From the Beginning to Plato

FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO 347
1 I cannot enquire into something of which I am completely ignorant.
2 I could not know if I came across what I was enquiring into because I could
not recognize it as what I was searching for.
The recollection theory can answer (2). The slave boy, for example, has latent
knowledge of p which, when revived by Socrates’ cross-examination, enables
him to ‘recognize’ p.
But the recollection theory does not and is not meant to answer (1). 55 To set up
X as an object of enquiry I must actively ‘know’ X, and latent knowledge cannot
by itself explain such awareness of X. Once we distinguish between propositions
and facts, the solution to (1) is straightforward: I can know what is said by ‘p’
without knowing whether it is the case that p. So I can enquire whether it is the
case that p without knowing whether it is the case that p. But with this solution
unavailable to him, Plato’s responds to (1) not with an explanation of how
enquiry is possible but by arguing that as a matter of fact enquiry can lead to
knowledge and so we ought to persist in enquiring into things we do not know.
For inasmuch as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, when
a man has recalled one piece of knowledge… nothing prevents him from
finding out all the other things.
(Meno 81c-d)
If I learn A, which is similar to B, then I may recollect B. And if B is similar to C
then I may recall C, and so on. It is this sort of stepwise enquiry which Socrates
conducts here (Meno 82e 12–13). 56
Dialectic
That stepwise procedure of recollection is an example of Plato’s dialectical
method. This developed from the negative and destructive Socratic elenchus—
the procedure of refutation portrayed in early dialogues— into a method for
achieving positive knowledge. The Phaedo contrasts it with empirical
investigation which leads to the difficulties mentioned previously, and
emphasizes that enquiry should proceed by reason alone. The Forms can only be
apprehended by reason, and it will be by thinking about them, by having them in
our mental view, that we will acquire knowledge of them, not by turning to the
sensibles that only confusingly reflect the natures we wish to know.
‘Dialectic’ is from dialegesthai (‘to converse’) and dialectic is a conversation
proceeding by question and answer. The questioner leads the enquiry and begins
by asking his interlocutor (possibly himself) a question, typically about how to
define some concept. An initial hypothesis is proposed which the questioner
attacks by getting his respondent to answer a further series of questions where
the answers lead to some difficulty or absurdity. They then go back and, taking
this result into account, another answer is proposed. And so on. In early