Plato's Quest for True Knowledge

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Plato states that for true knowledge, the process known as learning is actually a process of uncovering or recollecting what the individual already knows. It explains that as a solution to the question of how one will know when the correct answer is found this is ingenious. But this is not Plato's essential answer to the paradox. The true resolution lies in Socrates' demonstration that one can, through inquiry, come to knowledge of an object even though one has no knowledge of it to begin with.

From the Paper:

"As Socrates puts it, during the discussion of what the slave has accomplished in the exercise in inquiry, "a man who does not know has in himself true opinions on a subject without having knowledge" (85c). Plato's theory of recollection may provide an explanation of how the individual is able to proceed along the path toward knowledge and how he knows when he has discovered knowledge. But recollection is, in itself, inadequate to the task of inquiry which is, as Socrates shows, essential to acquiring knowledge even if this is essentially an uncovering of knowledge the individual possesses from previous incarnations.
Socrates' method on being asked about a particular object (usually a virtue) is to deny that he has any knowledge of the object of inquiry and then to prompt the other to explain what he knows about that object. Those with whom he speaks inevitably have opinions or beliefs about the object in question. As the interlocutor supplies his answers (his opinions and beliefs) Socrates leads him, by careful questioning, to see that he does not, in fact, have the knowledge of the object that he thought he possessed. Thus Socrates invariably demonstrates to the other party that, like Socrates, he too does not know what the virtue is. This leaves the other man, as Meno says, feeling like he has been stung and numbed by the hidden barb of a sting-ray (80a). But in Meno's case the interlocutor begins to question the whole process of inquiry in which they are engaged. Meno poses a paradox for Socrates which presents a genuine puzzle."

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