Abstract:Is there anything in the mind that was not first in the senses? According to the received view, the French empiricist Étienne Bonnot de Condillac's (1714-1780) answer to this was a firm "No". Unlike Locke, who accepted the existence of innate faculties, Condillac rejected the existence of all innate structure and instinctive behaviours. Everything, therefore, is learned. In this article, I argue that from at least the writing of his 1754 Traité des sensations, this reading fails to capture the true nature of h… Show more
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