Phaedo I: ‘ Learning as Recollection’

Abstract

Socrates points out in the Phaedo that we could not possibly have derived the notion of absolute equality (the one signified in mathematical equations by the sign of equality) from the comparison of sensible objects. For to be able to carry out such comparisons we would have to understand what it means for two objects to be of equal length. Of course, we do learn or acquire concepts from experience, by comparison and abstraction. But such learning presupposes certain categories of thought and standards of comparison which cannot themselves be derived from experience by comparison and abstraction. Plato is right to point this out. But unable to think of an alternative way in which we may have acquired these concepts he concludes that we must have acquired them in a previous life when we were not dependent on the senses, that we must have been born with them, though they were not accessible to us at first. He describes the process of their becoming accessible as recollection. Thus just as we can be ignorant about something without recognising our ignorance (e.g. Meno on virtue—see Plato 1961, 80b), we can also know it without realising that we do (e.g. Meno’s slave boy on how to double the area of a square whose sides are two feet long).