ok. this isn’t homework, but it is revision, and i’m confused. ok we’re talking meno here. and we are talking about his exciting advancement into the world of geometry (the excitement is nearly kidding me). and i wrote this essay and now have no idea what iw as blahing about (it was a really bad essay i’m never gonna pass this year)
the question duhn duhn duhn was… “is knowledge of geometry a) a priori b) innate or c) recollected” and then something like "and which of these is illustrated with socrates and the slave boy.
the fun and excitement huh?
so here’s where i get confused. obviously plato is trying to illustrate that its recollected, that’s kinda the whole point of the blurb, but it seems to me, and apparently every scholar who i’ve read on this point that this knowledge (according to plato) must also be a priori. The idea behind this is that firstly if the knowledge could be empirical, there’d be no point to the paradox because it was be easily solvable by making some distinction between belief and verifiability. (that’s badly put but not what I need help with, so i’m not gonna expand). and it also seems fairly intuitive (apparently) that he also thought that the belief must be innate. not in the strict sense of innate as in with us from birth, but more like with us from a previous time, because if it wasn’t innate we couldn’t recollect it. am i making sense? so my first problem is, where is the argument? I cannot find a single person who doesn’t maintain to the fact that all three are alluded to in the discourse between slaveboy and socrates. seems wierd.
but my MAIN huago problem is the first part, as in, which actually is it. this confuses me for two reasons firstly because it’s a set text question and i’m not supposed to leave the context of the text too much and surely in order to answer the question of which of those three (or combination) geometry is i’m going to have to widely leave the text and delve into the wide and varied fun and games of epistemology. but also i’m supposed to get all this info to answer this question from the books i’ve been set to read, and none of them specifically talk about what knowledge of geometry ACTUALLY is, and only what Plato says (or implies) it is. Now obviously the arguments that some of these scholars have put forward against the theory of recollection (mainly on the grounds of immortality of the soul not be proved and also the idea that you get circularity because how could the soul previously have learnt it (forms are not yet referred to by plato) etc etc and also some of the probs that dualism chucks in) can be used to counter the idea that knowledge of geometry is recollected. BUT where and how can i argue against or even for the idea that geometry might be innate or a priori except in the ocntexts of what the text says which’ll get me nowhere.
anyone got any ideas to help me out
cheers
sara
xxx
The phrase I made bold implies that the following is the exact formulation of the first part of the question:
“Is knowledge of geometry a) a priori b) innate or c) recollected?”
If it isn’t then my subsequent reasoning may be futile.
The question is about “knowledge” of geometry. I don’t think knowledge is the main thing that matters in any part of mathematics; what matters is understanding. Of course, one cannot understand mathematics if one doesn’t know the subject matter. Socrates introduces the slave to a problem. The slave did not know the problem before then. So knowledge of geometry is neither a priori, nor innate, nor recollected. What may be innate is the capacity for understanding geometry, or at least some geometry (for instance, the problem in question).
Let us look at the dialogue itself.
He had the notions in him which were required to discover those new notions. But he did not have the impetus to combine in him; it was Socrates who provided this impetus.
Not recover, combine. Combine and conclude.
No, it is no spontaneous recovery, but reactive discovery. And it is not recollection but combination and conclusion.
This answer will not help you, if I understand what you mean by a set-text question. And it is interesting that all three options seem to be argued somewhere in the text. Perhaps this latter points to none of them being the right answer. (Plato loves to play.) But for what it’s worth, for Plato’s student, Aristotle, knowledge was none of these – it was received (edit: by the knowing power the potential intellect, from the agent intellect).
ooo
mrn,
neo-scholastic
The question is about teaching, right? How to inspire understanding within a student of, say, what a triangle is. Now, for Plato, not only do all the triangles in the world exist–he says there exists something like the “essence” of a triangle, the Idea of perfect triangle. Furthermore, all the actual or imagined triangles we can create or conjure up are just shadows or reflections, derivating of the true Form of the triangle. Thus the nature of what is triangular is a priori; i.e., three-sidedness is not itself a triangle, and (for Plato) would exist even if there were no actual triangles around.
My understanding is that Plato offers us what is called a mauietic model of teaching, which isn’t quite a recollection, but is probably closer to the “innate” suggestion. The Socratic method but helps bring out from the student the implicit definitions in what he already believes about reality. Teaching for Socrates is not about instilling or creating beliefs; it’s about awakening an understanding about the nature of reality. But what about those instances where the student is learning something completely new about reality? Note that “mauietics” is from the Greek work for “midwife”–the teacher’s questions allow for a sort of psychic rebirth, the growth of an understanding which is linked inextricably with the universal form of understanding.
Great questions, Sarah, good luck on your semester!
/Thanks for quoting the passage, Sauwelios. You can find a complete passage online at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html
This is a good account of the ideas behind this speech (no pun intended), but I believe the question was what knowledge of geometry actually was (not according to Plato, but in truth). Seems like a strange question, but that is how I answered it.