Why Are There Two Versions of Meno’s Paradox?

Southern Journal of Philosophy 60 (3):465-486 (2022)
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Abstract

This article seeks to answer why there are two different versions of Meno’s Paradox. I argue that the dilemma contained in Socrates’s version is a pre-existing puzzle, familiar to both Meno and Socrates before their discussion. The two versions of the paradox are thus different because Meno’s version is a mistaken attempt to remember the puzzle contained in Socrates’s version. Although Meno’s version is a mistaken attempt to state Socrates’s version, it is a philosophically richer puzzle that makes three interesting points about inquiry and recognition. After arguing that Socrates’s version is unsound and that Meno’s version is an attempt to recollect or remember it, I analyze Meno’s version in detail. In closing, I consider the relationship between the notion of recognition, which figures prominently in Meno’s version, and the theory of recollection, suggesting that the latter may have arisen as an attempt to explain the origin of moral intuitions.

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Douglas A. Shepardson
Hunter College (CUNY)

References found in this work

Inquiry in the Meno.Gail Fine - 1992 - In Richard Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. pp. 200-226.
Meno's Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher.Alexander Nehamas - 1985 - Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3:1-30.
Plato's Theaetetus.Gail Fine & David Bostock - 1991 - Philosophical Review 100 (4):687.
Meno's Paradox in Context.David Ebrey - 2014 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (1):4-24.

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