  As with most philosophical matters, Plato is the first in the Western tradition to address the innateness question directly and to work out some of its broader implications. The issue first comes up in the Meno, where he puts forth the doctrine of anamnesis, which holds that all learning is recollection, that everything we will ever learn is already in us before we are  taught.[3] According to this view, perception and inquiry remind us of what is innate in us. In the dialogue, Socrates supports this view by showing that by simply asking an uneducated slave the right questions, the slave can ‘discover for himself’ a version of the Pythagorean theorem. Socrates does not elaborate the anamnesis claim as much as we would like. Among other things, it is not clear what counts as knowledge in this context, what exactly is innate, or how the innate interacts with perception and/or inquiry to give rise to knowledge. Still, Nativists have treated the slave-episode in the Meno as a touchstone for their view (‘Platonism’ has at different times referred to the innateness doctrine). Apart from the interpretive problems just noted, the Meno has never been treated as a significant defense of Nativism, because it is too easy to doubt Socrates’ claim that the slave has not been told the solution. Skeptics see Socrates’ ‘questioning’ as really implicitly feeding the slave the right answers. The upshot is that the demonstration has remained famous as a pedagogical tour de force, but not as a compelling defense for the doctrine of recollection.