Empiricism v. rationalism

The rationalist position was based on the philosophical writing of rene descartes, who held that certain human abilities, capacities, and ideas were innate.
The empiricists, whose earliest standard bearers were John Locke and David Hume, insisted that everything humans come to know including language is entirely explainable as sense-oriented, ‘’learned’’ behavior. The empiricists were adamant in denying the existence of innate ideas or germs of ideas. 

THE EMPIRICISTS:  Empiricists share the view that there is no such thing as innate knowledge, and that instead knowledge is derived from experience (either sensed via the five senses or reasoned via the brain or mind).  Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are empiricists (though they have very different views about metaphysics).

The rationalists:  Rationalists share the view that there is innate knowledge; they differ in that they choose different objects of innate knowledge.  Plato is a rationalist because he thinks that we have innate knowledge of the Forms [mathematical objects and concepts (triangles, equality, largeness), moral concepts (goodness, beauty, virtue, piety), and possibly color – he doesn’t ever explicitly state that there are Forms of colors]; Descartes thinks that the idea of God, or perfection and infinity, and knowledge of my own existence is innate; G.W. Leibniz thinks that logical principles are innate; and Noam Chomsky thinks that the ability to use language (e.g., language rules) is innate.