Comparing Socrates To Meno

In this essay I will be working with the concepts of knowledge and true belief. I will show how they differ in two different Plato texts. I will first work to show what the concepts are and how they are different. I will then work to provide the necessary background information for each text, and separately explain how these concepts are treated in the two different texts. Next after having explained the concepts use in the text I will highlight the differences in the two accounts. Finally I will work to show that while the two accounts do differ the differences can be reconciled, so Plato is really saying the same thing in both texts. When someone says they have a true belief, or that they have knowledge of something you would think they
are saying the same thing. However in Plato’s opinion they would not be. While both these statements would boil down to someone having accurate or correct information in Plato’s opinion they still hold a crucial difference. If someone has true belief of something as opposed to a false belief this means they have some opinion or belief that is accurate. However what separates this true belief from knowledge according to Plato is that it is not tied down. The idea is that these true beliefs are just that beliefs/opinions. This means that you have a belief which happens to be correct, but you do not have anything that completely supports it. Meaning you lack a scientific explanation, or any form of logical explanation that could would as proof for your belief being correct. In contrast if you are in possession of actual knowledge according to Plato then you have some explanation or backing that keeps this belief tied down. This sounds minor, but it does have some fairly important practical application. For example if you were giving someone directions to a place you know you might only be in the possession of true belief. You could give the directions and they could be absolutely correct, but that does not necessarily mean you have knowledge according to Plato’s interpretation. If this belief is not tied down, someone else could tell you that you have one of the turns wrong in your directions, or that you have some other minor error and this could cause you to change the directions, and therefore have lost the true belief. In contrast if you were in possession of knowledge perhaps you give these directions while looking at a map, so that if someone were to contradict the directions you were giving you would have something in front of you to provide a concrete reliable argument against it. Now your opinion would be able to hold up to criticism, and would be as Plato says tied down. However, the dilemma with Plato’s knowledge is that it seems that we may not be able to have any real knowledge at least by his standards. We could point to a mountain, and say that mountain is there, however this statement may not be an absolute truth if in hundreds of years from now the mountain could be eroded away. Plato’s definition of knowledge rests heavily on proving your belief to be an absolute truth. However in the real world one would be very pressed to find absolutes. This brings us to how he treats these concepts in his text the Meno. Before I dive into the treatment of the two concepts in the Meno I will give a brief background of the context of the story.
Within the story Socrates and the character Meno began by searching for what virtue was. Meno simply wanted to know the nature of it, how it was acquired, but Socrates felt the definition was needed first. In the end Meno gets frustrated with the whole discussion and feels they can’t inquire about something they don’t know about. This where the concepts of knowledge and true belief come into the Meno. To prove to Meno they are able to conduct inquiry into the unknown Socrates does a demonstration with a slave boy to prove his assertion that all learning is recollection. In this demonstration he has the slave boy answer geometry questions. The slave boy does not know geometry. Throughout the demonstration Socrates simply draws pictures and asks questions to guide the boy to the answer. At the end of the discussion the slave boy who had no knowledge of geometry was able to answer a few geometrical questions. Socrates takes this to prove his assertion that the soul is immortal, and therefore all learning is recollection. Socrates says because the soul is immortal it possesses all knowledge within it, and what we call learning is really recollecting. We acquire knowledge through inquiring about things until we are able to ‘remember’ them as Socrates states it. Once we have done sufficient inquiry these true beliefs within us become knowledge once again as
accurate as any knowledge. From there the discussion continues and they assert because no one can teach virtue it isn’t a form of knowledge and those who had demonstrated great virtue in the past must simply have had true beliefs about it and not knowledge. This is the bulk of what goes on in the Meno I want to now break it down a little bit and clarify the strange portions of it. Socrates biggest assertion here is the idea the soul is immortal. Because of this the soul possesses all knowledge within it, but when we are alive this knowledge would be within us as only true beliefs because we don’t have the explanation or backing for it. In order to take all these true beliefs and turn them into knowledge we must perform inquiry until we finally arrive at the explanation and ultimate nature of these beliefs. They then have become the infallible knowledge we seek. In the Meno the true beliefs and knowledge are different in the ways explained in the previous paragraph, namely that they are not tied down. However this concept of the immortal soul is what provides the basis for the most important assertion in the treatment of these concepts in the next text the republic. The immortal soul is the key component in what is known as Plato’s theory of the forms.
The theory of the forms is this idea that everything we see in the world is an aspect of some perfect form. These perfect forms do not exist in the world, but our immortal souls that have all knowledge know these perfect forms, and we perceive everything in the world as aspects of these forms. When we see beautiful objects we are seeing things that exhibit aspects of the form of beauty, and when we see ugly things we see things exhibiting aspects of the form of the ugly and so on. Again these perfect forms do not exist in reality, but within our immortal souls we have them, and therefore when we see these beautiful things or ugly things we recollect this form. In the argument in the republic we create three categories. There is ignorance which is what is not, knowledge comprises what is, and belief comprises the middle ground in both what is and what is not. In this argument knowledge would be the forms, the forms are perfect they are what actually is unchanging and infallible. Ignorance is simply falsehoods things that don’t exist. Beliefs is the tricky part in this argument. Everything we can observe would be in the belief category. While we can see things that exhibit aspects of the forms they aren’t totally the form. For example the same woman one man sees as beautiful could be seen as ugly by another. Therefore this woman would exhibiting two forms, and not totally either one she
both would be and not be. Belief is imperfect because it relies on perception which changes from person to person, and therefore can’t be knowledge which is supposed to be unchanging and fixed. The argument continues that most of us cannot attain knowledge we can only have belief. However a special few members of the guardian class he establishes in this text with proper education and inquiry, can actually come to observe the forms themselves and therefore obtain true knowledge. Therefore in the republic knowledge is the forms themselves and something only a special few can come to attain, and belief is all of reality objects we can perceive, things we can say, but these things are not fixed they are changing or imperfect. The difference in these two arguments is subtle, but important. In the Meno knowledge is what happens when we take beliefs and manage to explain them or provide factual logical arguments to support them, such that they cease to be moveable. Meaning we explain them thoroughly enough that we can now resist the arguments against our belief because it has become fixed and cannot be taken away. We have these true beliefs within our souls and when we work hard through inquiry we can turn them into knowledge. In the Republic knowledge is also fixed but it the forms themselves we wish to see. The difference is knowledge is more precisely defined here as the forms. Therefore beliefs are just aspects of the forms, and knowledge is what occurs when we manage to pierce the veil and observe the forms for themselves and not just aspects of themselves. At first glance it may appear these arguments are different, but they are easily reconcilable. The Meno’s argument on knowledge and true belief is the precursor to the Republic’s argument. Both arguments have knowledge acquired through inquiry, both have belief as things that are not fixed, the primary difference is simply that the republic argument rests totally on the ability to see these forms, while the Meno argument paints knowledge as anything we are able to find complete explanation for. However this is really two different ways of saying the same thing. In both arguments it’s the immortal soul that’s crucial, the immortal soul is what allows us to inquire about the unknown and because it holds all these true beliefs these inquiries can prove fruitful and create knowledge. In the Republic this immortal soul is how we know what the forms are because they don’t exist in reality. but our immortal soul allows us access to them. Therefore the difference in the argument simply is that the theory of forms had not yet been established by the Meno, and the Republic presents the same argument, it just uses the theory of forms as a more precise way of defining knowledge.