Plato

Question 1

Define Meno’s paradox

Answer 1

If you know what you are looking for, inquiry is uneccessary, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, inquiry is impossible

Question 2

Describe how the example of the slaveboy is used to support Plato’s theory of recollection

Answer 2

• Socrates questions the slaveboy on principles of geometry
• slaveboy seemed to have already known the answers to the questions asked
  => knowledge must have already been there and the slaveboy must have ‘recollected’ the ‘new’ knowledge independently
• the slaveboy acquired such knowledge when his soul experienced the world of forms

Question 3

What does Cebes say in Phaedo

Answer 3

That the recollection argument is “another proof of the soul’s immorality”

Question 4

Norman Gulley’s view on how ‘Phaedo’ counters ‘Meno’

Answer 4

In Phaedo “anamnesis is now being described as a process of being reminded of the Forms by the senses”

Question 5

Ed Fraser’s argument

Answer 5

• Plato’s Theory of Recollection is circular

- the existence of the immortal soul depends on the existence of the slave boy’s recollected knowledge and vice versa

Question 6

Bertrand Russell’s argument

Answer 6

any beliefs in the immorality of the soul “claims no support from science”

Question 7

Describe how assimilation can counter Plato’s argument

Answer 7

• Assimilation is where new information is taken in and fits in with similar existing information
  => the slaveboy can work out the area of the larger shape as he did with the smaller shape

Question 8

Dawkins’ argument

Answer 8

• meme as being inherited ideas of phenomenons

CP: could be a scientific approach to Plato’s theory