What I have to say in response to this question is just another form of the nature versus nurture debate. On one hand we have John Locke's idea of tabula rasa, where our mind is, at birth, a blank slate on which experience writes. To me this is a very logical idea. As someone who doesn't believe in a definitive god, it makes sense to think that we cannot inherently know anything. Instead, everything we know and think is a result of our life experiences. I can read and write because I went to school. Therefore I know things because I was taught them.
On the other hand is the very loud argument for innate knowledge. The best evidence that I can use to support this idea is IQ. Some people are naturally smarter than others. People with an ultra-high IQ seem to have a head start because they appear to inherently know more than the rest of us. But I've actually just started to see the flaw in this argument. What does IQ measure? Some studies day it measures our motivation to do well, but for the purposes of this argument I will use a different definition. I see intelligence tests as tests of pattern recognition and connection making. Those who are best at making connections score the highest. They are the most observant, the fastest thinkers, and the "smartest." So if people with high IQs are just more observant than the general population and can make more connections than us, they didn't start off already knowing more. They just had better tools to learn more.
By my own mis-shaped argument I would say that we know what we know by how fast and how well our brains can make connections between different pieces of knowledge, and that everything we know is learned.
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