PHL200Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Socratic Method
Document Summary
The second half of the men is a commentary on socratic philosophical practice. Plato shows how ethics leads us to epistemology and how and why he has gone beyond socrates. The learner"s paradox raises epistemic issues at the heart of socrates"s elenchus. The interrogation of the slave: socrates claims to draw out knowledge from the slave by asking questions alone and hence not teaching anything. Socrates only asks the questions, the slave boy response and assesses the questions. The slave boy would get the first question wrong, sees its mistakes, recollected and answers the second question correctly. People may say socrates is asking leading questions, but even giving someone the answer does not count as knowledge, because they wouldn"t know what the answer even means. Socrates/plato then say all knowledge of necessary truths is recollected. Knowledge is recollected from the soul, therefore it means the soul must be transferred from the death of a person to the birth of another.
