British philosopher John Locke (1602–1704) was a proponent of empiricism. Empiricists believe that sensory experience is the primary source of knowledge and justified belief. For them, the main way for us to get to the truth of things is through our experience of the world. Empiricism thus is to be contrasted with rationalism, which is the view that reason is rather the primary source of knowledge. Rationalists believe that humans are capable of directly grasping the main truths about reality using thought alone.
The Latin phrase tabula rasa means ‘blank slate’, which is how Locke conceived of the state of the human mind at birth. In his view, we are born without any innate knowledge or rules for processing information. Our minds must therefore be shaped entirely from scratch, which leaves us absolutely free to determine the content of our own characters. | |||