Comparing Socrates To Meno

In this essay I will be working with the concepts of knowledge and true belief. I will show how they differ in two different Plato texts. I will first work to show what the concepts are and how they are different. I will then work to provide the necessary background information for each text, and separately explain how these concepts are treated in the two different texts. Next after having explained the concepts use in the text I will highlight the differences in the two accounts. Finally I will work to show that while the two accounts do differ the differences can be reconciled, so Plato is really saying the same thing in both texts. When someone says they have a true belief, or that they have knowledge of something you would think they
Within the story Socrates and the character Meno began by searching for what virtue was. Meno simply wanted to know the nature of it, how it was acquired, but Socrates felt the definition was needed first. In the end Meno gets frustrated with the whole discussion and feels they can’t inquire about something they don’t know about. This where the concepts of knowledge and true belief come into the Meno. To prove to Meno they are able to conduct inquiry into the unknown Socrates does a demonstration with a slave boy to prove his assertion that all learning is recollection. In this demonstration he has the slave boy answer geometry questions. The slave boy does not know geometry. Throughout the demonstration Socrates simply draws pictures and asks questions to guide the boy to the answer. At the end of the discussion the slave boy who had no knowledge of geometry was able to answer a few geometrical questions. Socrates takes this to prove his assertion that the soul is immortal, and therefore all learning is recollection. Socrates says because the soul is immortal it possesses all knowledge within it, and what we call learning is really recollecting. We acquire knowledge through inquiring about things until we are able to ‘remember’ them as Socrates states it. Once we have done sufficient inquiry these true beliefs within us become knowledge once again as
The theory of the forms is this idea that everything we see in the world is an aspect of some perfect form. These perfect forms do not exist in the world, but our immortal souls that have all knowledge know these perfect forms, and we perceive everything in the world as aspects of these forms. When we see beautiful objects we are seeing things that exhibit aspects of the form of beauty, and when we see ugly things we see things exhibiting aspects of the form of the ugly and so on. Again these perfect forms do not exist in reality, but within our immortal souls we have them, and therefore when we see these beautiful things or ugly things we recollect this form. In the argument in the republic we create three categories. There is ignorance which is what is not, knowledge comprises what is, and belief comprises the middle ground in both what is and what is not. In this argument knowledge would be the forms, the forms are perfect they are what actually is unchanging and infallible. Ignorance is simply falsehoods things that don’t exist. Beliefs is the tricky part in this argument. Everything we can observe would be in the belief category. While we can see things that exhibit aspects of the forms they aren’t totally the form. For example the same woman one man sees as beautiful could be seen as ugly by another. Therefore this woman would exhibiting two forms, and not totally either one she