’t draw it from his senses. He didn’t make the idea of God he says the idea was imprinted on him. He makes the conclusion by stating, “Thus the only option remaining is that this idea is innate in me just as the idea of myself is innate in me.” God imprints the innate idea of Him on us at birth and that is why we know of God. An example of this is how a craftsman imprints his signature on his work. Descartes says he gets innate ideas from God because God instills the idea of himself onto us, which is an innate idea.The next argument on innate ideas comes from John Locke. He was a British Empiricist who believed in Imperialism. Imperialism means what is available to the senses. Locke’s ideas come from the furniture of the mind-you don’t come to earth with an idea; you are a blank tablet ready to absorb any idea that comes your way. Locke believes that ideas come from the senses. He states that you will see the world how it is unless something is wrong with your senses. The way you know the world is from your senses. He says in his argument that principles and ideas are not innate. As you live on the earth you get ideas through life experiences. If people believe that innate ideas exist, that must mean that there are innate ideas. Locke says there are two candidates for innate ideas: the law of identity (A=A) and the law of non-contradiction which means a thing is A or it is not A, it cannot be both. He says that all children and idiot’s don’t posses these. People don’t have these ideas at birth because they aren’t innate ideas. The same goes for idiots. This proves that people don’t have innate ideas. He also says that universal consent proves nothing to be innate. His argument says, “argument of universal consent which is made use of to prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none: because there are none to which all m...
