Socrates is known for his ability to question others about their definitions of a specific virtue. Throughout his questioning, Socrates takes the definitions given to him and uses logic to show that the definitions do not hold. In one of these instances Meno is questioned by Socrates and fails to produce a satisfactory definition for virtue.
When Socrates defeats Meno’s definition, Meno questions Socrates motive. Socrates claims to be simply inquiring the definition of virtue. Meno takes this opportunity to make a claim that there is no use to inquiring about something because it is either unnecessary or impossible to do so. This has become to be known as Meno’s Paradox.
This paradoxical argument claims that an individual either knows a …show more content…
Eventually the boy is able can figure out how to answer the problem by using the diagonal of the original square as the side of the larger square. The boy did not know the solution to the problem at the beginning, inquire about the answer, and knew the solution of the problem at the end. However, this should not be possible with Meno’s paradoxical argument, but the Theory of Recollection argues that the boy knew about the idea of equality before he was born, and during the inquiry stage simply called upon this base knowledge to remind him about some specific instance of equality and applied that base knowledge to solve the problem at …show more content…
This would be the same trial and error in answering questions such as who is the President of The United States of America in the year 2017 and how far is the moon from the Earth. It is arguably more plausible for all accounts of knowledge to be acquired in the same or at least similar manners rather than having some knowledge inherently known before birth while everything else is simply an application of the knowledge learned before birth. Though it is accurate to say knowledge can be built upon experiences and past knowledge it seems inconsistent to allow some knowledge to be built without experiencing some sort of learning process. If there is some learning process that is experienced before we are born, then this argument allows gaining knowledge to be a similar process regardless the type of knowledge being acquired. However this learning experience before we are in existence seems impossible because it is not possible to experience anything before you are an experiencing
When Socrates defeats Meno’s definition, Meno questions Socrates motive. Socrates claims to be simply inquiring the definition of virtue. Meno takes this opportunity to make a claim that there is no use to inquiring about something because it is either unnecessary or impossible to do so. This has become to be known as Meno’s Paradox.
This paradoxical argument claims that an individual either knows a …show more content…
Eventually the boy is able can figure out how to answer the problem by using the diagonal of the original square as the side of the larger square. The boy did not know the solution to the problem at the beginning, inquire about the answer, and knew the solution of the problem at the end. However, this should not be possible with Meno’s paradoxical argument, but the Theory of Recollection argues that the boy knew about the idea of equality before he was born, and during the inquiry stage simply called upon this base knowledge to remind him about some specific instance of equality and applied that base knowledge to solve the problem at …show more content…
This would be the same trial and error in answering questions such as who is the President of The United States of America in the year 2017 and how far is the moon from the Earth. It is arguably more plausible for all accounts of knowledge to be acquired in the same or at least similar manners rather than having some knowledge inherently known before birth while everything else is simply an application of the knowledge learned before birth. Though it is accurate to say knowledge can be built upon experiences and past knowledge it seems inconsistent to allow some knowledge to be built without experiencing some sort of learning process. If there is some learning process that is experienced before we are born, then this argument allows gaining knowledge to be a similar process regardless the type of knowledge being acquired. However this learning experience before we are in existence seems impossible because it is not possible to experience anything before you are an experiencing