English Assignment

While scholars disagree about how many of the opinions expressed by Socrates were actually held by Plato, we will assume for the purposes of this class that Socrates speaks for Plato. Therefore, the statement "Socrates claims..." will be equivalent to "Plato claims...."

Please answer the following questions in one well-developed essay not exceeding 1100 words. 1) How does Socrates explain the servant's ability to solve the geometry problem? 2) How does Socrates say that people in general know things? 3) What is the difference between true opinion and knowledge?

Here are the links for reference to answer these questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2g_5vMHMVI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meno

http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#GetPro

Here is the lecture to help answer these questions: 

 This course seeks to improve participants' skills in critical thinking, reading, and writing. Broadly, this means finding out what is true, evaluating the truth content of what is reported to us, and communicating such truths as we can find to others. Our method will be to read the arguments of some of history's greatest writers on these subjects and use them as models, road maps, or templates (pick your metaphor) for our own thinking and communication.

       First up is Plato, the most studied and the most influential writer on these subjects in Western letters. We will be reading Meno, a short but extremely informative dialogue in which Plato hints at a definition of knowledge. Near the end, Socrates, in trying to clarify for Meno the difference between knowledge and true belief, says that knowledge is true opinions that have been made "fast with causal reasoning" (98a). In plainer English, knowledge is a belief or opinion that is true and can be shown to be true with evidence or sound arguments.

       This section of Plato's Meno seems to be the written origin of the nearly universally accepted idea that knowledge is justified true belief. That is, when a person claims to know something such as that San Francisco is west of Oakland, 1) that person must believe it himself, 2) it must in fact be the case, and 3) he must be able to say why he believes it, i.e., he has seen the two cities' relative positions in a satellite photograph.

       This definition of knowledge as justified true belief was assumed by nearly all writers on the subject from Plato's time up to 1963 when Edmund Gettier seemingly refuted it in his famous essay "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" In that essay, Gettier produces what he claims are two counterexamples that break the equivalence between "knowledge" and "justified true belief."

       To some people, Gettier's essay shows that we simply do not have a good definition of knowledge, that when we say, "I know X," we are, in fact, unable to explain what we are really saying. To others, such as philosopher Karl Popper, knowledge is not a belief at all, but an object like a tree or house. A very helpful YouTube video explains justified true belief and gives Popper's alternative view (see "Karl Popper and Justified True Belief (video)" in this week's module). 

       It is my belief that our handling of knowledge is critical thinking, reading, and writing, so a working definition of knowledge would seem like an important starting point. It is not, however, the only important philosophical problem raised in Meno. The first point that Socrates makes to Meno is that a person cannot know the qualities or characteristics of a thing if he does not know what the thing in question is. Meno asks Socrates how virtue is acquired, but Socrates says that he cannot answer because he does not know what virtue itself is.

       After making some failed attempts to define virtue, Meno becomes frustrated and poses the paradox of inquiry or what has become known as Meno's Paradox (Meno 80d). In an attempt to solve this paradox, Socrates proposes an alternative explanation for the acquisition of knowledge: learning as recollection.

       Meno's Paradox can be stated rather simply, but must be mastered for an understanding of Plato's learning-as-recollection theory, so study this link and other sources until you can state the paradox and Plato's answering theory for yourself (see "Meno's Paradox (video)" in this week's module).

       Socrates solves Meno's Paradox by demonstrating the truth of his knowledge-as-recollection theory with Meno's servant. It is not, perhaps, so important that you are able to follow the entire demonstration, but it is important that you understand Socrates' explanation of it and his reasons for conducting it. See "Learning Is Recollection (video)" in this week's module for help.

       Meno, in his enthusiasm for Socrates' theory, repeats his question concerning how virtue is acquired. This causes Socrates to make some unflattering comments about Meno's behavior and inspires him to set about answering the question by means of a hypothesis. This process shows great ingenuity and is worth careful study in itself, but is of most interest to us because it leads into the definition of knowledge previously discussed.

       I should mention here that while Socrates is one of ancient history's most familiar names, he is not known to have written anything that is extant. Most of what we know of him comes to us from Plato's dialogues. It is not known which of the ideas expressed by Socrates are his and which are Plato's. We will go under the assumption that Socrates' theories and claims in Meno are those espoused by Plato.