Recollection And The Reply To Meno's Paradox Of Inquiry

ESSAY NUMBER TWO
12/2 /2016
By: Pricillia Ryanda
PHIL 20A
Professor Marc Lispi

Plato’s Theory of Recollection and the Reply to Meno’s Paradox of Inquiry

As one of the earliest philosopher, Plato is frequently distorted as simply recreating Socratic talk. In Meno, one of the principal Platonic exchanges, Plato offers his own one of a kind philosophical hypothesis, mixed with his mentor's splendid fallacy.
First of all I would like to talk about Meno’s paradox of inquiry. The paradox arises due to a number of speculations about knowledge and inquiry that originated from Socrates and Meno. The assumptions of Socrates are;
If we do not know what A is, we do not know anything about A and if we cannot define A, we do not know what A is. While
The route to Larissa, therefore, would be an example of opinion but not of knowledge, and could never be recollected.
Despite all the examples, the hypothesis itself is not sufficiently approved to demonstrate the immortality of the soul. Different explanations in both books turn out to be by one means or another “deceptive “ .If all humans possess knowledge through recollection, this would disprove Socrates' frequent statement that he does not have any knowledge. There were also lacks of explanation: if we are to believe his idea of theory of recollection on knowledge, then how did the soul initially gain knowledge? If opinion is indeed temporary to our mind and body, then what was the source of knowledge of the forms?
Another example that was used to demonstrate Socrates’ theory is the story of slave boy. Fully aware that the slave boy never learns geometry in his life, Socrates gave him a geometric problem to solve. Long story shorts after several attempts, the slave boy eventually reached the correct answer. Note that Socrates emphasized that he never taught the slave boy anything during the entire process. Socrates insisted that he only asked questions that led the slave boy to his own “recollection” of geometry. This makes Socrates even more convinced of his theory of
For instance, what if a historical trivia was asked instead of the mathematical problem? If the theory is indeed true, and the reincarnation does take place, and we previously lived through many different lives, wouldn’t we be able to recollect what happened throughout history? In fact, it would be technically and theoretically easier for us to recall historical knowledge than resolving a mathematical problem, because we have experienced historical events through so what we called reincarnation. However I highly doubt a person can know on top of their head about what happened in 1660, or 1950, or years BC, merely by doing recollection. Let’s say, if someone with minimum historical knowledge is being asked, “what happened in August of 1945?” do you really think that person could give the correct answer by recollection and without looking through internet or books. When we go to museums for example, we cannot look at a bomber plane from World War 2 and suddenly recollect all the horror of that war. Because of this therefore I believe there is no such thing as recollection. In my opinion, the theory of recollection is more of a premise to explain our learning experience than a theory to prove our source of