does kowledge exist in recollection?

[SittingBull47]

Socrates had the idea that all knowledge exists in recollection, which is basically understood to mean that the soul has existed before and in a past life (the pythagoreans, etc.)

Reincarnation sounds attractive, but is there any basis to it?

[Monty Cantsin]

There really no evidence to support Socrates theory of recollection. In the discourse Memo when they get a slave boy to preform simply maths task they take it as evidence of recollection because he uses his own deductive reasoning to solve the problem rather then them explicitly telling how to do it. The slave was coxed along the right track by Socrates but he did not ‘teach’ the boy therefore the boy already had the knowledge and merely had to recollect it with the help of the sage. As the argument goes.

[SittingBull47]

that's true. After all, that's all Socrates ever really does. He guides people along through reasoning until they both arrive at a conclusion or something more than what they began with, but he never just gave anybody any knowledge.

He really wasn't kidding when he said he knew nothing.

[Body Count]

I'd say its complete and utter bullshit.

[timbaly]

It sounds absurd to me, and there is absolutely no proof of such a theory. Like sittingbull 47 said "he really wasn't kidding when he said he knew nothing." Why should we even debate about this, and create something to explain the unexplained like the soul?

[JKP]

It basically asserts that your thoughts are a better source of truth than reality itself, so no. In addition, this Platonic philosophy would bring the development of science to a standstill for more than a millenia.

[encephalon]

It should be noted that it wasn't Socrates that made these claims, but Plato. Socrates didn't record anything in his entire life, and most of what we know of him comes from Plato, who advocated the theory of forms in contrast to what he wrote earlier of Socrates.

Historically, Plato's earlier works revolving around Socrates seem to more reliably depict the real Socrates (they also correspond with the few other sources concerning Socrates that we have). Plato abandons Socrates' methodology (the elenctic) in the republic and other middle period works in order to build a constructive theory of philosophy rather than a destructive one. So remember: when Plato depicts Socrates as stating something, it's more than likely Plato's own thoughts rather than those of Socrates.

What we do know about socrates is that he actually did "philosophically assault" people on the streets about their own basic assumptions, and then deconstructed those assumptions to show how incompatible those beliefs were with the person's other highly held beliefs. By some, he's been coined the most annoying man to have ever lived in the history of humanity :lol:

It should also be remembered that Plato was definitely a product of his time, and had a very limited knowledge of science.. he really had nowhere to go but the metaphysical realm. Still, even in the limitations of his own age, he managed to put forth quite a few ideas that, by ancient greek standards, were almost impossibly revolutionary. For starters, he proposed that men and women be treated the same (although he still had not-so-disputable inklings of sexism). If you know anything about Greek culture at the time (remember, this wasn't rome..), you can realize how revolutionary this idea actually was. I would imagine it's comparable to calling for the abolition of a wage system in the 19th century. It's so radical, compared to the society in which it was born, that it's difficult to believe it actually came out of that society.

But yeah, just remember: Plato made most of the claims discussed here, not Socrates. Socrates, from what we know, didn't propose a constructive theory in his entire "career." His purpose was to destroy assumptions, not make them.

[Zak]

I'm a big fan of Socrates I love his style and agree with much of what he says regarding morality. But I always bother by Fido when he starts talking about souls and proving the after life and etc. I think you have a pretty good take on it encephylon when you talk about him not making assumptions. He did not provide answers but rather show that those who thought they knew did not and those who said they possessed wisdom could not justify their statements.

To me it makes alot of sense that this was Plato putting words into his mouth (as he must have done, since Socrates never wrote anything) But then again maybe around the time of his death he was a little shook up. However Socrates death is at best a third hand account since Fido say's Plato was not present and Fido is not telling the story to Plato but rather another one of the students of Socrates.

The dialogs where Socrates first puts fourth this theory are interesting, but the main problem I saw with it is this: it's one thing to ask questions and get logical answers about something like geometry but if learning were truly recollection I should be able to phrase questions in such a way that you "remember" how to speak Hakka Chinese. But for most people I don't think this is possible.