Answer To A Question example essay topic

In Plato's dialogue entitled "Meno", the title character Meno confronts Socrates about a supposed paradox concerning the nature of inquiry. This paradox holds that inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible. Given a particular object, if you know what it is, then inquiry is unneeded, and if you don't know what it is, then inquiry is impossible because one would not know even where to begin. In response, Socrates introduces his theory of recollection (TOR) as a solution to Meno's Paradox. The TOR seeks to explain how we acquire knowledge and claims that what seems on the surface to be learning something new is, in actuality, just a process of recollecting that which our soul already inherently possesses. In this paper, I will argue that Meno's Paradox is based upon the fallacy of equivocation and thus does not really exist.

I will also show that Socrates' TOR is unsound, in that it does not account for empirical inquiry and is based upon two false implicit premises. In order to understand why Meno's Paradox is based upon a fallacy of equivocation, it is necessary to understand more clearly the arguments of Meno's Paradox. The first premise (P 1) of Meno's paradox is that if you know what you are looking for, then inquiry is unnecessary. It is unnecessary because you already know that for which you are looking. The second premise (P 2) is that if you do not know what you are looking for, then inquiry is impossible. The reason this is so is that if you don't know something, then it is not even clear where to begin a search for the answer to a thing.

(: .) The conclusion of this paradox is that inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible. This paradox seems to raise serious doubt as to inquiry being a means of acquiring knowledge. I want to make it obvious that the major implicit premise that this argument hinges upon is that either you know what you are looking for or you do not know what you are looking for. In evaluating this premise, it seems to me that there lies an equivocation.

An equivocation is an ambiguous word or phrase that has a double meaning. Most of the time, we are able to distinguish the meaning of such words based upon their context. A fallacy of equivocation is committed when the meanings of such words are confused, thus making an unsound argument appear sound. It seems to me that the crux of the equivocation lies in phrase "you know what you are looking for". Is the argument claiming that we know the question that we want answered or is it claiming that we know the answer to that question?

If we use the first sense, in that we claim to know the question, then P 1 would be false and the P 2 would be true. If we know what the question is then inquiry is necessary to find the answer, but if we do not even know the question, then it would be impossible to find the answer. In using the second sense, in that we are claiming to know the answer, P 2 would be true and P 1 would be false. If we know the answer to the question, then inquiry would be unnecessary, but if we do not know the answer to a question it does not automatically make inquiry impossible. You can't get a valid argument let alone a sound argument through piecemeal of the two true premises based upon a different sense of the phrase "you know what you are looking for". To see this ambiguity more clearly, I propose the question, is it possible for someone to know what he or she does not know?

On one hand the answer is no, in that you either know it or you don't. One cannot claim to know a particular thing and not know that same thing simultaneously. On the other hand, the answer is yes, in that it is possible to know the question to which you do not yet have the answer. It is this fallacy of equivocation that makes this argument unsound and proves that Meno's paradox, as formulated, does not exist. Inquiry is possible, and it is by knowing the question that you would like answered and following some sort of appropriate methodology until you come to know something which you had not previously (the answer to that particular question).

Socrates' response to Meno's Paradox is his TOR, which I feel is based upon fallacious assumptions and does not account for all types of inquiry. The TOR concedes that inquiry, in a sense, is impossible. It is the claim that knowledge is not acquired through learning, but is rather a matter of recollecting that which we already know. The TOR believes that our soul is inherently endowed with the answers to all questions. Therefore, inquiry is only possible if it is viewed in the sense that it is a process of retrieving that which we already know from our souls. A problem with the TOR is that is does not account for many types of inquiry, such as empirical inquiry.

How does the TOR answer how it is we come to know the score of the UCLA football score? Or how many students are in class today? Or what time the party is? In these case examples there is some sort of standardized procedure for acquiring the answer-look on T.V., go to class and count, and look at the party flyer. This indicates that a person can obtain knowledge about that which the soul could not inherently prepossess an answer. If the TOR cannot account for empirically based questions, does it offer a means to answer non-empirically based questions, such as the one taken up in the Meno, "What is Virtue?" This type of question may not be answerable via a standardized method, but Socrates believes that it may accounted for by his TOR.

Socrates provides a demonstration to Meno by means of an interview with a slave. Keep in mind that what is of concern is non-empirical knowledge, for example a geometrical theorem. The theorem used in the Meno is that a square, whose area is twice that of a given square, is a square on the diagonal of the given square. Since according to the TOR, even the slave's soul should have knowledge of this theorem, Socrates believes that a mere series of questions should trigger the slave to retrieve and recognize that theorem. However, this proof of the TOR is founded upon erroneous assumptions. Socrates claims that in (P 1) that at t 1 the slave seems to have no knowledge of the theorem.

Moreover, he claims in (P 2) that at t 2 the slave does know the theorem. (: .) Thus, Socrates concludes that the boy did not acquire the knowledge of the theorem between t 1 and t 2. He did not learn anything between t 1 and t 2, but rather recollected that which he already knew. Socrates believes that (P 2) is evidently true, because the slave at t 2 can provide a proof of the theorem. He hold the (: .) to be true since he did not teach, rather he only questioned to trigger the slave's inherent knowledge. It seems to me that if (P 2) and (: .) are true, then there must be something wrong with (P 1).

If Socrates' is going to claim that he did not teach the slave between t 1 and t 2, then the slave must have known the theorem all along. The two major assumptions of this proof are that (A 1) Socrates did not teach the slave and (A 2) that teaching is the only means of acquiring knowledge. I believe that (A 1) is false because Socrates asked several leading questions, and in one of the crucial steps of the proof he clearly brought up the diagonal in order to get the slave to notice it. The problem with (A 2) is that the means of acquiring knowledge may not be exhaustive by the disjunction between "either the slave was taught the theorem" or "the slave already knew the theorem".

It does not account for an alternative possibility, that of deductive reasoning, the ability to produce new knowledge for that which was previously unnoticed from knowledge earlier acquired.