Talking about Empiricists and Rationalists - the latter believe that we are born with some ideas and concepts that are innate. Locke rejects this idea and considers Man at birth to be a Tabula Rasa - A blank tablet on which man's experiences writes out whatever knowledge he acquires through his senses.
I feel like agreeing with Locke in this aspect because a human baby (in contrast to the young of other animals) does not seem to have an awareness of what is perilous to its safety. I had read many years back that a small child of about 6 to 8 months tried to grasp at a passing cobra somewhere in Tamil Nadu, India and was repeatedly bitten. It did not seem to have an awareness that a cobra is dangerous. Hence there appear to be no truths available to humans at birth. Further, as has been told by many others, such a presence of ideas would have resulted in UNIVERSAL IDEAS found in people of all cultures at all times. Even the idea of God and divinity is not universal in the sense that it is not held to be true universally by all people at all times. Rather, as I've expressed earlier in my blog, much of mythology varies quite sharply from culture to culture.
At this some people may cite the example of mathematics - that 2+2 is 4 and 7+5 is 12 in India, Peru, Qatar and Greenland. But if you look into it, these truths are the way humans EXPERIENCE the universe in different parts of the world! These basic truths are experiential to begin with and only later is it that reason is applied. But yes! As I said earlier, reason may then proceed on its own steam to discover further mathematical truths, but what I am stressing here is that Man does not seem to be born with innate ideas even though he may have found truths that are universal. These truths are rather derived from the commonality of experience and the common way in which man experiences the universe.
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