Meno's Paradox

This post is committed to my dear soul friend, Fay Vietmeier, whom I think about as the sovereign queen of request and interest & curiosity.

Socrates has let us know he knows how to dismiss flawed definitions. However, how can he know when he has prevailed with regards to tracking down the right definition? Meno mentions a criticism regarding the whole definitional search as (what has been designated) "Meno's Paradox," or "The Paradox of Inquiry" (Meno 80d-e)

The contention can be demonstrated to be sophistical, however, Plato treated it exceptionally in a serious way. This is clear since his reaction to it is to give its focal case: that you can't come to know something that you didn't as of now have any idea. That will be, that request never delivers new information, however just restates things definitely known. This prompts the well-known Doctrine of Recollection.

I. An Objection to Inquiry

• A. The contention is known as "Meno's Paradox" can be reformulated as follows:
• 1. If you realize what you're searching for, the request is superfluous.
• 2. If you don't have the foggiest idea of what you're searching for, a request is unthinkable.
• 3. Therefore, the request is either pointless or unimaginable.

B. An certain reason:

• Possibly you realize what you're searching for or you don't have the foggiest idea of what you're searching for.
• Furthermore, this is an intelligent truth. Or then again is it? Provided that "you realize what no doubt about it" is utilized unambiguously in both disjuncts.

There is by all accounts a prevarication in "what you're not kidding":

A. The question you wish to respond to.

B. The reply to that inquiry.

Utilizing sense (A), (2) is valid, yet (1) is bogus; utilizing sense (B), (1) is valid, yet (2) is misleading. However, there is nobody sense in which the two premises are valid. What's more from the pair of genuine premises, (1B) and (2A), nothing follows, as a result of the prevarication.

To see the equivocalness, think about the inquiry: "Is it workable for you to know what you don't have the foggiest idea?"

In one sense, the response is "no." You can't both know and not have the foggiest idea about exactly the same thing. (Pace Heraclitus.) In another sense, the response is "yes." You can know the inquiries you don't have the solutions to.

So this is the manner by which request is conceivable. You realize what question you need to respond to (and to which you don't yet know the response); you follow some fitting method for addressing inquiries of that sort; lastly, you come to know what you didn't already have the foggiest idea, viz., the solution to that inquiry.

The contention for Meno's Paradox is in this way imperfect: it submits the deception of evasion. However, past it lies a more profound issue. Also to that end?

Plato doesn't excuse it crazy. That is the reason in the light of it he proposes his renowned "Hypothesis of Recollection."

Plato Concedes that, in some sense, the request is incomprehensible. What has all the earmarks of being gaining some new useful knowledge is truly recalling something definitely known.

Interpretations of "Memory"

Plato positively thinks he has demonstrated that something is intrinsic, that something can be known deduced. However, what? There appear to be three prospects, arranged by diminishing strength:

A. Propositions: like the mathematical hypothesis P. They are in a real sense in the spirit, inconspicuous, and ready to be recovered. As per this perusing of "memory,"

"Suggestions that can be known deduced are in a real sense natural".

B. Concepts: like equity, distinction, odd, even, and so forth We are brought into the world with these - we don't secure them as a matter of fact. We utilize these when we stand up to and put together our crude encounters. As indicated by this perusing of "memory," there are deduced ideas that we have preceding experience.

C. Abilities: like that of thinking. We are brought into the world with the natural capacity to infer the coherent outcomes of our convictions. We might shape our convictions experimentally, yet we don't acquire our capacity to reason observationally. As per this perusing of "memory," there is no inborn information and there are no deduced ideas. Everything except the most hard-bubbled empiricist can acknowledge (C).

Plato talks as though he has laid out (A), however, the most he lays out in the Meno is (B) or (C). Yet, maybe that is all he is expecting to layout (cf. Vlastos article, "Anamnêsis (Recollection) in the Meno," on e-hold. Furthermore see esp. Meno 98a: memory = giving a record of the justifications for why.)

This is the contention from defect, which implies to show that the flaw of the actual world demonstrates that we should have deduced ideas that can't be gotten for a fact. Rather, the actual chance of our having experience at all expects that we as of now have these ideas.

So regardless of whether "memory" is just derivation misdescribed, there is still space for Plato to contend that deduction requires the utilization of ideas that would themselves be able to be procured observationally -

Your Thoughts, Agreements/disagreements are appreciated