 Having outlined these key scientific debates, we then turn to attempts by philosophers to understand those debates. Section 2 considers five alternative diagnoses of why nativism is the subject of so many scientific controversies. The first diagnosis is that scientists simply fail to appreciate the legitimate differences in explanatory emphasis across different sciences. The second diagnosis is that scientists disagree about whether certain cognitive traits are acquired by special (as opposed to general) purpose learning mechanisms. The third diagnosis sees the innateness concept as a disciplinary boundary marker between psychological and biological sciences. The fourth diagnosis claims that scientific debates are the result of a deeply muddled concept which conflates various properties that ought to be distinguished. The fifth diagnosis claims that scientific conceptions of innateness are easily conflated with a deeply unscientific vernacular conception that is grounded in folk essentialism.