MENO'S PARADOX AND THE THEORY OF RECOLLECTION

Plato Thinking About the Afterlife

 

 

Plato's Meno: Paradox and Solution

 

In the dialogue Meno, Plato writes that after repeated failures to provide Socrates with an adequate definition of virtue, the character Meno complains that Socrates may not be able to inquire about virtue at all.  If we know what virtue is, then there is no need to inquire about it.  If we don’t know what it is, then “even if you do happen to bump right into it, how do you know that it is the thing you did not know?”  Plato has Socrates rephrase Meno’s complaint as follows: 

 …it is not possible for a person to inquire about what he knows, or about what he does not know.  After all, he wouldn’t inquire about what he knows—once he knows it, and there is no need to inquire about something like that— or about what he does not know—since he does not know what he is to inquire about.  (80e)

Scholars call this Meno’s Paradox. We might all agree that if we already know the definition of virtue, then there is no need to inquire about the definition.  It is the second option that troubles us.  If we do not know what virtue is, then how are we to go about our inquiry?  How will we know when we have found correct or incorrect answers to our question about the nature of virtue?  It is like being told to find the length of the third side of a triangle having a perimeter of 50 with two sides equal in length and the third side having a length that is more than 5 times that of the equal sides.  How will we know the correct answer when we come across it?   If we happen to bump into the correct number how will we know that it (20) is correct rather than some other number (15 or 25)?    

Socrates accepts the challenge. He responds by making a number of claims.  Let us look at these by using the following strategy. We will begin by locating the main conclusion(s) of the argument(s) that Socrates advances (What is he attempting to prove?)  Next, we will identify the reasons (if any) provided by Socrates for the conclusion reached, showing how he moves from these reasons (premises) to the conclusion.  This will prepare the groundwork for any criticisms we wish to make.  Does Socrates succeed?  Is the proof logically sound?  Are the premises true?  Do the premises support the conclusion?  Finally, we might want to show how we would answer the same question, taking care of the reasons that we think support an alternative solution.

 

Here are the main conclusions that Socrates advances in his ensuing dialogue with Meno:  

1.     If learning something new is unnecessary or impossible (as proved by Meno’s Paradox), then it must be that what we (mistakenly) think we are learning for the first time is actually something we already know, and we are merely recollecting what we already know.

2.     If we are recollecting what we already know, then we either acquire the knowledge we are recollecting in this life or in a previous life.

3.     There is no evidence that we acquire the knowledge in this life.

4.     Therefore, we must have acquired what we know in a life that is previous to this life.

5.     If we lived a previous life, then we lived it as a disembodied soul.

6.     The soul is immortal (meaning that it will never cease to exist).

Socrates supports premise 2 with an explanation of how it is possible to inquire about that which we do not know.  His solution is the theory of recollection.  We are able to inquire (or learn) because inquiry is a process of recollecting what we already know but have forgotten.  Plato attempts to prove this to Meno by means of his interview of a slave-boy.  He asks several questions that lead the young boy, who has never been taught geometry, to recognize that a particular geometrical theorem must be true: A square whose area is twice that of a given square is the square on the diagonal of the given square.   Let us refer to this theorem as P, and put the time of day at which tSocrates questions the slave-boy at 10 am, and the time the boy acquires the knowledge that P is true at 10:30 am.  Socrates then proposes the following argument[i] as valid:

a.       At 10:00 am it appears that the boy does not know that P. 

b.       At 10:30 am, after being asked a long series of questions, the boy knows that P. 

c.       The boy does not acquire the knowledge that P during the interval between 10:00 and 10:30 am.

Socrates thinks that (b) is obviously correct, since it is only at 10:30 am that the boy can give proof that P is true. And he thinks that (c) is correct since Socrates did not do any “teaching” - he only asked questions.  But (b) and (c) entail that what appears to be true in (a) is not true - at 10:00 am the boy must have known ‘that P’, since he knows it at 10:30 am and didn’t acquire the knowledge in the interval between 10:00 and 10:30 am.

 

If (a) is mistaken, then the boy did know ‘that P’ before Socrates began asking his questions.  The questions asked by Socrates must have caused the slave-boy to recollect, that is the slave-boy recovers the knowledge “from inside himself” (85d).  Since no one has ever taught the boy geometry (according to Meno), he did not get this knowledge in his present life.  Hence, he must have got it at some other time, “at that time, then, when he was not a human being” (86a).  

 

The general conclusion of the discussion is that we can inquire about the nature of virtue, and we can do this in the same way that the slave-boy comes to profess true beliefs about the geometrical theorem P.  There are true beliefs in us about the nature of virtue. 

These beliefs can only result in knowledge after we are subjected to a process of questioning, and we recollect these beliefs.  As to the metaphysical question about when we originally acquired these beliefs Socrates pronounces that they have always been in us.  “For it is clear that for all time we either are or are not human beings… Then if the truth about the things that are is always in our soul, the soul is immortal.”

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[i]       I owe both the construction of this argument and the comments following it to Professor S. Marc Cohen (Lecture notes, University of Washington, 2016). 

 

EUTHYPHRO: EXAMPLES OF SOCRATIC METHOD, Part 1

From https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01I5GAIJI

 

Part 1 Examples are not Definitions

Plato sets the scene of Euthyphro outside the courthouse in Athens.   Socrates is there to hear an indictment brought against him by a young man named Meletus.  Upon his arrival, Socrates is surprised to run into a prophet[1] he knows named Euthyphro. Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is there to bring a prosecution against his own father for the crime of murder.   Socrates is understandably astounded that anyone would do such a thing (4b) . Euthyphro admits that his relatives feel the same way, but he argues that it should make no difference whether the killer is his father or a stranger: "the sole consideration should be whether the killer killed justly or not.  If he did, let him go; if he didn't— prosecute” (4b).

Euthyphro explains to Socrates the facts that led him to prosecute his father (4c-4d).  The man that his father killed was a day laborer of his -- "he worked the land for us."  This man got drunk one day and, in a rage,  he cut the throat of one of Euthyphro's household slaves.[2]   Euthyphro's father tied him up and threw the killer in a ditch until he could find out from the authorities what should be done with him.  He did not give the man any food or clothing for protection against the elements because he did not care whether he lived or died while they were waiting.  "And that's just what happened: hunger, cold, and being tied up caused his death" (4e).  

Euthyphro's father and other relatives are angry with Euthyphro for prosecuting his father for murder.  They say that his father "didn't really kill" the laborer, and "even if he definitely did kill him, it's wrong to be concerned about the dead man--since he was a murderer” (4e). 

Euthyphro's next statement, which is the claim on which Socrates focuses the rest of the discussion in the dialogue, is this: "You see, it's impious, they say, for a son to prosecute his father for murder" (4e).  Euthyphro tells Socrates that he rejects this criticism on the ground that he, Euthyphro, has an "exact knowledge" of such things as piety and impiety and "the positions that the gods take" about the pious and the impious[3].   

Socrates immediately seizes upon this statement because he has also been charged with the crime of impiety.  He tells Euthyphro that he wants him to teach him everything he knows about piety, beginning with a definition of this term.  Euthyphro’s answer:

"What's pious is precisely what I am doing now: prosecuting those who commit an injustice, such as murder or temple robbery, or those who've done some other such wrong, regardless of whether they're one's father or one's mother or anyone else whatever.  Not prosecuting them, on the other hand, is what's impious" (5d-5e). 

For future reference, we will use the label D1 Euthyphro's first definition.

After a brief interlude Socrates tells Euthyphro that D1 is not adequate because it fails to give us the "one characteristic" by which "the impieties are impious, and the pieties pious" (6e).

Socrates means that citing an example of a pious action (like prosecuting his father for murder) is not helpful because it fails to give us the characteristic, model, or "form itself" by which "any action of yours or anyone else's" is pious (6e).  We will refer to this as Socrates' first criticism as R1.

What Plato has done here is to launch analytic philosophy 2,000 years before it was used again in Western philosophy.  By the "form itself" Socrates means what we now refer to as the "concept itself."  The form or concept of a thing or act tells us what is essential to an act of piety.  For example, the form or concept of bachelor is "human, male, adult, unmarried."  These are essential to something being a bachelor.   Only humans,   males, adult males, and unmarried males can qualify as bachelors.  We would not refer to a dog as a bachelor, nor would we say that a three-year child, or a married man is a bachelor.  The concept of bachelor applies only to those people who have these characteristics.  They are essential.  But at the same time we can never observe the concept of bachelor.  I would not point at a man walking down the street and say "there goes the concept Bachelor."   Instead, the man walking down the street is a bachelor  We can think about the concept of bachelor but we will never observe it.  We can see a bachelor but only if he is of a certain height, weight, color, and other visible properties that are not essential to the concept. 

And so it is with piety, according to Socrates.  If Euthyphro is to succeed in defining piety he will have to focus on piety as a concept not as a visible object.  And the concept of piety, like the concept of bachelor can only have what is essential to any act or person that we would refer to as pious.

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[1] A prophet or oracle is a person considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or predictions or precognitions of the future, inspired by the gods (Freeman, 2008).

[2] Slaves were mostly treated as property under ancient Athenian law.  They could be bought, sold amd beaten (but only by their master). Legal action for offenses against slaves had to be brought by their masters (AncientGreece.co.uk).

[3] The word “impious” means a lack of reverence or respect for the gods or sacred things.  The term is not much used today, although in certain parts of the world it would be regarded as impious to wear shorts, go shirtless or wear a hat while entering a holy place (church, temple, mosque).  In ancient Greece, impiety was a civic as well as a religious offense.