[BLANK_AUDIO] We're just about up to that weird bit I told you about. The Pindar poetry. Then comes the geometry lesson. Then the final bit about virtue. That'll be next lesson. I'd like to close this lesson out by pointing out four interesting moments from this dialogue, up until this point. First there is a moment when Socrates maybe commits what has been called the Socratic Fallacy. What's that? Let me quote you from an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. An article on ancient conceptions of analysis. By the way, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent free online source for high quality, rigorously peer reviewed articles on general subjects in philosophy. Word of warning, the articles tend to be written at a level that may be a bit challenging for beginners. I'd say its typically pitched at an upper level undergraduate level. But it's very reliable. Maybe you can make your way through it. Just for your information. Here's the bit I want to talk about. In the Euthyphro and also in Meno. Quote, Socrates appears to be committed to the principle that if one does not know what the F is, then one cannot truly know if F is truly predicable of anything. Unquote. Let me explain to you what that said. What's, the F? Well its any predicate. That is any word for a property. For example, holiness. We're talking about the words now. Virtue, bee-ness, that is the property of being a bee. Circularity, squareness, hoarseness and on, and on. What the principle says in effect, is you could never identify something as holy. Predicate the word holy of it, unless you could define holiness. You could never identify something as bee unless you could define bee-ness. This sort of makes sense. After all, if you were programming a robot, maybe the Euthyphrobot 3000 To sort all of the things in the universe into two piles, holy and unholy. The obvious strategy would be to program an algorithm into it. And that algorithm would be functionally, a definition of holiness. Somewhat less ridiculously, if a scientist were trying to build some sort of automatic bee detector. An obvious strategy would be to program the detector, to detect features that are jointly necessary and sufficient for something being a bee. I don't know, maybe a DNA test? In general, things have properties. And that's how you identify them. If you don't know what properties something has, you can't identify it. If you do, you can define it. But at the same time, it isn't obvious this is right at all. Maybe there are other strategies for building detectors than programming them with necessary and sufficient conditions. Is a thermometer programmed with the definition of temperature? Just for example. Plus, it just seems pretty implausible that we humans actually do have at our mental disposal sharp, let alone verbal, definitions of all the properties we are prepared to detect in our environment. I can't define in words the taste of coffee, but I can recognize it. I can't even define chair. In a way that would be immune from all possible annoying, Socratic counterexamples. But I'm pretty good at identifying chairs when I see them. So maybe what Meno should have done is get off the whole definition bus at the very first stop. Sorry, Socrates Just because I can't define virtue, doesn't mean I don't know it when I see it. I refuse to play your little word games. I encourage you to think about whether you think that would be a thoroughly reasonable thing for Meno to have said. Let's make it a quiz. Do you think you need to be able to define what a successful person means, in order to recognize a successful person when you see them? A, yes. B, no. If you answered b, and most people will. It's a bit hard to see how this dialogue, the Meno has been basically barking up the wrong tree. But even if that's right, it's still interesting to ask. How can b possibly be right? What form does your knowledge come in? If not in the form of the general account of what properties all successful people have? Let's sharpen this up by moving on to a second moment. Meno misses his opportunity to refuse to play Socrates' little word games. But maybe, he gets a second opportunity. When he starts sulking after losing the little definition game. Quote, how will you look for it, for virtue Socrates, when you don't have the slightest idea what it is? What sort of thing will you select as the object of your search from the class of things you don't know? Even if it's right in front of your nose, how will you know that's the thing you didn't know? Unquote. Okay, let me explain to you what that meant. It sounded a bit weird, didn't it? Meno is putting forward a kind of paradox, as Socrates immediately recognizes. I'll just quote a bit further on in that Stanford Encyclopedia entry I quoted earlier. Meno's paradox goes more or less like so. Quote, either we know what something is, or we do not. If we do, then there is no point searching for it. If we do not, then we will not know what to search for. Unquote. To illustrate. For example, if I asked you what a buggle-wuggle is, you can't say. You don't know what a buggle-wuggle is. So you have no resources to think through what one might be. How would you even start. On the other hand, if you already knew what a buggle-wuggle is. You couldn't even begin to inquire in that case either. You can't begin because you're already done before you've started. You already know it, by hypothesis. Conclusion. Inquiry and learning are impossible. You either know it or you don't. But in either case you can't learn nothing about anything. That seems like a pretty silly conclusion. But in a weird way, Socrates ends up affirming it. He goes on to argue that knowledge is all recollection. That is, you don't ever really learn anything. You just remember what you already knew. But that you didn't remember you knew. That's next lesson. But for now, think about this. How is it possible to half know stuff? Well enough that you can learn, badly enough that there's a need to learn. We humans half know stuff a lot, don't we? How do we do it, I wonder? [BLANK_AUDIO]
