09_29_15

Explain Meno’s paradox, and Socrates’ proposed solution, i.e. the theory of recollection. Socrates thinks that a consequence of the theory of recollection is that the soul is immortal. How important is this claim to Socrates’ solution to the paradox?

Meno and Socrates dialogue

The dialogue starts with Meno’s question: “can virtue be taught” (Meno 70a). If Socrates’ answer is yes, Meno would like Socrates to teach him virtue. As always Socrates insists that he knows nothing and cannot teach anything: “I blame myself for my complete ignorance about virtue. If I do not know what something is, how could I know what qualities it possesses? Or do you think that someone who does not know who Meno is could know whether he is good-looking or rich or well-born, or the opposite of these”(Meno 71b)? He would love to go on a discussion about the definition of “virtue” with Meno before they talk about the original question. Meno is quite confident and gives several attempts to define “virtue,” but Socrates rejects them all. In the middle of the discussion, Meno loses his temple and regards Socrates as a "broad torpedo fish”, which numbs or paralyzes its prey so that it cannot make any move". He refers Socrates' speech as "bewitching" and "beguiling", which does not lead him to “perplexity” but confusion. In reply to Meno’s sarcasm, Socrates says that he cannot be the “torpedo fish” when he is as confused and clueless as Meno in this discussion about virtue. He adds that the torpedo fish only paralyze its prey, but not itself. Socrates' reply seems reasonable, but somehow suspicious. In the beginning he indicates that he has no knowledge on the subject they discuss, no skill to teach anything, and no tendency to coach Meno. However, the way he leads the discussion itself is a process of inquiry, of what both of them do not know: “virtue” (Moline 155).

At the end of this discussion, neither of them is able to draw a satisfying conclusion. Meno admits that he does not know about the subject of his own question. At this time, he asks Socrates: “How will you look for it, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know”(Meno 80d)? Here, “it” refers to “virtue” in the text. However, since Meno agrees with Socrates “virtue is a kind of knowledge,” this sequence of questions can be generalized to cover any claim about knowledge (Rohatyn 69).

These questions ask for not only the ways of acquiring knowledge, but also how we came by the original knowledge that helps us identify the unknown versus the known. If the only way to find out the true knowledge of something is to know a part of it, where do we learn this portion? Little by little we will eventually trace to the origin of knowledge: the simplest thing we learn at first that helps us recognize the more complex issues. What kind of process do we need to undergo to acquire the knowledge of these simple things from knowing nothing? Socrates did not directly answer the question, but in his recollection theory he suggests that the “learning” process only happens in the ideal world, where the soul “learns” knowledge without sense perceptions. Hence, the soul sees without eyes and instantly knows the knowledge when they encounter regardless of its level of sophistication (Meno 81d).

Meno’s paradox comes from the following syllogism (Socrates Theory of Recollection):

1. “If one knows, inquiry of the known is unnecessary”,

2. “If one does not know, inquiry of the unknown is impossible”,

3. “Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible”.

With these three remarks, Meno does not purposely state, suggest, or intend a paradox. In a logical sense, a paradox usually takes the form of one question and a claim about a forced but unacceptable option in answering it. While Meno's "paradox" consists of three questions without any answers. It does not include any claim. In etymological sense, Meno's remark does not make a paradox either, since it connotes no strangeness. If one is really confused and ignorant concerning the object he is pursuing, he should not know where to begin his inquiry. Although Meno does not know the meaning of “virtue,” he at least knows to come to Socrates for a dialogue that might lead to an answer. For example, if a person has no idea what a word means, but he knows he would be able to find a definition of the word from a dictionary, we cannot say he is totally ignorant. He might not know what exactly the inquiry is, but he has a clue on the method that might get him to the answer. In this case, Socrates is like Meno’s dictionary. He might not be able to give Meno a positive answer, but his questions and words lead Meno closer to the answer they are looking for (Moline 157).

Suppose these three remarks are true, in a short term, the paradox indicates that Meno and Socrates' inquiry is meaningless. They cannot define "virtue," so they do not know what to look for, thus they cannot answer the original question: "can virtue be taught?" In the long term, the paradox indicates that no knowledge can be learned through any kind of inquiry at all. Since learning requires previous knowledge about the subject. If one has no clue what he is looking for, he is definitely not going to find an answer (Plato’s Theory of Recollection in Short).

One possible answer to the paradox is that between knowing and ignorance there is a third state: “aporia”, which is: knowing that one doesn’t know and willing to find out the answer. Another answer is the best-known Socrates’ theory of recollection.

Socrates’ solution

Socrates, after hearing Meno’s “paradox,” does not agree or restate Meno's words. He rephrases it for his own purposes in the dialogue: “ . . . that a man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know” (Meno, 80e). Since people cannot really “learn” knowledge in his recent life, Socrates proposes that all knowledge one can possibly gain is from recollection of memories. He provides the theory that every person owns knowledge in his or her immortal soul. The soul has been in a world in which pure theoretical knowledge exists. However, when the soul enters the body (when a person is born), he or she forgets the knowledge. The process to gain back knowledge is through what Socrates calls “recollection”(Meno 81d).

After proposing the theory, Socrates uses an experiment to show how the recollection works. Socrates calls a slave boy and asks if he knows what a square is like. He confirms that the slave boy knows some basic qualities of a square: its four sides are equal; lines through the middle point are equal; etc. Then, Socrates draws a 2 feet by 2 feet square. He confirms with the slave boy that this square has a 4 square feet area, and then he asks the boy what the length of the sides be if he wants a square with area 8 square feet. The boy gives out a wrong answer: he simply doubles the side. However, his solution with 4 feet sides will create a square with an area of 16 square feet instead of 8 square feet. To help the boy realize his mistake, Socrates does not tell him that he is absolutely wrong. They started with the boy’s square with 4 feet sides and worked back. Finally, the boy realizes that he just needs to connect the middle point of the 4 feet sides. In this way he gets the 8 square feet without calculating the length of the sides (Meno 82c). According to Socrates, that the slave by himself, gradually comes out with the correct solution of the math problem is a proof of the recollection theory: since the slave boy hasn’t learned geometry in his current life, the soul of the slave has to know the answer before the boy is born. So that Socrates is not teaching him but only helping him recall that memory.

Importance of the claim that “soul is immortal”

In fact, Socrates never actually answered Meno’s question: “How will you look for knowledge, when you do not know at all what it is?” By proposing, “Soul is immortal and has already possessed all the pure true knowledge,” Socrates basically is saying there is no such process of “learning.” His theory claims that before the soul meets the body, it gains all the knowledge from an ideal world, so that it does not have to see or touch to learn. However, this might as well just be an easy way to avoid answering the question: how does the soul learn?

Consider if Socrates’ claim that “soul is immortal” is true. And our souls eventually go back to the ideal world after bodies die. Then what is the point of all the inquiry for knowledge when one’s alive if we will know everything easily in the ideal world? Socrates' explanation is that although our soul will last, it would not be “us” since the personalities die with the body. In current life we should not stop inquiring as much as possible, and recall as much as memories from the soul. Socrates does not want people to follow Meno’s views that there is no possible way to learn, since “it would make us idle, and fainthearted men like to hear it.” He believes that inquiry is neither unnecessary nor impossible, and it is the only way to make people “energetic and keen on the search” (Rohatyn 71). Through this kind of inquiry, “we will be better men, braver and less idle” (Meno 86c). In other words, weather “the soul is immortal”, or “the soul has possession of all pure knowledge,” was not Socrates’ main focus. He is telling people that we should believe that there is a way we can find out the right answer and gain knowledge, instead of accepting it is impossible to find out what we do not know (Meno 86c).