This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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The 17th century French philosopher René Descartes, who is often referred to as the father of modern philosophy,

was primarily concerned with questions around epistemology, what can we know and how can we know it.

There are some things, Descartes believed, that we can know independent of experience,

that is we don't get knowledge of them through our

experience of the world, through interacting with the world. Intuitively, that sounds

a bit odd, but Colin the Gin believes Descartes position is very plausible, though for reasons Descartes didn't fully grasp.

Colin McGinn, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

I'm very glad to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on today is Descartes and innate knowledge.

Perhaps we could begin by just saying what you mean by innate.

Inate knowledge is simply knowledge which isn't acquired,

and more specifically it's not acquired by experience

and usually when people say that they mean it's not acquired through sense experience so it doesn't

derive from seeing things hearing things, and anyway from the environment.

It entirely comes from within the subject or the organism and not from outside the organism.

Could you give an example of that?

Well, it's controversial what is innate and what is not

innate the cases which most people have thought to be innate usually things like

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