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Meno's Paradox Analysis

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Meno’s Paradox, from Plato’s Meno questions how humans gain knowledge. Meno confronts Socrates with a paradox. The basis of Meno’s paradox is that in order to know about something we must know it completely or not at all. “How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?”. Meno confronts Socrates with this issue; if you know something, then you would not need to ask. If you do not know it, you would not know enough to ask about it. This issue leads Socrates to conclude that if Meno’s paradox is true, inquiry is either not possible or not needed. According to the …show more content…

Although Socrates’ demonstration was clever, it did not prove his point. I do not believe that Socrates’ response conquered the paradox, but rather looped around it and created another. I do not believe that his response to the paradox was good for a few reasons. If we assume his theory to be true, we are still left with many questions. The first problem, is that his theory does not answer the question of where or how these souls came about. Another question that is left unanswered is where or how the souls obtained the knowledge if inquiry is not a factor. We also do not have proof that the souls actually exist- and we are basing that off of the assumption that Socrates’ is correct.
His response loops us back around to the initial issue, and in term it may even create it’s own paradox. He believes that the soul is immortal, and has lived many lives and learned things and has true beliefs, but does not answer the question of how we know if those beliefs are absolutely true or not. Some more questions to argue Socrates theory of recollection would be, how can we determine when our beliefs are true? And what is the possibility that the knowledge we acquire is just collective false truths? How can we determine the difference between a false truth and the absolute

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