In philosophy and psychology, an innate idea is a concept or item of knowledge which is said to be universal to all humanity—that is, something people are born with rather than something people have learned through experience.
The issue is controversial, and can be said to be an aspect of a long-running nature versus nurture debate, albeit one localized to the question of understanding human cognition.
Read more about this topic: Innatism
Famous quotes containing the words innate and/or idea:
“No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)
“You know what the Englishman’s idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)