Meno's Paradox

The following is an essay I wrote on Meno's Paradox. 

Meno raises a problem concerning whether inquiries or a search for knowledge is, in principle, possible. Meno objects, “How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is?...If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing you did not know?” Socrates takes the word “it” here to refer to the form, or a standard, particularly the standard of virtue, although Socrates applies the problem to the search of any standard whatsoever. It isn’t certain that limiting the problem to the search for standards is what Meno had in mind, as Socrates first calls the argument a kind of debaters trick. Nonetheless, Socrates narrows the argument to just the search of standards when he says, “He cannot search for what he knows-since he knows it, there is no need to search-nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.”

For example, suppose you didn’t know how to use the metric system in terms of length and you were asked to provide a few centimeters of tape. If you knew how long a centimeter was, you would have no need to search for it. If you did not know how long a centimeter is, you wouldn’t know it when you saw it, even if what you saw truly was a centimeter. You may come across a ruler with centimeter increments, but then you would have to ask how you know the ruler conforms to the standards of what a centimeter is as well. And so, you could never really look for what a centimeter is. In a similar way, the search for the standard of virtue is also impossible. 

Suppose an answer could be given for what the standard of virtue is. This would only push the question back a step. In order to determine that the standard of virtue is what they say it is, we would have to subject that answer to some other standard, the standard of the standard. And if an answer could be given for that, we would have to subject that answer still to an even higher standard, ad infinitum, so that we never come to a terminating point, and so we never really come to an answer, and therefore never come to learn anything. This is the Meno Paradox. 

Socrates has an answer to the problem. He answers, “As the soul is immortal, had been born often, and had seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it had not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before…” What this means is that while it is true that in this world we learn nothing about standards, nonetheless we can still recollect it, and we can only recollect that which we already know. So yes, learning about what the standards are is impossible, but only because we already know what the standards are, and so Meno’s Paradox is resolved. This sounds fantastical to Meno and he asks for its demonstration. 

Socrates gives a causal argument through a geometrical proof. At one point, Socrates shows Meno’s slave is ignorant of an answer for a geometrical problem. Socrates emphasizes the slaves ignorance when the slave provides incorrect answers. But then, at another point soon thereafter, the slave is able to recognize the answer to the problem. Meno cedes that Socrates did not teach the slave the answer, only questioned him about the problem. Since the cause of teaching is ruled out in this life, it must have been acquired in some past life. What Socrates has now demonstrated, to Meno’s satisfaction, is that someone, like the slave, can come to know the standard of a thing, as demonstrated through geometrical knowledge, even if at a particular moment he is not able to have immediate access to it. He can, perhaps after some effort, recall it without the aid of anyone teaching him. So at point A, the slave doesn’t know the answer and then at point B he does, and between those two points, Socrates had no causal teaching effect on him. So, the cause must be in some past life, and recalling from a past life is the Recollection Doctrine which is supposed to be a resolution to the paradox. 

I do not think Socrates succeeds in his demonstration. Socrates seems to think that to teach something is to directly inform you about something, as is implied when he says he has only questioned the slave. However, you can teach or inform someone through questioning. Some questions can be loaded. For example, “When did you stop murdering” implies you are a murderer. We recognize this legally as well. When a cop questions a suspect, he cannot imply or give away information or else that taints the testimony. If a cop were to ask a witness, “How did the suspect kill the victim” vs “How did the suspect shoot the victim”, the latter implants or perhaps suggests ideas into the witness that may not have been there before. Socrates could be leading the slave on in a similar fashion as evidence by his two types of questioning. In demonstrating the slaves ignorance, Socrates asks questions that require concrete answers, answers that involve numbers. But in the second set of questions, the answers do not require this kind of commitment to numbers to get to the answer, only agreement, which doesn’t prove a recollection process at all, but certainly implies Socrates led him on.

If we recognize that the slave had the potential to know the answer, but didn’t know it actually, and we add the Aristotelian-Thomistic premise that things that are potential can only be actualized by something else that is actualized, then it becomes obvious that Socrates is the actualized thing that reduced the slaves potentiality to actuality, and there is the cause, not some speculative previous life.