Nativism and Plato’s Epistemology: Knowledge, Awareness, and Innate True Belief in the Meno

Abstract

Abstract This article provides a rigorous defense of innate true belief in the Meno, to my knowledge, the first of its kind. While several commentators have proposed innate true belief in the past, the position has never been defended or explained in detail. Instead, the most thorough discussions of Plato’s innatism have opted for different innate objects. I defend my proposal against these recent alternatives by showing that the passages often thought to imply innate knowledge can arguably be better read in other ways. I then argue that they should be so read, because of an “awareness condition” Plato had on knowledge at the time.