Plato Theory of Recollection suggest that the process of learning is just recalling events that happen before we were born. Plato believes all knowledge we have is immortal therefore the knowledge is always there all we have to do is recall that knowledge. This views of Plato could be considerably true due to the vast amounts of knowledge are brains are able to retain. If all those memories pre-existed then our brains could have infinite potential. Since our soul is believe to be non-physical meaning it cannot die then ones our body dies our soul will still continue to live on with all the information we have learned in that life time. Plato backed his theory with events that happened. For example, in “Meno” Socrates shows us a slave that has …show more content…
This event gives a strong case to Plato’s theory because the slave was never exposed to any kind of math that could of have helped him resolve the problem. The only way the slave could have solved the problem was by looking at the problem, once the slave recognized the problem his mind would recall information his soul had in him making him able to correctly solve the problem without having any kind of knowledge during his lifetime. Recollecting of memory was used by the slave. Not only does Plato’s theory prove that our knowledges comes from before birth but also that our immortal soul does exist. Without the soul to keep the information our minds would be empty and learning would be more difficult to comprehend. According to Plato the knowledge we store can never be forget meaning that once that knowledge enters our brain it will never go away. The information stored would be kept …show more content…
Plato’s theory makes sense due to the way he gives examples such as the slave and people around him that went through the same recalling process that he gives in his theory. The theory is well processed by Plato. If we receive information we have never seen before than the knowledge could have not been in our brains because our brains were made when we were born with no knowledge meaning that the ideas we somehow developed at the moment could not have been in our brains. The only explanation there is about the sudden knowledge receive at the moment is that the knowledge is coming from another source a source that cannot be seen but is present with us such as our soul. We cannot see our soul but it is there with the knowledge from past lives. Plato’s theory of invisibility suggests that things that are invisible cannot be destroyed since we as humans cannot see them than the object is not destroyed. The same concept goes with the human soul since the soul cannot be seen then it cannot be destroyed according to Plato. The soul is then made immortal which goes through many bodies and gathering many souls. “We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process
Socrates is unable to prove his argument that the soul is immortal through the theories of Opposites, Recollection, and Forms because he is unable to explain his reasoning to give a legitimate answer. Although he had given enough evidence to try and prove his point, the evidence given was not convincing enough. His idea often fell through when he tried to relate back to the theories because the possibility that the soul lives on forever leads to so many questions that all don’t necessarily have a reasonable answer or an answer at all, therefore Socrates idea that the soul is immortal is false.
Seeing as both Socrates and himself do not know what virtue is, Meno declares that they are unable to recognize or even discover it. After that Socrates refutes by stating the theory of recollection, and the immortality of the soul. Since Socrates believes that a soul is immortal, any knowledge can be recollected, which is what the theory of recollection is. He proves this through Meno’s slave, who had no prior learning of math or geometry. Through a series of questions, the slave boy is able to determine all of the lengths of the squares that Socrates draws, which explains to Meno that virtue can be recollected if they take enough time to find the
What began as Socrates’ process of inquiry, the impression that one cannot obtain knowledge about something without having a definition for it first, led to Meno’s Paradox, a seemingly intelligent argument that mindlessly concludes that knowledge of something can never actually and fully be obtained. Seeing that the paradox had this visibly defective conclusion, Plato disproves Meno’s third premise, and by its fault, premise four is restated as, you can, actually, discover something, which corresponds with Plato’s view of how a person obtains knowledge.
The flaw that Plato speaks about is trusting as real, what one sees - believing absolutely that what one sees is true. In The Allegory of the Cave, the slaves in the caves know that the shadows, thrown on the wall by the fire behind them, are real. If they were to talk to the shadows echoes would make the shadows appear to talk back. To the slaves "the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images." (Jacobus 316).
It is thought that Meno's paradox is of critical importance both within Plato's thought and within the whole history of ideas. It's major importance is that for the first time on record, the possibility of achieving knowledge from the mind's own resources rather than from experience is articulated, demonstrated and seen as raising important philosophical questions.
However, when people are learning, in common-sense is to learn, to discover things that they do not know, in other words, because they do not know, they precisely need to learn. But how to learn, to discover something people do not know? People are learning or discovering, but they do not know what they are learning or discovering, this is impossible. And then again, if people already know what they are discovering or learning, there is no need for them to learn or discover. In this way, people either know or do not know what they are learning or discovering, learning and discovering are impossible or unnecessary. The essential start point that Plato proposes “recollection” in Meno is to refute this argument about learning ...
Therefore, through the soul, that has been born before being placed into a physical human body, the human has knowledge. As a result of the soul being immortal and knowing everything, Socrates ties that idea of immortality with the theory of recollection, which claims that our knowledge is inside of us because of the soul and it never learns anything new, only remembers, consequently, serving as an evidence that the soul is pre- existent. Socrates uses the knowledge of the soul to explain that there is no such thing as learning but instead there is discovery of the knowledge that one has and does, by himself, without receiving new information. However, most knowledge is forgotten at birth since we are born without knowing, for example, how to add, subtract,talk, etc. Nonetheless, the knowledge we have, has to be recollected with the help of a teacher. Socrates is able to prove this argument to a degree by using Meno’s slave, who had no prior knowledge of geometry before, as an example of how humans have the knowledge inside of them, through the soul, and they know everything but all they need are a sort of guidance to be able to “free” the knowledge they didn’t know they had inside them all this time. (Plato,
...blem. What Plato has done is simply put the problem in the realm of the ethereal. Even by doing this, he does not give a solution as to how becoming can exist. He has merely just explained how there can exist more than one characteristic in one thing.
In the Phaedo Socrates claims that the soul is indeed immortal, that it lives forever and cannot die even after the body has died, thus philosophers spend their lives devaluing themselves from their body. Socrates presents the Theory of Recollection to persuade his fellow philosophers that have convened inside his cell that the soul is immortal. In essence, the recollection argument refers to the act of learning, because the soul is immortal, according to Socrates, then this suggests that when a person is learning something they are actually relearning it, because their soul has existed before they were born. This idea of recollecting knowledge is prominent and is the most convincing argument in proving the existence of immortality through the soul, however, this argument does not suggest that the soul continues to exist after death and lacks clarity regarding what truly happens after a person dies.
- Chappell, Timothy. "Plato on Knowledge in the Theaetetus." Stanford University. Stanford University, 07 May 2005. Web. 08 May 2014.
First and foremost, Socrates believed that when a person dies the body is what seems to die while the soul continues to live and exist. Although many suggested that when the body dies the soul dies with it, Socrates provides numerous arguments to prove his point otherwise. The arguments that were presented consisted of The argument of Reincarnation, The argument of Opposites, The argument of Recollection, and The argument of Forms. The argument that was most convincing for me was that of the Argument of Forms because Socrates makes his most compelling arguments here and it’s the most effective. On the other hand, the argument that I saw to be the least convincing was that of the Argument of Recollection and Reincarnation because both arguments fail to fully support the idea of the soul being immortal.
Plato believes the soul is an immortal separate entity that is entrapped in the body until one dies. The soul is what possess knowledge and remembers what was known from previous lifetimes. He illustrates this with the story of Socrates and the slave boy. With this, he showed that while the slave boy was an unschooled individual, he was still able to solve the problem of doubling a square. Plato attributes this accomplishment to the soul as remembering a previous encounter with an eternal knowledge.
Plato believed that the body and the soul were two separate entities, the body being mortal and the soul being immortal. In Plato’s phaedo, this is further explained by Socrates. He claims that by living a philosophical life, we are able to eventually free the soul from the body and its needs. If we have not yield to our bodily needs, we should not fear death, since it can than permanently detach the soul from the body. The most convincing argument for the immortality of the body is the theory of recollection, which shows that we are already born with knowledge of forms and that learning is thus recalling these ideas. If we are already born with knowledge this implies that are soul is immortal, since it would otherwise be a blank page.
In the Phaedo, Plato introduced the theory of Ideas which centered on the problem of immortality of the soul, which suggested that true cannot be finding in the sensible world, but in the world of ideas. He talked about the knowledge of equality in the sense world in which it is impossible to have things that are equal. Things in the sense world might seem to be equal, but in reality it is not. Equality can only come from the mind and this equality is Ideas, which has always been in the mind and is unchangeable, universal, and eternal. He lays down that ideas such as beauty itself, goodness itself, and justice itself are itself when they partake in themselves. For example, beautiful object is beautiful because they partake in itself or all beautiful things are beauty by itself. This makes beauty exist forever and not like objects in the sense world which is temporary. He used these Ideas to use as his proof for the immorality of the soul. The body is like objects in the sense world, which is temporary and insignificant. These objects can change from hour to hour and from day to day. They are unreliable and useless. The soul, on the other hand, is in the Ideas world which is unchangeable, perfect and is forever. Just like beautiful thing partake of beauty by itself, the soul partake in the ideas of life which means that the soul li...
He wrote many dialogues, and one of them includes his famous dialogue called “Allegory of the Cave.” This dialogue explained how we were born into being very naïve people about our surroundings and taking things for granted, but eventually with the right education we grow to be philosophers that know the Form of Good. Society closes our eyes and whispers things to us in our ears and we believe it, in order to break free we need to educate ourselves into being more knowledgeable about our surroundings. We need to analyze even the smallest things, nothing is to be taken for granted because everything is more complex than what it seems (Plato, p. 26). Plato also states in his idea of self, the soul, that the soul is composed of three parts, our desires, the conscious awareness of reason and the spirited part which gets angry at injustice (Plato, p.40). His allegory and this idea about the parts of the soul connect with each other and might as well lead us to understanding what his idea truly means. Like the first argument, we could say that because our souls is what makes us alive, we are aware of the life we live, therefore we become philosophers only when we do not forget where we came from. This though, sounds contradicting to itself if we take the second argument in hand. If our soul is our life and our body is what carries it, than our ability to become philosophers depends solely on our ability to remove our soul from the body in