Fernyhough's Argument Analysis

Humans have been talking to themselves for quite some time, but it was not until fairly recently that psychologists became more interested in this topic and began to seriously research it. One psychologist who is fascinated by human’s inner dialogue is Charles Fernyhough. Fernyhough argues that inner dialogue is beneficial to human development and helps change our perception of how we react to the world around us, and Fernyhough discusses this in his article. He says that having conversations with yourself helps improve your language, changes your viewpoint and how you react to certain situations, and also helps to enhance your problem solving skills. Fernyhough also mentions mental or inner dialogue and how this questioning even dates back …show more content…
One specific example of this is from lines 82b-85e where Socrates is questioning the slave boy. Socrates is testing to see if the boy is either recollecting or learning from Socrates. See, Socrates asks the boy a set of questions about geometry, where the boy would mostly just answer yes or no. Socrates begins with seeing that the boy does not know how to find twice the area of a square. So, Socrates knows that initially, the boy knows nothing. Socrates is trying to show Meno that by questioning the boy, all he has to do is look in and recollect to find knowledge. Socrates asks the boy question after question. The boy’s mind becomes “numb” and when this happens, Socrates asks the boy another set of questions about geometry. After doing this, Socrates has the boy agree that he now knows how to find twice the area of a square and says that he has recovered past knowledge without actually being told the answers or being taught. This scenario is similar to a section of Fernyhough’s article where he talks about if a system has to told something, it’s not really smart. The section reads, “A robot can get very smart at responding to what happens in the environment, but what makes it come up with the idea of doing anything for itself? If the system has to be told what to do, then it is lacking one of the essences of intelligence.” (p. 77). This is Socrates argument when questioning the slave boy, that he …show more content…
79). These four qualities could mostly all be found in Meno as well. For the first quality, the dialogical nature, the nature of the dialogue in Meno is fairly complex. For instance, in the scene where Socrates is talking to the slave boy, the dialogue is very long when Socrates is talking, but short when the slave boy is replying. A majority of Socrates’ dialogue in Meno is questions, and it’s difficult to find anytime in Meno when Socrates’ sentences do not end in a question mark. Contrasting to Socrates’ dialogue, Meno’s dialogue is fairly short and brief. For example, four of his replies to Socrates were “I do”, “Certainly not”, “Yes”, and “Yes indeed” (p. 73) just on one page alone, making it evident that Socrates’ dialogue takes up a majority of Meno while the nature of Meno’s dialogue takes up little to any. Meno’s short responses leads into the second quality of inner speech: its tendency to be