Mikal

I have to write a brief essay on weither or not socrates has a good argument that you can have objective truths from reasoning.This is in context of the Meno. I asked for help and the teacher said to concentrate on the example of the slaveboy and the area of the square. I am still having trouble formulating this paper. Could anyone gimme me alittle mo help?

how would you attack this?

Thanks,
-Mike

John Page

1. Early in the dialog, Socrates declares "....I should make use of premises which the person interrogated would be willing to admit. " Thus, Socrates acknowledges that, in order to be sensible, any debate requires the participants to hold or agree some common ground.
2. Socrates shows, by getting the slaveboy to examine the "problem" from different angles, (and thus introduces some objectivity into the the slaveboy's reasoning), that the answer is deducible by the slaveboy.
3. By way of an explanation as to how reason is able to operate this way, Socrates reasons "....the slave's soul always possessed knowledge which simply needed to be awakened by inquiry."

How does Socrates know #3 "objectively"? Does this merely serve to reinforce Socrates' caveat in #1? Hopefully you can then arrive at your own requirements for objectivity and its scope.

Of course, you may disagree with my premises.

Cheers, John