Tabula Rasa
Definition
Tabula Rasa is Latin for "blank slate." It refers to the idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that all their knowledge comes from experience or perception.
Analogy
Think of your mind as an empty hard drive when you're born. As you grow and experience things, data gets written onto it - this is how you learn about the world according to tabula rasa theory.
Related terms
Innate Ideas: These are ideas that are present in the mind from birth (the opposite of tabula rasa). They're like pre-installed software on your computer.
Empiricism: Again, this theory emphasizes experience as the primary source of knowledge. If tabula rasa is your blank hard drive, empiricism would be adding files to it through experiences.
Behaviorism: This psychological approach suggests all behaviors are learned through interaction with environment. Like programming responses into a robot based on different inputs or situations.
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