Meno's Paradox

Plato created the theory of learning as recollection because of the controversy and problems of learning, often called, the “learner’s paradox”. The problem of learning is, either a man knows or he doesn’t know. If man knows then he can’t learn and if man doesn’t know he can’t learn as well. As a result, man can’t learn whatever he trying to understand In better words, an article, “The Learner’s Paradox” states,
“Clearly if knowledge is taken to require learning why S is justified in believing X to be true, then if no one can learn anything, then no one can know anything that he/she does not know from birth. This validly deduced conclusion certainly seems on the basis of "common sense"- to fly in the face of the apparent "fact" that people actually do manage to learn …show more content…
Meno and Simmias were confused of this whole theory of learning as a recollection. This led to many examples being provided by Socrates to lessen or even eliminate the problem. However, in my perspective the learner’s paradox will always be a problem and not fully understood. The learner’s paradox concludes to no one can learn anything. The learner’s paradox and theory of recollection is introduced in Meno, because Meno questions the problem of learning and Socrates responds with the fact that the soul is immortal. Also, that the soul has existed in many lives and have gained all types of knowledge. Therefore, when it enters a new human body, that person has the ability to recollect certain knowledge, but the body never learns it just recollects. He goes on to explain this theory more in Phaedo, with different ideas. The different ideas that were proposed in Phaedo were humans automatically possess knowledge and right explanations in them. Their knowledge comes straight from the soul and don’t learn or teach anything. He also uses the ideas of sense perception and the comparison between sensible and