Bill,

There's so much wrong with what you're saying. Where to begin?

"Or perhaps you are referring to Rand's opposition to the racist view that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry."

You don't seem to have a basic grasp of what racism is. It is a well known fact there is by far more variance in intelligence (and just about any other trait) within a race than between races.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas -- or of inherited knowledge -- which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.
. . . .
Modern racists attempt to prove the superiority or inferiority of a given race by the historical achievements of some of its members. The frequent historical spectacle of a great innovator who, in his lifetime, is jeered, denounced, obstructed, persecuted by his countrymen, and then, a few years after his death, is enshrined in a national monument and hailed as a proof of the greatness of the German (or French or Italian or Cambodian) race -- is as revolting a spectacle of collectivist expropriation, perpetrated by racists, as any expropriation of material wealth perpetrated by communists.

Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. ("Racism," The Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 126, 127)

This idea above, while perhaps used by racist types, is in fact not racist at all. Reality is such that any trait that one can measure almost always shows a stronger link with genetics than environment.

You wrote in an earlier post:

Rand is also correct that one's characterological traits are not produced and transmitted by one's internal body chemistry, since these are the result of one's choices, which depend on one's knowledge and values.

then

I've already explained what she means by "intellectual" and "characterological" in this context and why, given the meanings she attaches to these terms, what she says is true. Are you now telling me that despite its truth, her statement is totally useless - that it does not communicate her opposition to racism, which was its original intent?

Opposition to racism can be argued quite well logically, but not with this argument. Yes I am telling you that the statement is useless because it CANNOT be wrong because according to you, or Rand, or both - whatever, the statement cannot be false be the meanings attached to these terms is DEFINED as "that which is not inherited".

to be precise with your words

The term "character" refers to those elements, particularly those involving ethics and morality, that are open to a person's choice, and what is open to a person's choice is not inherited.

and

The term "intellectual" in this context does not refer to intelligence but to philosophical values. Rand is also correct that one's characterological traits are not produced and transmitted by one's internal body chemistry, since these are the result of one's choices, which depend on one's knowledge and values.

Again you define all meaning and logic out of your argument - classic begging the question fallacy - again.

In case you (and others) might have forgotten, begging the question assumes the conclusion in the premises. Your/Rand's argument boils down to the assertion that "Uninheritable traits are not inherited" and has no argumentative or logical value.

I am not arguing that we are born with external knowledge, at least in the sense where knowledge = facts as in your examples.

However, we certainly "know" things when we are born. We know how to eat, we know how to learn, and so on. In addition, we are also born with quite strong character/personality tendencies and traits that are strongly inherited.

My problem is that the concept of tabula rasa is wrong (on face value) or must have knowledge "defined" so narrowly as to beg the question. My contention is that Rand's brand of tabula rasa has no logical value or basis.

A sensation of hunger will tell [man] that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as "hunger"), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available -- but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no "instincts" will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge..." ("The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 21)