Gone But Not Forgotten (or Here But Not Remembered)

In one of Plato’s dialogues, Meno, Plato presents his view of the origin of human knowledge. He believes that all knowledge is contained within each eternal soul, and knowledge comes simply by recalling the knowledge that is already there. This is a view that was held by many philosophers after Plato, all the way down to Descartes , Liebnez, and even more recent thinkers. I seek to argue that this theory, which is referred to as the recollection theory of knowledge is not reasonable or true and that the common arguments and examples used as evidence of a priori (“that which is prior to the first”) knowledge are not valid. Then, I will present an alternate theory of knowledge to fill the void left by the recollection theory.

Plato believed and taught that knowledge is not something new to be discovered, nor is it something which must be taught. Rather, knowledge is something that resides already within us and needs only to be discovered and remembered in order for that which is traditionally called “learning” to take place. The first example (to my knowledge) that was used as a proof for the recollection theory of knowledge was provided in Plato’s dialogue Meno, in which Socrates coaxes an uneducated slave boy into knowledge of geometry, using only a series of questions to elicit the knowledge that he already knows. The argument that stems from Socrates’ demonstration with Meno’s slave is as follows:
1.) The boy does not know how to double the area of the square before starting,
2.) He is not explicitly taught any new knowledge about the process of doubling the area of a square.
3.) He successfully finds out how to double the area of the square.
4.) Therefore, he must have an innate knowledge of geometry.

However, a closer inspection of Socrates’ method of “eliciting recollection” in the boy reveals that one of his steps of teaching arguably violates the rule prohibiting explicit teaching. At one point, after the boy fails a few times, Socrates draws three more squares that are identical to the first square to make a square that is quadruple the area of the original, then proceeds to connect the mid-points of each side of the large square, bisecting each of the four smaller squares to make one square that is half of the area of the four combined squares, or double the area of the original square (Plato 85b). This is an idea that the boy was not likely to have come to on his own; neither would he have sprung upon this idea as a result of any series of non-explicit questions. Socrates’ teaching strategy here was about as explicit as it possibly could have been (he literally took the stick into his own hand and showed the boy how to do it). It is at this point that the original argument for innate knowledge falls apart. In the enumerated argument above, this violates premise two, that the boy is taught nothing explicitly, and the argument is no longer sound. This slave boy did not know this geometric truth (essentially the Pythagorean Theorem) until he was shown explicitly and experientially one of its uses.

It is doubtful that even Pythagoras himself came up with this theory without first finding some sort of empirical data upon which to base it. To say that modern science, mathematics, and basic truth have existed in the human mind since the beginning of humanity, and have been lying around docile just waiting for someone to ask the right questions to discover them is foolish. The science of genetics, could not have been founded on anything other than Mendel’s experiment; otherwise it would have been speculation rather than science. Likewise, Darwin’s theory of evolution did not come from innate knowledge awakened by the question, “Where did we come from?” but rather from his observations and careful studies of real organisms on an island. The anticipatory thought that preceded these sciences could be said to be the result of experientially inspired questions and critical thought based in reason. Even ancient mathematical truths, which Plato would attribute to the truth and universality of his forms, are made true rather by the fact that they are backed up by empirical fact (5+7=12 not because we know the form, but because we have seen that five apples added to seven apples makes twelve apples). That which we know is based on what we have learned to be true through experience or empirical data.

One other problem that I find with Plato’s argument is that he assumes that innate knowledge is the only explanation that can be given for the boy’s ability to double the area of the square. A more reasonable and simple alternative would be that the boy was able to demonstrate proficiency in geometry because of his human ability to reason and figure things out for his own. By Occam’s razor, the more reasonable conclusion is that he did not have to appeal to some innate knowledge in some dark corner of his soul; he only had to appeal to the human powers of deduction and induction, using what he could see with his eyes, definitions (which he knows from being explicitly taught language), and a perceptive assessment of the direction that Socrates’ questions were pointing to come into his own correct understanding of the driving geometric truths (forms, if you will) behind the problem.

Knowledge is a product of experience. Every single aspect of what is recognized as truth holds, as its origin, some experiential basis. Even if we were to believe that human knowledge was inherent in the soul, what would be to keep that knowledge from being inherently false? How are we to know that the knowledge in our soul is anywhere close to true? Reason tells us that there is no way of knowing that, so we must rely on our experience and our senses to be our source of truth.

Now, it would be quite easy for an opponent to ask the question, “How do we know that our senses can be trusted as a source of truth?” The question raises a good point; anyone who has ever seen an optical illusion or magic show can tell you that our senses often cannot be trusted, and they can quite easily be manipulated and tricked. This certainly makes it difficult to say that sensory experience is a source of absolute truth. To this I have no reply. There is indeed no way of knowing when our senses tell us the truth and when they lie. We assume things like “The sky is blue,” because that is what our senses tell us, but what if we have been tricked since our birth into believing that the sky is blue, when it is really some shade of burgundy, or what if one person’s perception of blue differs from another’s, and it just so happens that we call the same object “blue” while seeing entirely different hues? We cannot know.

So now the question becomes, “What can we trust?” We clearly cannot trust our senses as a source of knowledge, and we cannot, of course trust the “innate knowledge,” unless we know first that it exists (which is not provable), and where it came from (which is not findable). This is a dilemma that would certainly seem to throw a wrench in the cogs of our search for the source of knowledge. At this point, we could return to Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” statement and simply settle to leave the extent of our knowledge to be that of existence and nothing more, which is not exactly a happy day for epistemology. Rather, I would like to present an idea that is perhaps not quite so intellectually satisfying as one may wish, but will [I hope] at least provide us with a practical compromise as to the knowledge that we can trust.

We know that, regardless of whether or not we hold innate knowledge (right or wrong), the only way in which any new information enters our body is through the senses (Locke’s “Doors of Perception”) and sometimes through the creative churnings of the mind. News of any action which we do or which affects us enters the body through the senses. The only truth that matters then is truth that, when applied to the world, remains true as far as the senses can tell. This is, of course, an idea which is based entirely on utility. If it is true to the senses and it is practical in the world, and if the utilization of a piece of knowledge returns sensory information that is consistent with whatever hypothesis may stem from that knowledge, then the knowledge is true as far as man is concerned or can be concerned.

As an example, I would return once again to Pythagoras. Suppose that Pythagoras wants to build a bridge out of a single piece of felled timber to span the width of a river. Pythagoras finds a large tree, measures the distance from the base of the tree to the spot at which he is standing, measures the angle at which he must look up to see the top of the tree, and uses his mathematics to calculate that the tree is, in fact, tall enough to span the gap. He has some workers cut it down and lay it across the stream. If he then measures the tree, his calculations were correct, and he sees that the tree is tall enough to span the gap, then the knowledge that he used as a calculator must be practically true.

We can know what our senses are telling us. We may not know whether they are telling us the truth or not, but as long as they continue to tell us what is consistent with the knowledge that we use, it makes no difference. Truth is that which unifies our senses and our reason, allowing us to perceive what we think we should perceive. Beyond that, we cannot know for certain what is true and what is not true.