Monthly Archives: January 2015

The Power of Definitons

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 2 comments

The passage by Plato about the conversation between Meno and Socrates commences with a sentence that distinguishes teaching from practice and experience. Although these have different meanings, they are not contrary ideas as the passage seems to suggest. That’s not to say that these are the same or always used together. Both teaching and experience can serve the purpose of learning independently of one another. For example, a child’s mother may tell him that the skinny limbs on a tree will break easily. This is one way for the child to learn this fact. Another way, of course, would be to physically snap the thin branch of a tree and learn from experience. In this case, experience is different from practice and the two words are not interchangeable.

Sometimes, the two methods are used in congruence with one another, and often in these situations practice and experience are closely related. An example of this would be learning to shoot a soccer ball.  The coach teaches the players to strike the ball with their laces, how to aim, and how to exert the proper amount of power. The players then practice applying these skills, and in this way, gain experience.

All of this is also assuming that teaching involves a third party. A person could teach themselves the notes and keys on a piano and practice reading music and playing songs to gain experience and through that teach, practice, experience, and learn to play piano all at once.

Overall Socrates offers a very narrow definition of the words teaching, practice, and experience and then treats them as true and factual and applies them to his arguments. Looking at wider or more flexible definitions for his words calls into question Socrates’ proceeding arguments.

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The Inextricable Connection between Knowledge and Experience

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 2 comments

As early as the first line of Plato’s Meno, teaching and knowledge are placed in contrast with practice or experience, emphasizing the distinction between these two operations in both meaning and purpose. In this discussion, Socrates and Meno debate the process in which knowledge is acquired, contemplating whether understanding is obtained through instruction, application, or natural causes, which further stresses the difference between teaching and knowledge, and practice or experience.

At first glance, knowledge and experience look very similar to one another. By definition, knowledge is information and skills acquired through experience or education. Similarly, experience is defined as the knowledge or skill acquired by a period of practical experience of something. Although the two words are used in each other’s definitions and are seemingly very similar, a distinction can be made between knowledge and experience.

Knowledge emphasizes theory and the obtainment of information and ideas. Experience, on the other hand, stresses practice, or the application of knowledge over a prolonged period of time, in order to reinforce understanding of subject matter or a certain task. While further knowledge on a subject or task can be gained through experience, experience cannot be obtained through instruction. Experience comes with time, exposure, and practice. It is based off of practical application rather than supposition. Knowledge, on the other hand, is founded upon the accumulation of information through either experience or education. It can be taught unlike experience. Therefore, here lies the greatest difference between the two. While knowledge is the sum of impressions based off of sensation, experience is the act of exercising or challenging knowledge in order to obtain sensation.

I argue that teaching and knowledge, and experience or practice, though different from each other, are inextricably linked by a mutualistic relationship. While knowledge is defined as the obtainment of information and skill through either instruction or experience, practice is described as the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method.  Additionally, while instruction and the obtainment of knowledge are more theoretical and abstract, the implementation of information and understanding is more concrete, in some cases even generating a physical product. In daily life, people are instructed on how to do certain things, and then later go on to practice them in order to reinforce and strengthen their ability to perform. Therefore, teaching, and the knowledge gained from such instruction, provide the foundation for practice of and later experience in the chosen subject matter or certain tasks.

Furthermore, despite their differences in meaning and purpose, knowledge and experience can both be encapsulated in the word wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, common sense, understanding, and insight. Therefore, this term encloses both knowledge and experience within itself, emphasizing not only the difference between the two words but also their mutualistic relationship.

In conclusion, the dichotomy of teaching and practice emphasizes that while teaching and knowledge, and practice and experience are very different operations, they are inextricably linked in that teaching gives people the knowledge to gain understanding and perform certain activities that are further strengthened through practice and experience.

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Meno’s Paradox

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 1 comment

Philosophy Blog 1
In Plato’s Meno, Socrates holds a dialogue with Meno, a young wealthy man who will become a general. The topic of discussion is how to obtain virtue. Virtue in ancient Greece refers not to morality but rather to skills and traits necessary to satisfy a particular role in society. For example, a farmer would have virtues of knowledge about the crops he grows and marketing skills in order to be successful in farming. The dialogue begins as Meno asks Socrates about whether virtue can taught. Socrates then claims that he does not know what virtue is or how it is obtained (71b). Meno is confused by his answer and claims that Gorgias has taught him virtue. Socrates rebukes him and repeats that he cannot learn what virtue is. This leads up to Meno’s famous paradox, in which he asks Socrates how he can learn anything if he does not know what he is searching for. If he already knew what he is searching for, then he wouldn’t need to search for it because he already knows about it (80e). Socrates responds with his theory that the soul recollects memories from previous lives when exposed to experiences in this life (81d). While this theory seems strange to many people, it has sparked many philosophical arguments over the nature of teaching and learning.
Meno’s paradox questions how knowledge is obtained and how can we know if something is right if we have never experienced it. We may ask our friends to show us how they interpret it, but they might be wrong and misleading. One way to overcome this paradox is by thinking about truths in our own lives. Rene Descartes famously said “I think, therefore I am” and this means that the act of thinking means that the individual is at least sure of his own existence. From here, the individual can begin searching for virtues that arise from his reactions and experiences from his life. Also, relearning something that was taught previously in this life is also part of the education process. If I were to relearn how to play a trombone, it does not mean that I knew how to play a trombone in a previous life. Meno’s paradox does not consider the act of forgetting and so it is possible to search for something that one knows but has forgotten due to the lack of certain memories.

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The dichotomy’s and analogies of knowledge and experience

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Teaching and knowledge is compared to practice and experience, yet they are both analogous and dichotomous at the same time. It is impossible to say that these two are exactly alike or that they are completely different due to their natures. The two are comparable in a few ways. Both are ways of improving oneself at a certain practice. This is not to say that the practice is deemed good or not, but only to say that it will assist in the advancement of it. Another way in which the two are similar is that neither knowledge nor experience are inherent. They must be nurtured through their respective means. Both of these can also be done, and can be enhanced by doing it in groups.

The two also differ in many ways. First, the way that the means, teaching and practicing, are used today have a few implications to them. Teaching is usually seen as a tool for academic progress, thus resulting in the word teaching to be connected to learning and intellectualism. Practice is usually seen in a context for something physical, such as “I am about to go to basketball practice,” or “I need to practice my form.” Consequently, practice is more associated with physicality. What I believe to be the greatest difference between the 2 is in the difference between sympathy and one is empathy. To be empathetic is to feel bad for someone simply due to human instinct, while feeling sympathetic is to feel sorry for someone based on having previously experienced that particular ordeal or trial. Practice will give you first-hand experience of how to handle a problem while teaching will give a person knowledge of how to handle a certain problem. It is the difference between book smart and street smart, where one teaches you how to act while the other one grants the practitioner the ability to react.

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Meno’s Paradox and Socrates

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | Leave a comment

If true, “Meno’s paradox” is a frightening proposition. The paradox suggests that human inquiry is impossible: humans are incapable of finding truths. The paradox stems form a simple question, “how can you put before your mind a thing that you have no knowledge of, in order to try to find out about it?”(Page 100, 80e) Inquiring about something, as in trying to find a universal truth about it, requires imagination and thinking. However, if somebody is inquiring about a thing that he does not know then it is impossible for him to imagine and think about it. On the other hand, if the person knows about the subject of inquiry then the process of inquiry is futile.

After thorough inspection, “Meno’s paradox” seemed perfectly logical and valid. How then are humans able to make new discoveries every single day if the process of inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible? Socrates explains this through a bizarre idea. He asserts that discoveries of new knowledge are actually recollections of knowledge already possessed by the soul. To Socrates, humans are all born with the solutions to all of nature’s mysteries. To unleash these solutions, a person must undergo the process of “remembering”. Deep down, we all know how to compose music, write computer code, solve mathematical equations, and come up with scientific theories. Just like the slave that “remembers” what a diagonal is, we must go through the long and tedious process of “remembering” that involves hard work and making mistakes. The paradox should not be viewed as a sad limitation of human power but as motivation that everybody can “solve” the mysteries of the universe.

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Meno’s Paradox and Everyday Lives

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 1 comment

From Meno, we encounter towards the middle of the piece a point in which Meno is angry at Socrates because they have come to an impasse as to what “being good” really is. Meno proceeds to feel baffled and makes the claim that it cannot be possible to find out what it is to  “be good” because he has no idea what being good really is (80e). This is Meno’s paradox; he feels that he cannot find out “good” because he doesn’t even know what to look for.

Socrates puts things into perspective by making a claim that souls are immortal, and they cycle through life, therefore all the experiences of every person before you culminates in the soul, therefore it is possible that we have learned, in a past life, what being good is, and it is not so much a process of learning, but a process of remembering (81c).

In our own lives, this paradox is encountered. Whether it’s a student who tries to understand calculus, a musician trying to learn a song, or a sprinter who works to drop time in their events, there is a common feature among all these examples: the process of discovery. Just as Socrates put it with his example involving Meno’s slave (84a), it is not learning, because we already know what to do, in a sense. We just have to remember what to do, a process of trial-and-error, where the error makes us eager to discover how to get the task accomplished. Work problems in calculus until it sticks, find ways to move your fingers on the instrument smoothly so to make the music sound seamless, and focus on details in your races in order to grow.

We often are found in similar situations as Meno to which a solution is feasible, but it is something that requires some thought. Deep down, there’s a basic idea on how to accomplish the task, but it really requires a some failure in order to bring us to answers.

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The Perplexity in Learning or Knowing

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 1 comment

Write about the role of “perplexity” in learning or knowing (80a-d, 84a-c).

To summarize the two selected sections of Plato’s Meno, Meno begins by saying that Socrates has “baffled” him about what being good really means, and that he has “got no idea how to answer the question. And yet, damn it, [he’s] talked about ‘being a good man’ thousands of times” (80b). Then, in the next section, Socrates explains to Meno that baffling his slave by proposing a difficult geometry question was not intended to mistreat or mislead him, but rather guide him to the true answer.

The combination of these two passages leads to the “perplexity” in learning or knowing. In the geometry question, Meno’s slave thought he knew the answer, but with a few simple questions posed by Socrates, he was thrown into confusion and doubted what he previously thought he had known. So by baffling the slave, Socrates helped him realize, what he did not know, thus what he needed to learn.    This is also echoed in Meno’s Paradox, “that it’s impossible to try to find out about anything – either what you know or what you don’t know” (80e). Exemplifying the first part of the paradox, the slave thought he knew the answer so there was no point in trying to find out anything more about the problem at hand. And for the second part of the paradox, before Socrates’ perplexed him with probing questions, he had no idea that there was anything wrong with his answer or there was a different method of obtaining the correct answer. Through perplexity he was able to dismiss what he thought he knew and get out of the paradox to learn the true answer.

I find that most students have a similar experience with the confusion of knowing and learning in science classes, specifically chemistry. In every chemistry class I have taken, the professor teaches students some property or rule that the students are expected to master. Then students fall under the assumption that they know the property and are content with the explanation given of why that property is true. But as students move on to later semesters and more advanced material, they get confused very quickly. I have had professors directly tell the class that a rule we have learned is actually untrue, or that the explanation is not as simple as we thought. This is often perplexing and, more recently, I thought I knew everything there was to know about significant figures, which are essentially rounding rules for numbers. But on my first day of analytical chemistry class, the professor told me the rules I had known from previous classes were false and I was confused so I had to learn how to arrive at the correct answer. In conclusion, chemistry students are constantly thrown into the perplexity of believing they know something, then entering a state of confusion in order to reveal what they do not know, so they learn something new, like Meno’s slave and Socrates.

 

Works Cited

Plato, Protagoras and Meno, Penguin, 2006. Trans. Beresford.

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The Acquisition of Knowledge

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | 1 comment

In Meno, Meno starts a conversation with Socrates about what it means to be “good,” which morphs into a discussion of larger themes pertaining to wisdom and the acquisition of knowledge. At one point Meno gets fed up with Socrates always refuting his points and turns to what Socrates refers to as the “quibbler’s argument,” “that it’s impossible to try to find out about anything – either what you know or what you don’t know. ‘You can’t try to find out about something you know about, because you know about it, in which case there’s no point trying to find out about it; and you can’t try to find out about something you don’t know about, either, because then you don’t even know what it is you’re trying to find out about” (pg. 100-101, 80e). This argument is more commonly known as “Meno’s Paradox,” and essentially states that you can’t acquire new knowledge either because you already know said information, or you don’t know enough information to know how to get more.

Socrates found this argument to simply be a way for lazy individuals to avoid working on their own and found that “as long as you’re adventurous and don’t get tired of trying to find out about things,” you will always be able to acquire new knowledge because he believes that the acquisition of new knowledge is actually just a form of “remembering” (102, 82d).

We encounter and overcome this paradox in our everyday life by doing exactly what Socrates says, we continue to be “adventurous,” and rather than assuming that we aren’t able to garner more information due to a lack of a place to start, we find a starting point and build from there.

For example, if we wanted to learn about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, we could begin by finding an introductory book on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and build or research from there. Although it might be difficult to start finding information, there are always ways around the blockage.

A better example may be solving for a derivative or integral in calculus. Someone may hear the terms derivative or integral and really want to know what they are but neglect to try to find out because they have no idea where to start looking, however, if you took the time to learn algebra and geometry prior to learning calculus you would have a solid base and initial set of information that then allows you to learn about the derivative and the integral.

To overcome the challenge of not being able to acquire new knowledge we simply acquire general knowledge through reading, school, experience, or even just speaking with others, and from their we build our research around a targeted topic.

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Into the Void

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Throughout the dialogue, Meno and Socrates talk about a certain problem: how can you look for virtue when you don’t know what it is? This paradox is later broadly expanded so it asks, “How can you try to find about something if you don’t know what it is, and if you did happen to come across it, how would you know that it’s the thing you’re looking for if you didn’t know what it was in the beginning?”

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