Simmias And Cebes's Theory Essay

He calls over a slave boy, who has had no education or experience with mathematics, and asks him to solve a mathematical problem. He draws geometric figures in the ground and asks the slave to work out how long the sides of a square, of twice the area, would be. Initially, he gets the answer wrong but, through guidance from Socrates, eventually he reaches the correct answer. Socrates never actually explains anything to the boy, but instead helps him to think for himself. Socrates argues that, as the slave reaches this conclusion by himself, he is recollecting knowledge he already possessed. (Meno 84-85).

He says that if there is no life after death then you will simply cease to exist and then death would be the soundest sleep you could experience. You would no longer be aware of the pain and misery of life and eternity would seem to be one night of interrupted sound sleep. However, if you die and there is no after life, you will not be able to help friends and family in need. Socrates would not be able to continue to teach his children the ways of life and he would no longer be able to guide the youth of Athens in becoming “good fellow citizens.” At the end of the trial Socrates even asks the jury to watch after his family after he is gone to ensure his sons are raised properly. And then he states to the jury that

Indeed, from this article we recognize that the children will gain success when everybody encourages their effort and shouldn’t emphasize inborn talent. Effort counts more than innate ability.

There can be something said for “talent” in which one is either born with or born without. This could be linked to genetics, many

Simon Nichols theory of loose parts argues that creativity is not for the gifted, he believes that it is our education and cultural conditions that lead us to believe this .He said that ‘in any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity and the possibility of discovery are directly proportional to the number of loose parts and kind of variables in it.’ You do not have to be a gifted musician to make music, the children and young people at my setting often make there own music, with pots, pans and trays or even banging small sticks on surface areas.

Socrates put one’s quest for wisdom and the instruction of others above everything else in life. A simple man both in the way he talked and the wealth he owned, he believed that simplicity in whatever one did was the best way of acquiring knowledge and passing it unto others. He is famous for saying that “the unexplained life is not worth living.” He endeavored therefore to break down the arguments of those who talked with a flowery language and boasted of being experts in given subjects (Rhees 30). His aim was to show that the person making a claim on wisdom and knowledge was in fact a confused one whose clarity about a given subject was far from what they claimed. Socrates, in all his simplicity never advanced any theories of his own

I belief that saying that a person can be taught to have knowledge is the same as saying a person who already beliefs in a topic or subject has a opinion. Which we know that opinion can be taught, but so can knowledge because you are teaching an opinion that soon will become a piece of information in a person's mind and that is what the definition is for knowledge. In other words, by learning an Opinion then they also will be receiving knowledge. Again like Socrates explains what Daedalus had told him about how we all will always have knowledge but our true opinion can be lost and maybe never be thought again. For a true opinion to stay in our minds we need to practice and think about the idea or a fact and turn it into an argument.

In this essay I will show that Socrates answer to Meno 's paradox was unsuccessful. First, I will explain what Meno 's paradox is and how the question of what virtue is was raised. Second, I will explain Socrates attempt to answer the paradox with his theory of recollection and how he believes the soul is immortal. Third, I will provide an argument for why his response was unsuccessful. This will involve looking at empirical questions, rather than non-empirical questions and how Socrates theory of recollection fails in this case. Next, I will provide an argument for why his response was successful. This will involve his interview with the slave boy and how the slave boy is able to provide the correct answers to Socrates questions. Lastly, I will explain why Socrates ' interview with the slave boy does not actually successfully prove his theory of recollection by examining how Socrates phrases his questions.

Socrates begins to dissolve the paradox by stating that the soul is in fact immortal. Our souls go through a process of anamnesis which is simply just recollecting previous information. To prove that our souls have past experiences from multiple lives, he presents Meno with a scenario involving a slave boy and a simple geometric inquiry. In short, Socrates tries to prove that even a slave boy who appears to have no knowledge, can work out a simple geometric problem. The slave boy at first gives a few wrong answers and Socrates had to ask follow up questions to bring the slave boy to the right answer, however in no way did Socrates give the slave boy the answer – from his recollection of past experiences, the slave boy managed to correct himself and come to the right answer on his own. Therefore, we have pre-existing information in our souls and it is only a matter of remembering past information.

Suppose Socrates managed to adequately prove the immortality and all knowing nature of the soul, his use of the slave boy interrogation as proof of recollection still remains problematic. What is being called into question is the method of interrogation that Socrates uses to help the salve boy recollect. Is the slave-boy actually recollecting forgotten knowledge? Or is Socrates asking strategic questions that direct the slave boy to the correct answer? It is assumed that because Socrates is asking questions and not explicitly teaching the slave boy anything that he has to be recollecting (106, Weiss). However, upon closer inspection this assumption can be easily questioned. Socrates’ use of diagrams begs the question, “can a process of discovery which leans so heavily on seeing- not in the sublimated sense, but in the literal one-be anything but an empirical process?”(Vlastos, 144). Would the slave boy have been able to arrive at the correct answer if Socrates had not drawn out the geometric figures? If he

Phaedo, the second dialogue of Plato’s theory, states that only through the forms and absolutes, an individual can have knowledge. It has been questioned how society can have the knowledge of an absolute if we haven’t discovered said absolute. Socrates reflects, “The thing which I see aims at being like some other thing, but falls short of and cannot be like that other thing, and is inferior” (The Philosophical Journey 90). That is to say that in order to have the understanding of an absolute of something, we can derive its meaning from the things that do not meet the requirements. In addition, to derive the conceptualization of an absolute, an individual can only use the senses one is given. As well, Socrates declares, “From the senses then is derived the conception that all sensible equals aim at an absolute equality of which they fall short” (The Philosophical Journey 90). As a result, the senses can only see

To illustrate this theory Socrates asks Meno to call over one of his slaves and he presents him with a geometrical problem. Socrates shows that without teaching him, but through a series of questions he can enable the slave, who had never been taught geometry before in his life, to solve the problem.

Melinda may also argue that knowledge can justify the existence of the soul. According to Plato,

In Phaedo Socrates claims that the soul exists somewhere after the body dies. He uses the argument of opposites to make his claim. Socrates believes that for something to “be” it must have been something else before or come from something. He gives Cebes examples of thing that are generated as a result from its opposite. “when anything becomes greater it must inevitably have been smaller and then have become greater.” He uses this example to say that being “greater” is derived from having been “smaller” at some point; and that in between being “greater” and “smaller” there are a lot of variables. After giving several examples to Cebes and Cebes agreeing to most outcomes, Socrates asks Cebes if there is an opposite to living, Cebes responds

The metaphysical point behind the opening question is to show that there is another thing that exists called the Equal. The best evidence to this is found in the line, “I do not mean a stick equal to a stick or a stone to a stone, or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the Equal itself,” (74a5-74a8). Plato makes it clear he is not talking about a stick being equal to a stick. Rather, if two objects are equal, than the “Equal” must exist and be a thing. The Equal is the equivalent to the Universal because the Universal is something that repeats and is not able to be proven by any known sciences. Thus, being the metaphysical point. Simmias is agreeing with this question and idea of an “Equal” or the Universal. The statement Simmias says “Indeed we shall, by Zeus,” (74a4) shows that Simmias has a very strong belief towards the idea of the Universal.