The mind is born empty; all our ideas, even the most abstract, come from the senses.

Supports

Locke, Hume · An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Books I–II · 1689

Let us seek an idea that would be in us before any experience. The , God, identity, first principles, ought to be recognized by all; yet the child has none of them, and whole peoples have no notion of them.
Every idea one examines can be traced back to a received impression: take from a man born blind the experience of colors, and the very idea of color is missing. The mind forms nothing that it has not first drawn from the senses, or from reflection on its own operations.
Nothing, then, is in the understanding that was not first in the senses: the mind is at the start like a , an empty cabinet that experience alone comes to furnish.

Therefore So all knowledge derives from experience: our ideas are no innate treasure, but the deposit of what we have perceived.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

Not at all

Entirely

Put to the test

Problem