Learning as Recollection in the Meno

In the Meno, Socrates inquires into the nature and origins of knowledge, suggesting it may be innate rather than acquired through experience or instruction. He introduces the theory of learning as recollection, which says that knowledge already exists within the soul and is recalled rather than taken in for the first time (experience can prompt the recalling, the way the figures Socrates draws prompt the slave, but it doesn't supply what is recalled). This theory implies that our souls must have existed before our current lives, carrying truths that education can help us remember. Socrates tries to demonstrate this through his interaction with Meno's slave, but I will argue that his case for innate knowledge is speculative, relying on contentious assumptions about the soul's existence and nature.

Socrates uses his interaction with Meno's slave (Meno 82b-85b) to argue that what we think is learning afresh is actually recollecting truths that are already known by the soul from a previous life. In the interaction Socrates asks questions which lead the uneducated slave to recall a geometric truth on his own. He then interprets this as evidence for pre-existing knowledge in the soul. I think that while Socrates' interaction with Meno's slave gives an interesting example to show that knowledge may be innate, his demonstration ultimately rests on the belief that the slave's successful responses truly reveal innate knowledge. Could they not be the end product of logical reasoning and some guidance from Socrates?

The argument comes from an inquiry into whether virtue can be taught. At the start Meno asks "whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor by practice, then whether it comes to man by nature" (70a1-3). When their attempts to say what virtue is break down, Meno asks how anyone can search for something he does not know at all, since "if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?" (80d7-8). Socrates restates this as the claim that "a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know" (80e2-3), and answers it by saying the soul is immortal and has "seen all things" (81c5-7), so "all enquiry and all learning is but recollection" (81d4-5). Questions are normally a way of teaching but Socrates insists that isn't what is happening here ("I am not teaching the boy anything, but only asking him questions," 82e4-5). He asks the slave how long the side of a square has to be for the square to have double the area. The slave first says the side must be doubled (82e2-3), then says three feet (83e1-2), then admits he doesn't know, and finally agrees that the answer is the line from corner to corner (the diagonal). Socrates conducts this demonstration and then uses it as evidence from which to conclude that the slave recalled what he had previously known. The slave did not know the answer, yet he "had in him those notions of his" (85c4) and no one has taught him geometry (85e1-6), so he must have had these notions at "the time when he was not a man" (86a3-4). The premise everything rests on comes just before, when Socrates asks "Were not all these answers given out of his own head?" and Meno replies "Yes, they were all his own" (85b8-c1). This assumption relies on several factors, however. Firstly, he assumes that being able to answer correctly shows the knowledge must have been latent, which is quite a bold claim. But does answering correctly really show that the knowledge was there all along? Could the slave not just be working it out as he goes? And if he were working it out, would the conversation look any different?

One thing that I think is wrong with Socrates' demonstration is that it is not conclusive enough. Instead of confirming that knowledge is innate, the conversation could merely show that humans possess a natural capacity for problem-solving and logical reasoning, with no clear way of determining between the two from this example. This could enable someone to reach the correct answer through this reasoning alone and completely avoid the need for pre-existing knowledge in the soul. It would also answer Meno's paradox (how you can search for something you don't know at all) without the soul's past lives, because the slave knows what he is looking for (a line that gives a square of eight feet) and he can tell when he has found it by counting, so he can search for something he doesn't know yet. Although they seem open-ended, the questions contain subtle hints to carefully guide the slave through the logic. This Socratic method is effective at helping people to form logical connections but doesn't necessarily show that the person knew that information already. In guiding the slave when he is wrong, Socrates is guiding the thought process, helping him construct the answer step-by-step which sounds more like logical deduction than the recollection of innate knowledge. The key step is a good example of this. The slave has just said he doesn't know, and it is Socrates who draws the line "reaching from corner to corner" and asks whether it does not "bisect each of these spaces" (84e4-85a1), so the slave only has to say yes and the idea that actually solves the problem comes from Socrates. I think that the slave's responses might reflect basic pattern recognition rather than recollecting specific geometrical knowledge from previous lives. The pattern is that each triangle inside the new square is half of one of the old four-foot squares, and he recognizes it by counting what is drawn in front of him, four halves in the new square and two in the old one, and four is twice two (85a7-9).

It is also important to consider what we know today in relation to this. Nature vs Nurture has been an argument going on for decades, with still no conclusive say on which one has more of an effect on development, but there is no disagreement about whether both come into play. In the same way I think a mixed view on which some knowledge is innate but some can be learned externally is a better explanation of this passage than Socrates' alternative, and the slave's wrong answers are what show this. If he were recollecting then his first answers should be what he remembers. Instead his first answer (that a double square comes from a double side, 82e2-3) is the natural mistake of someone generalizing from what doubling usually does, and his second answer of three feet (83e1-2) splits the difference between two and four, which is exactly what Socrates' question about a line "greater than this one, and less than that one" (83c8-d1) invites. Each answer follows from the last question and the figure in the sand. Recollection explains the right answers but has to treat the wrong ones as lapses of memory, whereas reasoning from what is in front of him explains both. Say you get a person to find the area of a rectangle solely through reason and logic with no prompting, then this would show humans can derive knowledge through reasoning alone. If it was conclusive that the person got there through natural reasoning, then it takes a lot of the weight out of Socrates' argument.

Socrates might respond by emphasizing that the truths that the slave uncovers show a deeper source of knowledge that can't be explained by inference from what the slave has actually been given, which is just the figures in the sand and Socrates' questions. He would say that the knowledge accessed during the questioning lines up with the eternal truths of geometry, much like the laws of physics that have been unchanged since the start of our universe and exist independently from human knowledge or instruction. A square drawn in the sand is never exactly square and it disappears when the sand is smoothed over, yet what the slave agrees to holds for every square, always. His conclusion speaks of "the truth of all things" that "always existed in the soul" (86b1-2), and a truth that holds always and in every case couldn't have been read off a few rough drawings. He could compare the process of recollection to recognizing a familiar face, which brings back a memory without creating that memory from scratch again, and in this view the questions are not importing new knowledge but instead act as reminders. In response to the critique that the questions were leading, he may argue that the simplicity of the questions encouraged the natural thought process of the slave without giving any answers. Most of them can be answered yes or no and ask the slave only to check something he can see, like whether "a figure like this is a square" (82b9-10), whether its four lines are equal (82c1-2) or how many squares are in a figure (83b3-4). Socrates supplies the figures but the slave supplies the judgments, which is why Meno can say the answers were all his own. If his questions were merely leading then they would not result in a real understanding, but Socrates claims that if the slave were asked the same questions "in different forms, he would know as well as any one at last" (85c10-d1), suggesting that his comprehension goes further than copying Socrates' guidance.

I don't think this reply closes the gap. Even if the simplicity of the questions shows that the slave makes each small judgment himself, the order of the judgments and the diagonal that ends the search (the line the answer is built on) are both Socrates'. Socrates seems to sense this too. Right after his conclusion he says "Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident," and what he says he will fight for is only that we will be "better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire" (86b6-c2), which is a claim about why inquiry is worth doing and not a proof that the soul existed before birth.

Whilst Socrates' argument in the Meno provides a compelling framework for understanding knowledge as something innate, the demonstration with Meno's slave is not conclusive enough to confidently establish that knowledge is recollection. He interprets the slave's responses as evidence, but there are more plausible alternative explanations such as inherent logical abilities and deductive reasoning. These objections suggest that the slave's responses could arise from human cognitive capacities instead of eternal knowledge being recollected. This debate raises an important question about where knowledge actually comes from. If Socrates is correct then we cannot acquire knowledge through interacting with the world but instead can only do it from within. If instead knowledge results from cognitive capacities then learning does not require the soul's eternal pre-existence but is a process rooted in human reasoning and experience, and I think the slave's session with Socrates is actually a good example of exactly that.

Works cited

• Plato, Meno, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Project Gutenberg #1643). Stephanus sections and line numbers follow Burnet's Oxford text.