human knowledge depend on our five senses. The sense of touching, seeing, smelling, hearing and tasting. They believe these senses serve as the foundation of knowledge.
Locke argues that humans cannot know anything other than what the senses teaches them.
Locke argued that human brain at birth is tabu la rasa - a black slate. For him, our brain was a blank slate at birth which experience writes on.
So for him, whatever we know, we know it through experiences.
On how an infant come to know anything, he argues that it is through first hand experiences.
The sense of taste for instance is activated after a child tasted his/her mother breast milk. This sense of taste is activated and it is only about sweetness.
The sense of bitterness is activated after the baby taste something bitter. So for some babies, once it is sweet, they gladly accept it and once it is bitter, they reject. This is sometimes seen from their reluctant in accepting anything coming into their mouth. They want to be sure that it is sweet before accepting it totally.
Locke goes further to use fire to drive home his point. He argued that no child knows that the nature of fire is hotness. Every child, he argues, knows this after putting their hands in fire. It is possible that the mother will keep shouting 'hot' but the baby has no idea but sees the face of his/her mother showing he/she should not touch it. But baby touches anything and as such, he/she will learn not to near fire after experiencing its hotness.
So Locke argues that nobody has such experience from birth. Man is born with an empty slate which only experience writes on. These experiences becomes what we regard today as knowledge.
While Locke argument looks plausible, it should be noted that human cannot be said to possess any knowledge from child birth.
Except we want to argue that crying is a knowledge because many babies cry once they come into the world. If we argue this, then we should be ready ask why many children don't cry after coming into the world?
If we accept that some don't cry, can we argue also that some are not born with such 'innate' knowledge of crying? Would this not collapse all our arguments in support of innatism?
Locke argument suggest to us that we learn that which we know as infants from experience and i agree with him on that but I refuse to agree further that all our knowledge as human beings are limited to our experiences.
As humans, we have intuitive capability and this gives us edge and opportunity to reason out of the box. It makes us different from one another. The opportunity to think and reason independently is what defines us as human beings.
It is that part of us that shows we are beyond the lower animals. As human, we know we are unique and this is evident in our ability to produce with some sense of creativity.
Thanks for your time. I am 