But I used to know many things I have now forgotten. I used to know the name of a very pretty girl in my third grade class. I have now forgotten it.
Wasn't it knowledge the guide actually had but he just didn't know it was knowledge, until he found out his belief was true?
Isn't true belief just knowledge waiting to be justified, discovered?
Well, so have I. This could start a discussion on what knowledge is, and whether you actually knew the girls name since you have forgotten it.
As I said, "chaining" mere right opinion turns it into stable right opinion. That does not mean that it can't be forgotten over time. Much like someone could forget where their boat is anchored after much time,they can also forget thing committed to memory. It is likely still in memory but can no longer be recalled because the "location" in memory is forgotten.
No. I can guess a horse will win a race, and then, later, the horse does win the race. But that doesn't mean I knew the horse would win the race, A lucky guess remains a guess even when you find out that you were lucky.
No. Unless it is justified, it isn't knowledge. It is a true belief.
In that case, I'm stuck here in the dialogue:
Men. The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.
<Soc. What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?>
Men. I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion-or why they should ever differ.
What does Soc. mean by this? My thought process follows the same as "Men" did. What cogent argument is he saying Soc. has?
When Meno says "he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not" he is referring to the idea that someone can have chance right opinion by being lucky or accidentally stumbling on right opinion. Socrates makes the point to say that the person still is right regardless of how they came to the right opinion.
Soc. You would not wonder if you had ever observed the images of Daedalus; but perhaps you have not got them in your country?
Men. What have they to do with the question?
Soc. Because they require to be fastened in order to keep them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and run away.
Men. Well. what of that?
Soc. I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain.
The soul is trapped in the body. The soul once lived in "Reality", but got trapped in the body. It once knew everything, but forgot it. The goal of Recollection is to get back to true Knowledge. To do this, one must overcome the body. This doctrine implies that nothing is ever learned, it is simply recalled or remembered. In short it says that all that we know already comes pre-loaded on birth and our senses enable us to identify and recognize the stratified information in our mind.
In that case, I'm stuck here in the dialogue:
Men. The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.
<Soc. What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?>
Men. I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion-or why they should ever differ.
What does Soc. mean by this? My thought process follows the same as "Men" did. What cogent argument is he saying Soc. has?
Some questions about this passage.
First - what are 'images of Daedulus' and what is it about them that makes them able to 'go truant' if they are not fastened? (This might have been explained elsewhere, or at least the reader might be assumed to know this, but it is a bit mystifying. They seem to be possessed of a mind of their own, rather than being 'images'.)
Second this 'fastening' of 'opinions' by 'recollection'. I presume the reference is to the Platonic doctrine of anamnesis. The Wikipedia article on same puts it (rather crudely) as:
Do you think this is what the passage is referring to? Because in this passage, the nature of 'the chain' seems of central significance. It is hard to conjecture what this might be, in contemporary terms.
So perhaps the point of the dialog is to differentiate that knowledge (episteme) is of a different kind to what many of us (cave dwellers, I presume) what regard as 'knowledge', which would at best be 'correct opinions or beliefs' (doxa).
It is hard to ascertain the truth of this statement, insofar as it assumes a distinction which cannot really be proven propositionally. No amount of propositional analysis could establish whether there is such a thing as 'true knowledge remembered by the soul' could it?
I don't know. I don't think you can discard the idea of 'anamnesis' without eviscerating Platonic philosophy altogether. Certainly it makes interpretation of this dialog impossible. I think the whole point is that Socrates is making a distinction between 'knowledge of an ultimate kind' and 'ordinary knowledge'. There are similar distinctions made in many traditional schools of philosophy (Arabic, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval). However, there remains scope for 'conventional' knowledge (which includes science) to be perfectly sound, within its frame of reference. But that frame of reference is understood not to be absolute.
Socrates is talking about a 'higher knowledge'.
Of course, we know more facts today than we did 100 years ago. But there can well be a sense in which we know more and more, about less and less. Maybe there is a really important perspective which Plato and Socrates shared, which we don't have, and which might not be gained by the accumulation of facts. But of course the modern outlook will generally reject this idea so I don't expect that it will be accepted. This is, however, what is at issue in this dialog.
that is true in a way, but it is rather beside the point. Besides it assumes that in all respects, modernity is superior to the ancient world. I think this is 'cultural chauvinism'. It might be the case that the modern outlook on life is better in some ways than ancient one. But there might have been some ways in which their's was better than ours. Experimental science is of course very useful, and reveals the details of nature very well. But at the end of the day we live in a human reality, and reality is a lived experience. Science is but one facet of that lived experience. Certainly it provides many powerful tools and other benefits, but does it make me any wiser? Does having access to all of this knowledge make me a better person? It is quite possible that the ancients understood other facets about which modern science has no knowledge or interest.
I seem to recall that Plato took a dim view of the hoi polloi. They were the great majority who dwelt in the realm of doxa. Of course these aristocratic tendencies were why Popper saw Plato as an enemy of the 'open society'. But on the other hand, what we call modern science might be just the way that the hoi polloi have organised things for their own convenience. And it certainly seems to be more convenient in some respects, but then on the other hand, we seem to permanently hovering on the edge of global catastophe as well, so maybe the 'jury is still out' as the saying goes.
But learning that we are fallible creatures does not require science. Some people would have known it 10,000 years ago.
I did not imply, or say, that there is 'no scientific knowledge', rather that scientific knowledge is perfectly valid within its frame of reference. Actually this is not even a particularly controversial claim. This is in accordance with what Kuhn and Polanyi say about scientific knowledge. I don't accept Bertrand Russell's idea that 'all can be known, can be known by means of science'. there are other types of knowledge, intuitive and spiritual understandings, which are not in the province of empirical science, because they require our participation as subjects.
And I don't make a religion out of science. I don't think 'the scientific worldview' amounts to a philosophy of life, nor that evolutionary biology accounts for the nature of human beings. I am not a scientific ideologue, although I will defer on scientific questions to scientists.
And Socrates is talking about a higher knowledge.
I agree, it is a difficult perspective. There is a saying in literature that 'the past is another country' and this is especially applicable to the thought of the ancient Greeks which is of course extremely foreign to the contemporary outlook. So it is very difficult to get into the 'mindset' of such a time, especially one so culturally and temporally removed.
You will recall that Plato used to talk of 'recollecting the knowledge of the soul'. But what if he actually meant it? Maybe in so doing, his very conception of who he was, and what life is actually about, was completely changed. 'Previously, I thought that I was such and such - now, I have a completely different understanding of who I am'. (I don't know if there is an equivalent quote from Plato, but I am sure that there must be one like it.) Now this might be knowledge of quite a different order to the knowledge of facts-about-the-world. (And, let us recall, the Delphic injunction Man, Know Thyself.)
However I do understand why one would reject that. We live in a scientific age. No-one believes these kinds of things any more: 'soul', 'forms', 'higher knowledge' and the like. But leaving aside, or bracketing, whether you or I actually believe that, I think it is essential in the understanding of the nature of the dialog, because I think this is what the dialog is about.
So really there is a religious dimension to this whole discussion. However, that too should be interpreted carefully, because again it may not mean 'religious' in the sense that moderns will understand. But it is a fact that Plato was in some respects, as illustrated by such passages as the famous allegory of the Cave, a mystic. And mystics believe, or declare, that there is a kind of knowledge specific to mystical experience or realisation which is not available to the - how shall we say - 'mundane' intelligence.
Now you would not at all be the first person to react against this aspect of Plato's personality. In fact, Aristotle did likewise, and as he grew older, became more and more antagonistic to the mystical elements in Plato's teaching. He thought the the Theory of Forms was 'fatal to science'. And accordingly, he devised a much more realistic ontology which became instrumental in the formation of Western thought.
However the Platonic lineage, or stream, call it what you will - which arguably started with Pythagoras and other predecessors - nevertheless continued down through the generations, and remained a major component of Western philosophy up until the beginning of the modern age. (I was reading a book recently where a professor declared that everyone is 'either an Aristotlean or a Platonist'. I think I have decided the latter.)
But be that as it may, none of it changes the fact that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, and that water is made from hydrogen and oxygen, and that if you put enough of it on a wood fire, it will go out. But there is a side of philosophy that deals with a different level of explanation, one where the types of questions we deal with are much less clear cut. Is the universe evolving towards an outcome, or is everything just a result of chance and necessity? Does human life have any particular significance in the scheme of things, or are we just acidental tourists? And so on.
Many in the modern world look to science to give us an account of the nature of the world we live in and the kind of people we are. This is not an unreasonable belief, but I do agree with Plato, and disagree with Russell, in that I too think there are kinds of knowledge in addition to the scientific. This does not mean I deny science or even doubt it. But there are questions it won't ask, and answers that it won't receive, and I think, again, this is what the Socrates dialog is about.
I hope that clarifies what I am getting at.
I agree, it is a difficult perspective. There is a saying in literature that 'the past is another country' and this is especially applicable to the thought of the ancient Greeks which is of course extremely foreign to the contemporary outlook. So it is very difficult to get into the 'mindset' of such a time, especially one so culturally and temporally removed.
You will recall that Plato used to talk of 'recollecting the knowledge of the soul'. But what if he actually meant it? Maybe in so doing, his very conception of who he was, and what life is actually about, was completely changed. 'Previously, I thought that I was such and such - now, I have a completely different understanding of who I am'. (I don't know if there is an equivalent quote from Plato, but I am sure that there must be one like it.) Now this might be knowledge of quite a different order to the knowledge of facts-about-the-world. (And, let us recall, the Delphic injunction Man, Know Thyself.)
However I do understand why one would reject that. We live in a scientific age. No-one believes these kinds of things any more: 'soul', 'forms', 'higher knowledge' and the like. But leaving aside, or bracketing, whether you or I actually believe that, I think it is essential in the understanding of the nature of the dialog, because I think this is what the dialog is about.
So really there is a religious dimension to this whole discussion. However, that too should be interpreted carefully, because again it may not mean 'religious' in the sense that moderns will understand. But it is a fact that Plato was in some respects, as illustrated by such passages as the famous allegory of the Cave, a mystic. And mystics believe, or declare, that there is a kind of knowledge specific to mystical experience or realisation which is not available to the - how shall we say - 'mundane' intelligence.
Now you would not at all be the first person to react against this aspect of Plato's personality. In fact, Aristotle did likewise, and as he grew older, became more and more antagonistic to the mystical elements in Plato's teaching. He thought the the Theory of Forms was 'fatal to science'. And accordingly, he devised a much more realistic ontology which became instrumental in the formation of Western thought.
However the Platonic lineage, or stream, call it what you will - which arguably started with Pythagoras and other predecessors - nevertheless continued down through the generations, and remained a major component of Western philosophy up until the beginning of the modern age. (I was reading a book recently where a professor declared that everyone is 'either an Aristotlean or a Platonist'. I think I have decided the latter.)
But be that as it may, none of it changes the fact that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, and that water is made from hydrogen and oxygen, and that if you put enough of it on a wood fire, it will go out. But there is a side of philosophy that deals with a different level of explanation, one where the types of questions we deal with are much less clear cut. Is the universe evolving towards an outcome, or is everything just a result of chance and necessity? Does human life have any particular significance in the scheme of things, or are we just acidental tourists? And so on.
Many in the modern world look to science to give us an account of the nature of the world we live in and the kind of people we are. This is not an unreasonable belief, but I do agree with Plato, and disagree with Russell, in that I too think there are kinds of knowledge in addition to the scientific. This does not mean I deny science or even doubt it. But there are questions it won't ask, and answers that it won't receive, and I think, again, this is what the Socrates dialog is about.
I hope that clarifies what I am getting at.
Now, Plato, and Descartes argued insistently that just because empirical knowledge was not known with certainty, it could not (really) be knowledge. They begin with the premise that knowledge must be certain, and conclude that empirical knowledge is not real knowledge. I think that must be wrong. I think we must begin with the premise that empirical knowledge is knowledge, and that, therefore, knowledge need not be (and is not) certain. The question is, of course, which premise one thinks is more likely to be true.
