Tutorial # 11. Plato's Meno. Meno's Paradox - The Search for a Definition of Virtue. Discussion Questions

The Reading for this tutorial is Meno, 79e-86c.
You are strongly encouraged to purchase:
Plato, Meno. This may be read either in the translation by Adam Beresford, Protagoras and Meno, (Penguin Classics), or in the translation by Robin Waterfield, Meno and Other Dialogues, (Oxford World’s Classics).

However, good online links to Plato's Dialogues can be found at http://plato-dialogues.org/links.htm (maintained by Bernard Suzanne)

***The Meno at PerseusProject

A useful summary by Marc Cohen University of Washington

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In Light of the reading and of the above material try to think about the following questions.

• What is Meno’s paradox?
• Is Meno’s paradox a serious problem?
• “A man cannot inquire either about what he knows or about what he does not know? For he cannot inquire about what he knows, because he knows it, and in that case is in no need of inquiry; nor again can lie inquire about what he does not know, since he does not know about what he is to inquire”. Evaluate this argument. Give a counterexample.
• Is it always the case that either we know what we’re looking for or we don’t know what we’re looking for? Is there an equivocation (i.e. Is “what you’re looking for” used in two distinct senses) here? How?
• How do we know when we have succeeded in finding the right definition of something, say of what love is, or of what a chair is? Try to answer thinking about the distinction between apriori and aposteriori way of knowing.
• Is all learning recollection?
• What is the difference between learning to drive a car, and learning to prove a geometrical theorem?
• Do we come to life without knowing anything at all? Do we have innate “knowledge”? How the innate interacts with perception and/or inquiry to give rise to knowledge?
• Can Plato’s theory of recollection help provide a solution to Meno’s paradox?
• Which way of knowing is at issue in Plato’s “argument”?
• Consider what follows - see also the previous post. Plato’s question to Slave: What’s the length of side of the square having area of 8 units? Slave: 4 units --- Is this a good answer (good = logical and justifiable)?
• Again consider this. Plato to Slave: So the side of the square of area 8 unit is NOT 4 units? Slave: No, it is not; Plato: How much then? Slave: 3 units --- Is this a good answer?
  Why? Or Why not?
• Is Socrates' ‘questioning’ a mere “asking questions”? Or is he implicitly feeding the slave the right answers?