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Meno's paradox and logic: a thread.
Meno's paradox says
1) you can't inquire into what you know (you know it already)
2) you can't inquire into what you don't know
3) you have to inquire into what you know or what you don't know.
4) therefore you can't inquire into anything. 1/
Meno's paradox says
1) you can't inquire into what you know (you know it already)
2) you can't inquire into what you don't know
3) you have to inquire into what you know or what you don't know.
4) therefore you can't inquire into anything. 1/
Let's get off the boat on (2), you say. But you can't inquire into something you know *nothing* about. How would you start looking? How would you know when you've found it? But obviously, you say, we can inquire about something when we know a little about it. 2/
Plato's more clever than that though. Suppose you are inquiring into A, and you know something about it: suppose A consists of B, C, D, and E. You know B and C, and you need to find out D and E. So lets look into D. What do you know about D? Something or nothing? 3/
If nothing, you can't inquire into it. If something, then let D consist of F and G, where you know F. Let's look into G...See? Impossible.
Logic is just the theory that thoughts can be related to one another in some way other than this kind of containment. 4/
Logic is just the theory that thoughts can be related to one another in some way other than this kind of containment. 4/
A science of logic is the solution to Meno's paradox because it allows that thoughts are connected to one another without just containing one another. If I have A and B, I can get a new thought C in such a way if I know A and B, I'll know C. 5/
The details go on forever, but the basic idea is just this: inquiry is possible because there is more to a thought than its contents. It has a form, and so it can stand in formal relations to other thoughts. 6/6
