Inborn Knowledge: The Mystery Within

An argument that nativism is true and important but mysterious, examining the particular case of ideas of sensible qualities.

In this book, Colin McGinn presents a concise, clear, and compelling argument that the origins of knowledge are innate—that nativism, not empiricism, is correct in its theory of how concepts are acquired. McGinn considers the particular case of sensible qualities—ideas of color, shape, taste, and so on. He argues that these, which he once regarded as the strongest cas...