Tabula rasa

Tabula rasa (Latin: scraped tablet or clean slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.

Proponents of tabula rasa favor "nurture" in the nature versus nurture debate. Modern genetic research finds that genes have a significant effect on personal characteristics. Some traits are more strongly influenced by experience, such as one's language, religion or some elements of sexual identity, and other traits are more strongly influenced by genes, such as IQ, alcoholism, or certain other elements of sexual identity.