Meno

Or: knowledge, belief,

understanding
 • Most translations render arete as
“virtue”.

Arete • This is helpful insofar as it

expresses the approving,
evaluative nature of the term.
 Authority
• Here (in the discussion of the historical
figure Gorgias) we get the first indications
of one of the major themes in the
dialogue:

• You cannot get understanding, or

knowledge worthy of the name, merely
from being told the answer by someone
else.

• You have to make some indispensable

contribution of your own.
 Knowledge

• This is most implausible, and again should

remind us: where they are available,
definitions are worthless and Definitions
are, if they exist, too demanding.

• And anyway, is “Meno” the sort of thing

you can define in either sense? He’s an
individual, not a property.

• Individuals can be cloned. But they cannot

be repeated.
 Some sample
definitions
1. Surface/shape = the only thing that
is found always following colour.

2. Surface/shape = the limit of a solid.

3. Colour = an efflux of surfaces

commensurate with sight (due to
Empedocles)
 Some sample
definitions
These “samples” give us one clue for how to
read the Meno.

It is Socrates being put on trial.

Not in the legalistic sense of his trial in 399;

but in the sense that throughout the Meno
he is critically invited to defend the way he
does philosophy.

He does not always do a satisfactory job…

 Definitions again
• None of these look like definitions.

• It is demonstrable that none of them are

Definitions.

• Was it not worth our thinking about

definitions as we did?

• Can you not tell that what Socrates here

advances is more interesting than a dictionary;
and not remotely as successful as an analysis;
but nevertheless worth the attempt?
 • 1 is not promising.

Problems • For it is as if I were to teel someone

with the ignorant of cutlery that…

samples • …forks are the only things laid to

the left of table knives at the
dinner table.
 • This isn’t a definition or a
Problems Definition! (Marginal cases:
with the pitchforks, forks in the road, forklift
trucks, skewers (is a skewer a one-
samples tined fork?)

• 1 and 3 together are circular.

 Worse…
• Socrates says to Meno “I think
you’re aware that you’d be able,
using my answer, to say what
sound and smell and many other
such things are.”

• Recall that a Definition of F should

collect all and only Fs, and say
something illuminating about
them.
 Worse…

• Now if sounds and smells, too, are effluxes of solids,

this definition falls at the first hurdle by failing to
collect only colours, even if it collects all of them.

• For it all too easily collects sounds and smells as

well. It therefore cannot be a Definition of colour. It
includes too much to say anything special about
colour. But colour is the sort of thing that needs
something special.
 Meno’s Challenge
(80d5-8)
{ΜΕΝ.} Καὶ τίνα τρόπον ζητήσεις, ὦ
Σώκρατες, τοῦτο ὃ μὴ οἶσθα τὸ
παράπαν ὅτι ἐστίν;

ποῖον γὰρ ὧν οὐκ οἶσθα

προθέμενος ζητήσεις;

ἢ εἰ καὶ ὅτι μάλιστα ἐντύχοις αὐτῷ,

πῶς εἴσῃ ὅτι τοῦτό ἐστιν ὃ σὺ οὐκ
ᾔδησθα;
 In English:
Meno: (1) And in what way are you going
to investigate, Socrates, something when
you don’t know what it is at all?

(2) Which of the things you do not know

will you establish as the object of your
investigation?

(3) And if you should chance upon it,

how would you know that it is the thing
you didn't know?
 {ΣΩ.} Μανθάνω οἷον βούλει λέγειν,
ὦ Μένων.

The Eristic ὁρᾷς τοῦτον ὡς ἐριστικὸν λόγον

κατάγεις, ὡς οὐκ ἄρα ἔστιν ζητεῖν
Dilemma ἀνθρώπῳ οὔτε ὃ οἶδε οὔτε ὃ μὴ
(80e1-5) οἶδε;

οὔτε γὰρ ἂν ὅ γε οἶδεν ζητοῖ –

οἶδεν γάρ, καὶ οὐδὲν δεῖ τῷ γε
τοιούτῳ ζητήσεως – οὔτε ὃ μὴ
οἶδεν – οὐδὲ γὰρ οἶδεν ὅτι ζητήσει.
 Socrates: I understand what you
want to say Meno.

Do you see how eristic is the

argument you’re invoking is - that

In English:
(1) it is not possible for anyone to
investigate either what he knows
or what he does not know.
 For (2) he would not investigate what
he knows, for he knows it, and there
is no need for investigation into such
a thing;
In English:
nor (3) what he does not know - for
he does not know what he will
investigate.
 The Eristic Dilemma
1. If you know x, you cannot inquire into x.

2. If you do not know x, you cannot

inquire into x.

3. For all x either you know x or you do

not know x.

4. Therefore, there is no x such that you

can inquire into it.
 Easy fixes
1. Show how the most natural way of
rendering 1 and 2 to make them plausible
renders 3 patently false.

2. Distinguish between knowledge and true

belief, as the dialogue in question does in its
third part, to make at least premise 2 false.

3. Distinguish, as the theory of recollection

effectively does, between latent knowledge,
and actualized knowledge, to make both
premises 1 and 2 false.
 • (i) God made the world.
• (ii) God is a perfect being.
Compare • (iii) A perfect being would
not create a world
the containing evil.
• (iv) The world contains
(strong) evil.
Problem
If the proponent of the problem
of Evil seeks to claim that these are
logically inconsistent, the
problem is all too easy to avoid.
 Recollection

• Not necessary to avoid the Eristic

Dilemma. See “Easy fixes”.

• Not sufficient either: you still need

to distinguish between
quantities/levels of knowledge, or
else…
 The Dilemma restated for
the Recollection Theory

1. If you have recollected x, you cannot inquire

into x.

2. If you have not recollected x, you cannot

inquire into x.

3. For all x, either you have recollected x or you

have not.

4. Therefore, there is no x into which you can

inquire.
The geometrical experiment in Meno
 • AB = 2. So ABCD = 4.

• The question: how long is the side X of

a square = 8?

• Two wrong answers:

The 1. X = 4. But the area of that square
process 2.
would be 16: too big.
X = 3. But the area of that square
would be 9: also too big.

So the Slave is trying to find some X such

that X > 2; but also X < 3.
 • There is a way of thinking about
something, whereby you can see
automatically that and why what you
think is correct.

What • Such thinking makes no appeal to

authorities, not even to the authority
of visual images, and contains the
follows? ingredients for its own explanation.

• Plato is fascinated by this fact. It

presents him with an ideal of
knowledge. He has moods in which he
hopes all knowledge will be like this.
 From Inquiry to
Discovery
{ΣΩ.} Καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ ἐμοί, ὦ Μένων. καὶ τὰ
μέν γε ἄλλα οὐκ ἂν πάνυ ὑπὲρ τοῦ λόγου
διισχυρισαίμην· ὅτι δ' οἰόμενοι δεῖν ζητεῖν
ἃ μή τις οἶδεν βελτίους ἂν εἶμεν καὶ
ἀνδρικώτεροι καὶ ἧττον ἀργοὶ ἢ εἰ
οἰοίμεθα ἃ μὴ ἐπιστάμεθα μηδὲ δυνατὸν
εἶναι εὑρεῖν μηδὲ δεῖν ζητεῖν, περὶ τούτου
πάνυ ἂν διαμαχοίμην, εἰ οἷός τε εἴην, καὶ
λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ.
 From Inquiry to
Discovery: English
Socrates: “As for the other points, I wouldn’t
absolutely insist on the argument.

But I would fight, both in word and deed, for

the following point: that we would be better,
more manly and less lazy, if we believed that
we ought to inquire into what we do not
know…

…than if we believed that we cannot

discover what we do not know and so have
no duty to inquire.”
 Why the switch?

That is, why answer a puzzle about

inquiry (the Eristic Dilemma)…

….with a theory of discovery?

These are not the same!

Inquiry and Discovery
The Eristic Dilemma seems to
threaten inquiry.

If there’s no inquiry, then surely

there’s no discovery except by
accident.

We will reflect a good deal on

accidents in this course.
Inquiry and Discovery

But remember that if you discover something by

accident, then necessarily you weren’t inquiring
into it.

It is possible to wish to come across buried

treasure by accident. It is not possible to take
steps to bring about your whim.

Still, you might be able to inquire even if you can’t

discover anything.
Two further 1. Nelson Goodman’s Grue:
reasons why
we need A thing is grue iff it is
(something green and observed
like) or
Recollection unobserved and blue
 Every time we see a green
emerald, that is confirmation of
the hypothesis “All emeralds are
green”.
A
gruesome
Observed green emeralds confirm
problem to exactly the same degree the
hypothesis “All emeralds are grue”.
 It cannot be that both hypotheses
are true, given their inconsistent
entailments for unobserved
The emeralds. (Think this one through
please!)
problem
So why do we think there’s
something right about the former,
and something crazy about the
latter?
 • Lewis Carroll’s paradox of Achilles
and the Tortoise.
• Suppose I accept “If P then Q”.
Second, • And suppose I accept “P”.
slightly
Presumably, I should accept “Q”,
different right?

reason Put another way: I need not accept

any further propositions in order
to pass to “Q”, need I?
 Don’t I need in addition to accept
the inference rule

Not “If (If P then Q, and P), then Q”.

necessarily.
OK, I’ll accept that. Does Q now
follow?
 Don’t I need now in addition to
accept the inference rule

“If (If (If P then Q, and P), then Q)

Not and (if P then Q, and P)
necessarily.
THEN Q”.

And so on ad infinitum…
 • We are not remotely tempted
to behave like the Tortoise. You
know the story is crazy as well
as anyone.

• And we are not remotely

tempted to think that one of
And yet: the colours is the colour grue.
You know the story is crazy as
well as anyone.

• Why? It must be that our minds

arrive with some sort of deeply
structured content…
 John Locke
We arrive into this world as tabulae
rasae, blank slates. We acquire our
concepts by performing inductions
based on our perceptions.

Many empirically-minded folk find

this story appealing. But they face
some gruesome problems…