strengths of the idea that knowledge is innate.

Intro: a belief that, as Leibniz said, there are ‘veins in the marble.’
We are born with some knowledge of some things, Plato argued maths, ethics and The Good. Descartes believed we have innate knowledge of God.
Strength : certainty
Descartes believed that we should not trust out sense experiences as they could be being placed in our minds by a demonic imp. With this theory, we don’t have to. We don’t have to doubt what we think. Eg according to him, we can be sure of God. We have an innate notion of God as a ‘supremely perfect being.’

or

Rationalists believe in innate knowledge which is knowledge we learn prior to experience, a priori. When we are born we have been ‘pre-packaged with software’. This software could be about the knowledge of Maths, Ethics, The Good, God and causality. Plato illustrated how human beings must have innate knowledge of maths through the illustration of Aristotle asking a slave with no education about geometry. The slave knew how to do the geometry therefore Plato argued that we must have innate knowledge of Maths. This reiterates the idea that as human beings we must have an awareness of Maths as well as other things before we are born, which is innate knowledge.

The first strength is the amount of certainty that is reached through innate knowledge regarding the way the world is. We can only be certain of the evidence in our own mental states and not that of experience, as we can be certain about our ideas but uncertain about the physical world. In Kantian terms; we can only know the phenomenal (our own minds) and not the noumental (external world). . One thought experiment that makes us sceptical of the physical world is Descartes hypothetical Demonic Imp, this explains that the physical world could be ‘merely delusions of dreams’ and there could be a meddling Cartesian demonic imp ‘to ensnare our judgement’. Our idea of the physical world is very clouded and uses only our judgement.
Another example is Plato’s allegory of the cave. Those trapped in the cave believe that projections and shadows on the cave wall to be the physical world, as this is what they have experienced. However, our certainty of the physical world lies in our innate ideas of ethics, reason and memory.

Another strength is through us living in a post-Freudian age, we as a society have become more comfortable with ‘hidden’ or ‘unconscious’ knowledge than Locke was. Although we don’t understand why we do all the things we do, we have learnt to recognise that something’s are motivated by things we don’t understand or know. Therefore we may have innate knowledge of the world and just not know until we have discovered it through reason.

or

A strength of the innate idea is the argument is the example of maths. Plato explains the story of Socrates and the slave, in which the slave had no prior education but still managed to understand basic shapes. This follows on from the idea that we all have a basic understanding of shape and geometry from birth. This is related to the theory that maths exists even if nothing else does and it is the one constant in the universe. This idea of maths adds strength to the argument of innate knowledge since it is very difficult to argue that it was 'taught' to the slave - therefore this knowledge was innate?