Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno?

Phronesis (2019) 1-39

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David Bronstein Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, 215 New North Hall, 37th and O Streets, N.W., Washington D.C. 20057. USA [email protected]

Whitney Schwab University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 463 Performing Arts and Humanities Building, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250. USA [email protected]

Abstract

Plato in the Meno is standardly interpreted as committed to condition innatism: human beings are born with latent innate states of knowledge. Against this view, Gail Fine has argued for prenatalism: human souls possess knowledge in a disembodied state but lose it upon being embodied. We argue against both views and in favor of content innatism: human beings are born with innate cognitive contents that can be, but do not exist innately in the soul as, the contents of states of knowledge. Content innatism has strong textual support and constitutes a philosophically interesting theory.

Keywords

Plato – Meno – innatism – epistēmē – doxa

1 Introduction

The question that serves as the title of this paper might seem like one not worth asking. Not because it is uninteresting or philosophically unimportant, but because the answer to it is largely taken to be settled: yes, in the Meno

Plato maintains that human beings are innately endowed with knowledge (epistēmē), and what we call ‘learning’ consists in recollecting it. We agree that Plato is an innatist. Nevertheless, we think that this question deserves to be revisited for two main reasons. First, some interpreters, most notably Gail Fine,1 have recently presented powerful arguments against attributing innatism to Plato, arguing instead that he accepts a view we will call prenatalism:

Prenatalism: Human souls possess knowledge in a disembodied state but lose that knowledge upon being embodied. The goal of recollection is for the soul to come to know again what it once knew but now no longer knows.

Fine’s account raises serious worries for innatist interpretations of the Meno and must be answered. Second, we think that the standard understanding of the kind of innatism that Plato advances in the Meno is mistaken and that getting clear on this en- ables us to examine deep and important philosophical issues. By far the dominant view is that Plato thinks the human soul is innately endowed with the cognitive state of knowledge. Such knowledge is often characterized as being ‘implicit’ or ‘latent’ in contrast to knowledge that is ‘explicit’ or ‘conscious’.2 So, on the dominant interpretation, Plato accepts a view we will call condition innatism (adapting Fine’s label ‘cognitive condition innatism’):3

Condition Innatism: Human beings are born in the cognitive condition of knowing, in the sense that human embodied souls possess latent innate states of knowledge. The goal of recollection is to make one’s latent knowledge explicit.

On the reading we will propose, Plato does not think that human beings are innately endowed with states of knowledge but, rather, with truths that can serve as the contents of states of knowledge. Just as there are uncognized truths ‘out there’ in the world that we can grasp via perception, Plato thinks that there are

1 See Fine 1992, 2007 and 2014. See also Dancy 2004, 225-6. 2 See e.g. Bluck 1961, 9, 272; Brague 1991, 622; Brown 1991, 604-5, 616-19; Calvert 1974, 146-8; Canto-Sterber 1993, 74, 86; Dimas 1996, 29-30; Scott 2006, 85, 87, 100, 106, 107-120; Sharples 1985, 155; Weiss 2001, 114 n. 79; and Woolf 2015, 380. 3 See Fine 2014, 21-2 and 141-2.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 3 uncognized truths ‘in us’ that we can grasp via inquiry. On our reading, then, Plato accepts a view we, following Fine, will call content innatism:4

Content Innatism: Human beings are born with innate cognitive contents, in the sense that human embodied souls innately possess truths that can be the contents of states of knowledge but do not exist innately in the soul as the contents of such states. The goal of recollection is to take up these contents in such a way that one knows them (again).

A clarification is in order. Although we have deliberately characterized the three positions as mutually exclusive, there are points of overlap among them. Like prenatalist interpreters of Plato, both condition and content innatist interpreters think that, for Plato, the soul, prior to its embodiment, existed in a disembodied state in which it was in the condition of knowing.5 In addition, like content innatist interpreters, condition innatist interpreters think that the soul possesses innate cognitive contents. However, unlike content innatist interpreters, condition innatist interpreters think that these are the contents of the soul’s latent innate cognitive states. It is worth underscoring this difference between the two views. Content innatism is the view that there are uncognized truths in the soul. The reason it is appropriate to call these truths ‘cognitive contents’ is that they are the possible contents of the soul’s future occurrent cognitive states (such as opining and knowing). However, they do not exist in the soul as the actual contents of the soul’s present latent cognitive states, as condition innatist interpreters of Plato maintain.6

4 See Fine 2014, 21-2 and 141-2. 5 That is, condition and content interpreters also think that Plato posits prenatal knowledge, but they do not accept prenatalism, as we have defined it, because they do not accept that the soul loses its knowledge (in the form of either cognitive states or contents) upon being embodied. Some philosophers are innatists without accepting any form of prenatal existence (see, perhaps most famously, Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics XXVI and, much more recently, Chomsky 1988, 4). 6 For useful discussions of the different varieties of innatism in ancient, early modern and contemporary philosophy, see Barnes 1972, Cowie 1999, 3-26, Fine 2014, 21-3 and 141-6, and Scott 1995, 91-5, 188-90, and 213-16. These authors discuss a third type of innatism—especially in connection with early modern debates—which they call ‘dispositional innatism’. We do not discuss dispositional innatism in this paper for the following reason. As we argue below, the question of the nature of Plato’s innatist commitments in the Meno turns largely on the referents of the terms ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’ at key points in the text. In our view, the most likely candidates for the referents of these terms are either the states of opinion and knowledge (respectively) or the contents of these states. Therefore, the two most likely candidates for the form of innatism to which Plato is committed are condition and content innatism.

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This paper, then, has two main aims: first, to argue against Fine’s prenatalist interpretation of the Meno; second, to argue that Plato advances a content innatist, rather than a condition innatist, view. The structure is as follows: first we briefly survey the central texts over which this debate plays out. The aim of that discussion is to show that there are two prima facie tensions in the Meno. We then look at, and reject, Fine’s attempt to resolve the prima facie tensions, arguing, against her, that we must attribute innatism, and not prenatalism, to Plato. Once we have argued that Plato is an innatist, we spend the bulk of the paper examining what kind of innatist he is. We argue that only a content innatist interpretation can resolve the two tensions in a textually and philosophically satisfactory way.

2 The Tensions

The main passage in which these issues play out is the famous exchange between Socrates and Meno’s slave.7 After drawing a two-foot-by-two-foot square on the ground, Socrates asks the slave to identify the line on which a square with double the area is based (82b9-e2). The slave eventually arrives at the correct answer: the line is the diagonal of the original square (we will call this ‘the geometrical truth’). Our aim in this section is to argue that, over the course of the exchange, Socrates commits himself to the following three apparently inconsistent claims:

P1: The slave does not know the geometrical truth. P2: The slave has innate mere true opinion of the geometrical truth. P3: The slave has innate knowledge of the geometrical truth.

(Socrates’ commitment to P2 and P3 is of course disputed by the prenatalist in- terpreter. Our aim in this section is to argue in a preliminary way that Socrates is committed to these claims. We defend innatism against prenatalism in the next section.) Attributing P1 to Socrates is straightforward, as he repeatedly says that the slave does not know the geometrical truth. We offer just two of the clearest

We also think that dispositional innatism is vulnerable to an objection similar to the objection we raise below against condition innatism. For further discussion, see n. 38 below. 7 As Irwin 1995, 132 n. 12 notes, the term Socrates uses for Meno’s slave, ‘pais’, can refer to a slave of any age; thus, uses of the expression ‘slave boy’, common in discussions of the Meno, are inappropriate. See Benitez 2016 for a detailed argument to the same effect.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 5 examples. After Socrates elicits the slave’s first (incorrect) answer, he asks Meno whether the slave ‘knows what sort of line it is from which the eight- foot figure will come to be?’ to which Meno replies: ‘Certainly not’ (82e4-9).8 Similarly, after Socrates shows that the slave’s second answer is incorrect and the slave is unable to come up with another answer, Socrates insists that the slave’s situation has nevertheless improved because, ‘as he does not know, neither does he think he knows’ (84a7-b1).9 Seeing that Socrates is committed to P2 is slightly less straightforward. After Socrates elicits the correct opinion from the slave, he and Meno agree that ‘whichever opinion he [the slave] answered is his own’ (85b-c1). When Socrates then asserts that these opinions ‘were in him’ (ἐνῆσαν … αὐτῷ) (85c4), his use of the past tense suggests that they were in him prior to their exchange. He then sums up the discussion with a passage that both underscores the slave’s lack of knowledge (P1) and points towards P2 (85c9-d1):

Soc.: In fact, these opinions have now just been stirred up in him like a dream, but if he is asked these same questions many times and in various ways, you know that ultimately he will know about these things no less precisely than anyone else.

Since the true opinions are explicitly said to be in a person who does not know the relevant truth, they must count as mere opinions, that is, opinions that fall short of knowledge. And since these opinions are said to have been ‘stirred up’ in the slave, it is clear that they existed in him prior to his exchange with Socrates (for it is only what is already present in something that can be stirred up in it). Finally, since Socrates is careful to rule out the possibility that the slave acquired the opinions during his upbringing (85e3-6), it is clear that they are innate. So, Socrates is committed to P2.10 Unfortunately, the reader of the Meno suffers whiplash when, immediately after committing himself to P1 and P2, Socrates seems to commit himself to P3 (85d3-11):

8 Unless noted otherwise, translations are our own. 9 See also 84b9-c7 and 85c2-8. Indeed, it seems that the set-up to the exchange between Socrates and Meno’s slave requires that the slave does not know the relevant geometrical truth, since part of the point of the exchange is to respond to Meno’s question ‘in what way are you going to search for this thing which you do not at all know what it is?’ (80d5- 6). This question, of course, is connected to Meno’s Paradox, which we discuss below. 10 Socrates confirms his commitment to P2 a few lines later (85e7-86a1).

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 6 Bronstein and Schwab

Soc.: Thus, will he know without having been taught but questioned, taking up the knowledge himself from himself (ἀναλαβὼν αὐτὸς ἐξ αὑτοῦ τὴν ἐπιστήμην)? Meno: Yes. Soc.: But is not taking up knowledge oneself in oneself recollecting (τὸ δὲ ἀναλαμβάνειν αὐτὸν ἐν αὑτῷ ἐπιστήμην οὐκ ἀναμιμνῄσκεσθαί ἐστιν)? Meno: Certainly. Soc.: Well then, must he not either have taken up at some time or always had the knowledge which he now has (ἣν νῦν οὗτος ἔχει)? Meno: Yes.

Socrates claims that through further questioning the slave will take up (ἀναλαμβάνειν) knowledge himself from himself or himself in himself. The first ‘himself’ in each phrase indicates that it will be the slave (as opposed to, say, Socrates) who will be taking up the knowledge. The second part of each phrase, namely ‘from himself’ (ἐξ αὑτοῦ) or ‘in himself’ (ἐν αὑτῷ), indicates that the knowledge the slave will take up is already present inside him. That is, if the slave is to take up knowledge from or in himself, it must be there in him waiting to be taken up. Socrates then reinforces this idea by speaking of the knowledge that the slave now (νῦν) has. He then asks whether the slave took up that knowledge at some time or always had it (i.e. innately).11 Socrates proceeds to argue for the latter option, and so commits himself to P3. This stretch of the Meno seems rife with tension: P1 and P3 are in prima facie tension. P2 and P3 are also in tension, since mere true opinion and knowledge exclude each other. In the remainder of this paper we attempt to hack our way through this thicket.

3 Fine’s Prenatalist Interpretation

On the standard interpretation of the Meno, Plato is some kind of innatist about knowledge. Before we consider how different innatist interpretations might resolve the tensions among P1-P3, we want to defend the innatist interpretation against Gail Fine’s recent attacks.12 According to Fine, Plato accepts only prenatalism—the view that the soul possesses knowledge in its

11 We will consider alternative readings of this claim and, in particular, the word ‘now’ in the next section. 12 See Fine 1992, 2007 and 2014. We will focus mainly on the last of these works. Although we disagree with her, we are deeply indebted to her work on this topic.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 7 disembodied state but loses that knowledge upon becoming embodied. Thus, Fine argues that Socrates accepts P1 and rejects P2 and P3. Quite naturally, she adopts two strategies: (1) arguing that the texts we have just argued provide evidence that Socrates accepts P2 and P3 are inconclusive, and (2) arguing that attributing P2 and P3 to Socrates is philosophically problematic. We consider each strategy in turn.13

3.1 Fine’s Interpretation of Problematic Passages The key passage that seems to support innatism, and so which Fine must deflect, is the final passage we discussed in Section 2 above. Fine proposes a reading of the crucial phrase ‘taking up the knowledge from himself’ or ‘in himself’ that does not commit Plato to innatism.14 Fine suggests instead that the phrase means only that the slave will ‘work things out by, or for, himself’ (2014, 151 n. 43). On this reading, Socrates is not saying that the slave will take up knowledge that is already present in him, but only that, by thinking by, or for, himself, he will acquire knowledge. However, it is not clear that the phrases can support the reading Fine wants.15 First, it is hard to think of a more confusing way Socrates could have said that the slave would work things out by or for himself. This point is under- scored by the fact that there are several ways Platonic characters elsewhere signal that something is doing work by, or for, itself. In the Phaedo (66d7-e2), for example, Socrates says that the soul must observe things ‘with the soul itself’ (αὐτῇ τῇ ψυχῇ), as opposed to in combination with sense-perception (see also Gorgias 523e2-4). In the Theaetetus (185d7-e2), Socrates insists that there are certain features of objects that can be investigated only ‘by the soul through itself’ (αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς). Moreover, if we look at other passages in which Plato uses ‘(ἀνα)λαμβάνω [an accusative] ἐκ [a genitive]’ (the construction we find here in the Meno), it is clear that the thing which is ‘taken (up)’ is already present in

13 Fine is careful to argue that Plato is not committed to innatism about knowledge or doxa, whether in its condition, content, or dispositional form. In what follows we focus on knowledge only because this is Plato’s focus in the key texts Fine must deflect. 14 Fine points out, quite correctly, that a commitment to innatism cannot be read off simply from the fact that Socrates says the slave will analambanein the knowledge (which may have been tempting, given that the prefix ana- can have the same force as the English ‘re-’ or ‘again’) (2014, 150). However, Socrates does not simply say that the slave will analambanein the knowledge, but qualifies the way in which he will do so, and we focus on the force of those qualifications. For a similar critique directed against Irwin (1995, 132-6 and 372 n. 15), see Williams 2002, 137. 15 The only defense Fine gives (at 2014, 148 n. 38) for this reading of the phrases is a citation to Aristotle’s De Memoria (452a11). See Woolf (2015, 379) for a persuasive argument that the Aristotle passage does not support Fine’s reading of the Meno.

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 8 Bronstein and Schwab the thing from which it is taken (see, for example, Phaedrus 253a2-4, Republic 617d3-5, and Hippias Major 282b7-c1). So, we think that the crucial phrase ‘taking up the knowledge from himself’ or ‘in himself’ implies that the knowledge is in the slave prior to his taking it up. However, to say that the knowledge is in the slave prior to his taking it up does not yet mean that it is innate, for he might have acquired it at some point in his life. Socrates’ next move addresses this very issue. He asks: ‘Well then, must he not either have taken up at some time or always had the knowledge which he now has?’ Socrates goes on to rule out the possibility that the slave took up the knowledge at some time after birth and concludes from this that he always had it. Since we just saw that Socrates says the slave will know by taking up knowledge from or in himself, it is natural to think that the knowledge that the slave now has is the knowledge he will later take up. If this is right, then it is clear that the knowledge the slave now has is innate.16 Fine, however, along with several other interpreters, argues that this line does not support an innatist reading because the word ‘now’ is ‘forward-referring’.17 That is, Socrates is not using the word to pick out the time of the exchange but, rather, the time after the slave has undergone the imagined questioning that will ultimately lead him to take up knowledge. If ‘now’ is forward-referring in this way, this line does not support the innatist reading and may in fact tell against it, as the implicature is that the slave does not have the knowledge at the time of the exchange. Although taking the word ‘now’ to be forward-referring is linguistically and conceptually possible, we think that it cannot have this force here.18 If Socrates intended ‘now’ to refer to the imagined time after the slave has undergone further questioning, then the option that Socrates rejects, namely that the slave took up (ἔλαβεν) the knowledge some time after birth, would be correct. To see this, remember that Socrates has just said that the slave will know (ἐπιστήσεται)

16 Of course, this raises the problem of how to reconcile the claim that the slave now has knowledge with the claim that the slave does not now know. We consider this in the next section. Note, in addition, that Socrates establishes that knowledge is innate in much the same way as he establishes that the slave’s true opinions are innate: as we remarked in Section 2 above, Socrates first establishes that the opinions were in the slave prior to their exchange and then he rules out the possibility that the slave acquired them during his upbringing, from which it follows that they are innate. 17 See Fine 2014, 152-3 and Irwin 1995, 132 n. 14. Bluck 1961, 313 floats (without endorsing) this proposal. Taylor allows that ‘now’ can refer to a future time, but insists that ‘the argument still requires that the slave has never acquired knowledge but has always possessed it’ (2008, 172 n. 8). 18 For additional considerations against taking the ‘now’ to be forward-referring, see Scott 2006, 110-12.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 9 by taking up (ἀναλβών) the knowledge himself from himself. If he were then to ask, of the time after the slave has succeeded in taking up that knowledge, whether he took it up (ἔλαβεν) (note the aorist) at some time after birth or always had it, the answer would obviously be the former. This is because, if the slave does not have the knowledge at the time of the exchange (as the prenatalist interpretation holds), but does have it after taking it up through further questioning, then the obvious answer to the question whether he took it up at some time is ‘yes, during the questioning we just imagined him going through’. But, far from viewing this possibility as obviously correct, Socrates rejects it. The only way to make sense of this, we conclude, is to take ‘now’ to be referring to the time of the exchange and to understand this line as evincing Socrates’ commitment to innatism.

3.2 Fine’s Direct Arguments Against Attributing P3 to Plato Fine has other arguments against attributing condition or content innatism to Plato. Since Socrates’ repeated claims that the slave does not know the geometrical truth (our P1) come before his claim that, through further questioning, the slave will take up knowledge himself from himself, Fine maintains that, if the latter claim means that the slave will take up knowledge that is already present in him, then it ‘comes out of the blue’ (2014, 150). She acknowledges that the claim does not come out of the blue in the sense that recollection has not been mentioned before but, rather, in the sense that Socrates would be here assum- ing the truth of recollection while trying to prove its truth.19 It is not obvious, however, that Socrates’ statement, read as meaning that the slave will take up knowledge that is already present in him, would assume the truth of recollection. Rather, we think Socrates’ statement presents recollection as the conclusion he draws from his exchange with the slave. That is, Socrates thinks that the exchange has provided him with the support for concluding that, if the slave were ultimately to acquire knowledge, this must be a matter of taking up knowledge that is already in him. At the beginning of the exchange, the slave is unable to answer Socrates’ question correctly but at the end he is able to do so. Now, as we saw above, Socrates does not think that the slave knows the answer, but that he will know it through further questioning. However, Socrates is adamant that the answer was not given to the slave, that is, that the answer did not come from ‘outside’ the slave. Thus, the answer must have come from ‘within’ the slave and, so, since the future questioning that the slave will undergo will likewise not furnish any information from ‘outside’, the knowledge he will take up must also come from ‘within’ him.

19 Fine 2014, 150 n. 41.

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So we can understand the innatist reading of Socrates’ claim that the slave will take up the knowledge himself from himself not as ‘coming out of the blue’ but, rather, as a conclusion Socrates draws from the preceding discussion. Of course, Socrates may not be correct to draw this conclusion. Perhaps there are possibilities that Socrates has not considered. But the point is that we can understand Socrates to take this conclusion to be motivated by the preceding discussion. And that is all that is needed to rebut the charge that on the innatist reading Socrates would be presupposing the truth of recollection.

3.3 A General Dilemma for Prenatalism If we step back from the specifics of Fine’s account, we can see that a dilemma faces her prenatalist interpretation of the Meno. On the prenatalist view, Plato thinks that upon becoming embodied the soul loses the knowledge that it has in its disembodied state. If Plato is a prenatalist in this sense, it is unclear why he would insist that the process of coming to have knowledge in an embodied state is a process of recollection, as opposed to a process of learning again. As Aristotle argues, recollection is a distinct process from learning again, and at least part of what distinguishes the two is that in the former, but not the latter, there is some persisting entity linking present cognition to past knowledge (De Memoria 451b9-12).20 Fine acknowledges that there is this difference between recollection and learning again, but maintains that Plato either (a) failed to see that some persisting entity is needed to maintain that the embodied soul recollects as opposed to learns again or (b) saw that some persisting entity is needed but failed to mention it.21 Fine further argues that, even if (b) is correct, ‘the persisting entity doesn’t need to be knowledge, in either the cognitive condition or content sense’ (2014, 152; emphasis in original) and she goes on to propose several other candidates for what the persisting entity might be. However, Fine concedes that Plato mentions none of these candidates, and she concludes accordingly that ‘either Plato rejects the entitative feature [i.e. the persisting entity] and so can’t explain why we are recollecting rather than learning for a second time or he accepts it but leaves a serious lacuna in his argument by not explaining what it is’ (2014, 165; emphasis in original).22 Thus the dilemma for the prenatalist view—a dilemma Fine

20 Moravcsik (1971, 58) calls this the ‘entitative feature’ of recollection. 21 Fine 2014, 164-5. 22 Fine here suggests a distinction between two kinds of prenatalism. On one, which we might call ‘strong prenatalism’, upon becoming embodied the soul loses not only the knowledge it has in its disembodied state, but also any traces whatsoever of that knowledge. (This is the version of her view on which Plato rejects the existence of a persisting entity.) On the other, which we might call ‘weak prenatalism’, upon becoming embodied

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 11 herself recognizes—is that Plato, in speaking of ‘recollection’, either wrongly explains or fails to explain his own view. There is, however, an alternative to this disappointing assessment: Plato does identify the persisting entity—the true opinions and knowledge he says are in us. In what follows, we develop this suggestion by arguing that it is innate opinion and knowledge in the content sense that serve as the persisting entity.

4 What Kind of Innatism?

Recall that the initial appeal of Fine’s prenatalist reading is that it dissolves the two tensions we introduced in Section 2 above: Plato does not face the conflict between the claim that the slave does not know (P1) and the claim that the slave has innate knowledge (P3), nor the conflict between P3 and the claim that the slave has innate mere true opinion (P2), because Plato does not accept either P2 or P3. We have argued that Plato is not a prenatalist but an innatist. But what kind of innatist is he? That is, what kind of innatism is best positioned to dissolve the two tensions? On the dominant interpretation, Plato is a condition innatist. According to this view, when a human being is born, the soul already possesses the cognitive state of knowledge. To make Socrates’ repeated claims that the slave does not know (P1) consistent with his claims that the slave has knowledge (P3), this interpretation attributes to Plato a distinction between implicit or latent knowledge on the one hand and explicit or conscious knowledge on the other.23 Thus, on this interpretation, when Socrates says that the slave does not know the geometrical truth, he means that the slave does not have explicit knowledge of it; when Socrates says that the slave has knowledge of the geometrical truth, he means that he has implicit knowledge of it. Interpreters who attribute this distinction to Plato do not claim that it is explicitly invoked in

the soul loses the knowledge it has in its disembodied state, but retains some traces of that knowledge. (This is the version of her view on which Plato accepts the existence of a persisting entity but fails to explain what it is.) Weak prenatalism thus seems consistent with some form of innatism. However, since Fine denies that Plato is an innatist about knowledge, belief or concepts in either the condition, content or dispositional sense, weak prenatalism is not consistent with any of these forms of innatism. We acknowledge that the name ‘prenatalism’ might be odd to ascribe to weak prenatalism, but think it is justified insofar as whatever it is that the soul has in its disembodied state does not persist through embodiment. 23 See the authors cited in n. 2 above. Although there may be a difference between the two terms on each side of the contrast, for brevity’s sake we will speak simply of the contrast between implicit and explicit knowledge.

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 12 Bronstein and Schwab the text. Rather, they maintain that he must be operating with such a distinction, on pain of falling victim to the apparent contradiction between P1 and P3. Unfortunately, however, as some condition innatist interpreters acknowledge and as we will argue below, the distinction does not dissolve the tension between P2 and P3.24 In the remainder of this paper, we argue, against this interpretation, that Plato is a content innatist: he thinks that, when human beings are born, their souls possess truths that can later be the contents of their states of opinion or knowledge.25 On our reading, when Socrates claims that the slave does not know, he means that the slave is not in the cognitive condition of knowing; and when he claims that there is true opinion and knowledge in the slave, he means that there are in the slave truths that can later be the contents of the conditions of opining and knowing. So, whereas for condition innatism the crucial distinction is between latent and explicit cognitive states, for content innatism the crucial distinction is between cognitive states or conditions and their contents. We think that content innatism enjoys two distinct advantages over condition innatism. First, content innatism, unlike condition innatism, can dissolve both apparent tensions. Second, attributing to Plato a distinction between condition and content is better supported by the text than attributing to him a distinction between implicit and explicit cognitive states. As we argue below, Socrates uses forms of verbs meaning ‘to know’ (eidenai, epistasthai) to deny that the slave is in the condition of knowing and to predict that he will later be in that condition, and he uses the nouns doxa, epistēmē and alētheia to affirm that the slave possesses truths suitable for being the contents of the conditions of opining and knowing. In Plato’s works, the terms doxa and epistēmē

24 See Brown 1991, 608-9 and 615, and Scott 2006, 118-20. 25 For a view that seems to come close to content innatism, see Vlastos 1965. Vlastos ada- mantly rejects condition innatism on the grounds that it would contradict Socrates’ repeated claims that the slave does not know the geometrical truth (153 n. 14) and he does speak of ‘propositions’ being present in the mind (159) but he explicitly characterizes those propositions as ‘known’ (159). Dancy’s view (2004) seems at times to have affini- ties to content innatism (as Fine 2014, 141 n. 11 notes)—he says that the slave does not believe / know but does have beliefs / knowledge (231-2)—but he does not clearly articu- late the content/condition distinction and so it is difficult to position his view precisely. Fine (2007, 361-2) briefly presents a content innatist reading of the relevant passages in the Meno, but she does not endorse it (and elsewhere she explicitly argues against it: see Fine 2014, 137-76). Wolfsdorf 2011, 60 attributes content innatism to Plato in the Meno, but does not develop or defend the proposal in detail. Fine 2014, 160 suggests that Gentzler 1994, 281 n. 49 might attribute some form of content innatism to Plato but, as Fine notes, Gentzler does not commit herself on this issue.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 13 often signify the cognitive conditions of opining and knowing, respectively. However, they also sometimes signify the contents of those conditions, and this is what we find in the Meno—or so we will argue. Our plan is to argue for our content innatist interpretation by looking closely at Socrates’ comments to Meno after the exchange with the slave (85b8-d11) and his argument for the immortality of the soul (85d12-86b5). We then consider how the content innatist understands Socrates’ response to Meno’s Paradox (the Paradox is presented at 80d5-e5). First, however, we examine briefly Plato’s uses of the terms doxa and epistēmē.

4.1 ‘Doxa’ and ‘Epistēmē’ in Plato It is central to our interpretation that the nouns ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’, at least in Plato’s hands, can denote two different, though related, things.26 On the one hand, they can denote cognitive states, things that exist only ‘in a person’s mind’. On the other hand, they can denote the content of cognitive states, something that can, for example, be written down on a piece of paper. In this way, ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’ are like many words that denote what philosophers nowadays call ‘propositional attitudes’, such as ‘hope’, ‘fear’ and ‘belief’, each of which is ambiguous between the content of a cognitive state and the cognitive state itself.27 Take ‘belief’. If, for example, someone were to write down a list of sentences about geometry, point to it and say ‘these are my beliefs about geometry’, they would be using ‘belief’ to pick out the content of the cognitive states they have concerning or about geometry, and these cognitive states are also their beliefs about geometry. Since these so-called ‘propositional attitudes’ take propositions as their objects, it is entirely natural to use a propositional- attitude term to pick out either the attitude itself, or the proposition that is the object of the attitude.28 The Greek words ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’ display the same ambiguity: they can be used to pick out either the content of cognitive states or the cognitive states themselves. The claim that doxa and epistēmē can pick out cognitive states is likely to be uncontroversial, and so we simply cite the following passage from Socrates’ ‘intellectual autobiography’ in the Phaedo (96b3-8, tr. Grube, slightly modified):

26 We also think that this holds of other ancient authors, but restrict our discussion to Plato. 27 See Rowett 2018, 37-8 for discussion. 28 It is unclear, however, whether all propositional attitude terms exhibit this ambiguity. ‘Knowledge,’ for example, can certainly pick out a mental state, but it is less clear that, in ordinary English, it can pick out the content of that state. Typically, in order to pick out the content, a locution such as ‘body of knowledge’ or the like is needed.

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Do we think with our blood, or air, or fire, or none of these, and does the brain provide our senses of hearing and sight and smell, from which come memory and doxa, and, from memory and doxa that has become stable, comes epistēmē?

Since Socrates is here asking about how doxa and epistēmē come to be (γίγνεσθαι), it is clear that those words pick out cognitive states: cognitive states come to be, but the content of those states do not. (Of course, a certain content can come to be present in the mind, in virtue of a cognitive state with that content coming to be in the mind, but the content itself does not come to be.) It is also fairly widely recognized that Plato sometimes uses ‘epistēmē’ to pick out the content of the cognitive state of epistēmē. We cite two examples. First, in the Republic, ‘epistēmē’ sometimes picks out the body of knowledge that the knower knows, rather than the state of knowledge. Consider, for example, Republic 527a1-4 (tr. Reeve, slightly modified):

Now, no one with even a little experience of geometry will dispute with us that this epistēmē is itself entirely the opposite of what is said about it in the accounts of its practitioners.

It is clear that in this passage ‘epistēmē’ picks out the content that the geometer knows, since ‘what is said about’ epistēmē are things said about geometrical objects, rather than about the cognitive state of geometers. This is why many translators opt for translating ‘epistēmē’ here as ‘science’ (see, for example, Shorey and Reeve).29 Second, in the Theaetetus, Socrates introduces a view according to which knowing (to epistasthai) is the having of knowledge (epistēmēs … hexin), which he suggests they amend to the possession of knowledge (epistēmēs … ktēsin) (197a7-b4). To explain the difference between having and possessing knowledge, Socrates likens the soul to an aviary that contains instead of birds ‘pieces of knowledge’ (epistēmai). When a piece of knowledge is shut up in the pen, one ‘possesses’ it; when one takes it in hand, one ‘has’ it (197d6-198d9). We think that throughout the aviary passage ‘epistēmē’ refers to the content of the state of knowledge and ‘possessing’ and ‘having’ refer to two different ways of being in that state: non-occurrently and occurrently (or dispositionally and actively),

29 See also Rowe’s translation of ‘epistēmē’ here as ‘branch of knowledge.’ This use of ‘epistēmē’ to designate a science or branch of knowledge (i.e. the content of a mental state rather than a mental state itself) is also common in Aristotle: see, for example, Posterior Analytics 1.10, 76a37-8, 1.11, 77a26, and 1.13, 78a23, with Burnyeat 1981, 97.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 15 respectively. One advantage of this interpretation is that it makes sense of the claim with which Socrates begins his discussion. To say that knowing (to epistasthai) is the having or possessing of knowledge (epistēmē) makes good sense if ‘knowledge’ is given a content reading: the claim is that to be in the state of knowledge is to stand in the relation of ‘having’ or ‘possessing’ with respect to some content. The claim is more difficult to understand if ‘knowledge’ is given a condition reading. For then the claim is that to be in the state of knowledge is to stand in the relation of ‘having’ or ‘possessing’ with respect to the state of knowledge, and it is difficult to see what this might mean. Overall, the language of the aviary passage supports our contention that in the key passages in the Meno, which we consider in a moment, Plato uses forms of verbs meaning ‘to know’ (eidenai, epistasthai) for the state of knowledge, and the noun ‘epistēmē’ for the content of that state. For in the aviary passage Plato similarly uses ‘to epistasthai’ for the state of knowledge and ‘epistēmē’ for the content of that state—one of his principal points being that there are two different ways of being in that state, either by ‘possessing’ or by ‘having’ one such content. Regarding the use of ‘doxa’ to pick out the content of a cognitive state, rather than a cognitive state itself, many passages in Plato are ambiguous (as are many uses of ‘belief’ and ‘opinion’ in English).30 However, there is a passage in the Gorgias that we think can only be read as picking out a content (501c1-6):31

For my part, Callicles, I think there are such preoccupations, and I say that this sort of thing is flattery, both in the case of the body and that of the soul and in any other case in which a person may wait upon a pleasure without any consideration of what’s better or worse. As for you, do

30 For an unambiguous post-Platonic use of ‘doxa’ for content consider Epicurus’ Kuriai Doxai, the title of a work listed in Diogenes Laertius 10.27.14 and quoted by him at 10.139- 54. In connection with this it is worth noting Diogenes Laertius’ report that ‘two things are called ‘dogma’: the thing opined (τὸ δοξαζόμενον) and the opinion itself (ἡ δόξα αὐτή). Of these, the thing opined is a proposition (πρότασις), the opinion is a belief (ὑπόληψις)’ (3.51). There is also a use of ‘doxa’ that denotes someone’s reputation, which is what other people think about them. 31 See in addition: Crito 46c6-48a11, where Socrates maintains that we should follow the doxai of the wise, not the doxai of the majority (while there is a sense in which we can follow doxai understood as cognitive states, this is only insofar as such states have content that can be action guiding); Phaedo 70b9-10: ‘I would like to hear whatever δόξα you have about these things’ (we cannot hear a cognitive state, but we can hear the content of such a state); and Republic 470a8: ‘I would like to hear you declare your δόξα’ (when a person declares their doxa, they are declaring what they opine, not the state in which they opine it).

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you join us in assenting (συγκατατίθεσθαι) to the same opinion (τὴν αὐτὴν δόξαν) on these matters or do you dissent (ἀντίφῃς) from it?

In this passage, it is clear that ‘the same doxa’ picks out the content of the claim Socrates has just made, and Socrates is asking whether Callicles assents to or rejects that content.32 Cognitive states are not the kind of thing that can be assented to or rejected; contents are the kinds of things that can be assented to or rejected, resulting in cognitive states with those contents.33 Not only does Plato use the word ‘doxa’ to pick out both the content of a cognitive state and the cognitive state itself, a passage in the Philebus can be read as explicitly recognizing the distinction. In the Philebus, the character Socrates analogizes doxa and pleasure (hēdonē). Although most of the details are not pertinent to our discussion, the passage where Socrates seeks to ‘clarify’ the preceding discussion is (37a1-8):

Soc.: Let us try to achieve more clarity about what we said concerning pleasure and opinion (doxa). Is there something we call doxazein? Protarchus: Yes. … Soc.: But there is also to doxazomenon? Prot.: How not?

In the subsequent discussion, the distinction between the activity or state of doxazein and the content of that state is exploited in comparing doxa and pleasure. It is quite natural to read the ‘clarification’ Socrates offers as being needed because ‘doxa’ on its own can pick out either the state or activity of doxazein and the content or object of that state (to doxazomenon).34 Thus, we are not simply saying that Plato’s use of the word ‘doxa’ accords with the distinction between content and state, but that Plato himself recognized the distinction.35

32 Indeed, the phrase ‘the same doxa’ on its own almost certainly picks out a content, rather than a cognitive state, since cognitive states are not the kind of thing that can be shared: you and I can be in the same cognitive state only in the sense that you have, say, a belief whose content is the same as the content of one of my beliefs but, strictly speaking, your cognitive states are yours and mine are mine. 33 Plato here seems to be anticipating something like the view the Stoics will develop in ro- bust detail whereby cognitive mental states are formed by assenting to certain contents. 34 See Harte 2004, 116-17, who also interprets this passage as making explicit that ‘“Belief” [doxa] analogously to “pleasure” may be used of both what is believed [to doxazomenon] and of the believing therein [doxazein]’. 35 It would be surprising if Plato did not occasionally use ‘doxa’ for the content of the state of opinion since the only other word naturally suited to this purpose, to doxazomenon

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4.2 Socrates’ Commentary (85b8-d11) We turn now to Socrates’ comments to Meno after his examination of the slave. We have already argued that the text supports innatism over prenatalism. We now argue that it supports content over condition innatism. The text begins immediately after the slave has reached the correct answer to Socrates’ question as to the line on which the eight-foot square is based (85b8-d11):

(1) Soc.: What seems to be the case to you, Meno? Is whichever opinion (δόξαν) he answered not his own? Meno: No, his own. (2) Soc.: And yet he did not know (οὐκ ᾔδει), as we said a little while earlier? Meno: You speak truly. (3) Soc.: But these opinions (δόξαι) were in (ἐνῆσαν) him, weren’t they? Meno: Yes (4) Soc.: So, in the man who does not know (τῷ οὐκ εἰδότι), about the things which he does not know (μὴ εἰδῇ), there are in him true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) about the things which he does not know (οὐκ οἶδε)? Meno: It appears so. (5) Soc: In fact, these opinions (δόξαι) have now just been stirred up in him like a dream, but if he is asked these same questions many times and in various ways, you know that ultimately he will know (ἐπιστήσεται) about these things no less precisely than anyone else. Meno: It is likely. (6) Soc.: Thus, he will know (ἐπιστήσεται) without having been taught but questioned, taking up the knowledge (τὴν ἐπιστήμην) himself from himself? Meno: Yes. (7) Soc.: But is not taking up knowledge (ἐπιστήμην) oneself in oneself recollecting? Meno: Certainly.

(the present passive participle of the verb doxazein), is rare in Plato. (According to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae it appears a total of ten times over five dialogues (Clitophon, Statesman, Philebus, Laws and Republic; or nine over four if we exclude the Clitophon)— all of which scholars generally agree were written after the Meno (again if we exclude the Clitophon). Prior to Plato, the word is unattested. (It appears in the Testimonia of Leucippus, at DK 67A24 = Diogenes Laertius 10.90; but this is an unreliable guide to the terminology that Leucippus himself would have used.)

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(8) Soc.: Well then, the knowledge (τὴν ἐπιστήμην) that he now has, didn’t he either take it up at some time or else always have it? Meno: Yes. A few lines later, in the passage we will examine in the next section, Socrates says that ‘the truth (ἡ ἀλήθεια) about beings is always in the soul’ (86b1-2). Taking these passages together, Socrates makes the following claims that are relevant to assessing the nature of his innatist commitments:

(i) True opinions about the geometrical truth are in the slave (our P2): (3), (4), (5). (ii) Knowledge of the geometrical truth is in the slave (our P3): (6), (7), (8). (iii) The truth is in the slave (86b1-2). (iv) The slave does not know the geometrical truth (our P1): (2), (4). (v) The slave will know the geometrical truth: (5), (6).

We have already seen that (iv) (our P1) is in tension with (ii) (our P3) and that (ii) is in tension with (i) (our P2). Our aim is to dissolve these tensions by explaining each of the five claims and showing how they are consistent with each other. Our central claim is that (iv) and (v) are about the slave’s present and future cognitive condition, which Socrates signals by using forms of the verbs eidenai and epistasthai, and that (i), (ii) and (iii) are about the slave’s innate cognitive contents, which Socrates signals by using the nouns doxa, epistēmē and alētheia. In (1), Socrates advances a claim about the slave’s answers to his questions: the answers are the slave’s own and not Socrates’; that is, they come from the slave himself, not from Socrates. Socrates puts it this way: the slave ‘answers an opinion (doxan)’ that is his own. Socrates’ claim is not that the slave responds to an opinion but that he answers with an opinion. The opinion the slave presents is naturally understood to be the thing he presently opines. The noun ‘doxa’ in (1), therefore, refers to the contents of the slave’s answers. To see this, consider that, if ‘doxa’ referred instead to the slave’s state of opinion, Socrates’ assertion that the doxa is the slave’s own would hardly be necessary: of course the slave’s state of opinion is his own, whose else could it be? Socrates’ assertion is better understood as stating that the contents of the slave’s states of opinion—the things he opines, the propositions he expresses in his answers—are his own, in the sense that they come from the slave himself, not from Socrates. By calling these contents ‘doxa’ Socrates tells us that the propositions the slave expresses are, at the time he expresses them, the contents of his states of opinion (as opposed to, say, states of knowledge).

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In (3), Socrates adds that the opinions the slave answered were in him. To understand this claim, we need to determine when they were in him. There are two possibilities: the opinions were in the slave (a) only when he answered Socrates’ questions and not before, or (b) when he answered Socrates’ questions and before. We think (a) cannot be right. For if it were, Socrates’ claim in (3) would be redundant: it would reduce to the claim that the slave presented his own opinions, the very claim made in (1). It is more likely, then, that Socrates has (b) in mind: the opinions were in the slave before Socrates questioned him. Indeed, we can see Socrates introducing this claim in order to explain the fact that the slave was able to answer with his own opinions: he was able to do so because they were already in him. From the two previous claims (that the slave answered with his own opinions and that these opinions were in him), Socrates concludes in (4) with a general statement: there are, in the person who does not know, true opinions about the things he does not know. Socrates’ claim seems to be that these opinions are in the person who does not know even when the person is not present- ing them as answers to questions (or otherwise using them). Indeed, his claim seems to be that the presence of true opinions in a person, such as the slave, who does not know explains their ability to respond correctly to questions the answers to which they do not know. Put differently, it is not that the true opinions are in the slave because he answers the questions correctly, as though the process of being questioned instills them in him. Rather, he answers the questions correctly because the true opinions are already in him. This is confirmed by Socrates’ claim in (5) that ‘these opinions have been stirred up in him like a dream’: it is only opinions that are already present in the slave that can be stirred up in him. We will consider in the next section a passage that tells us how much earlier they were in him: for all time (86a6-7). Socrates, in sum, claims that these opinions are in the soul innately (our P2). So far we have argued, first, that ‘opinion’ (doxa) in (1) refers to the contents of the slave’s answers and, second, that in (3), (4) and (5) Socrates establishes that there are innate true opinions in the slave (and in all human beings). We now need to understand what ‘opinion’ means in (3), (4) and (5). It is important that we get this right, if we are to understand Plato’s particular brand of innatism. There are two options. The first is that ‘opinion’ refers to the slave’s cognitive condition. On this reading, Socrates means that the slave was in the cognitive condition of opining the true propositions he presented in answering Socrates’ questions, and he was in this condition prior to being questioned, whether he was aware of being in this condition or not. (Most likely not.) This is a version of condition innatism: the slave is in the cognitive condition of opining, latently and innately, certain truths. The second option

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 20 Bronstein and Schwab is that ‘opinion’ refers to the content of the slave’s cognitive condition. On this reading, Socrates means that prior to being questioned there were in the slave certain truths that could (and presently do) serve as the contents of his condition of opining. This is content innatism. We think the second option—content innatism—is preferable: it both explains why Socrates claims that there are true opinions in the slave and rec- onciles this claim (i.e. P2) with the claim that the slave has innate knowledge (P3) (in addition to keeping the meaning of ‘doxa’ the same throughout the text). Condition innatism can only do the former. To see this, let us look at (5) (85c9-d1) in more detail:

(5) Soc: In fact, these opinions (δόξαι) have now just been stirred up in him like a dream, but if he is asked these same questions many times and in various ways, you know that ultimately he will know (ἐπιστήσεται) about these things no less precisely than anyone else.

Socrates invokes the distinction between true opinion and knowledge, a distinction he returns to at the end of the Meno (see 96d5-end), where he says that there is a significant difference between them: knowledge comes to be when true opinion is tied down by a working out of the explanation (97e2-98a8). By saying in (5) that after further questioning the slave will know, Socrates makes it clear that the true opinions he said in (3) and (4) are and were in the slave are mere true opinions, ones that fall short of knowledge as characterized at 97e2- 98a8.36 Since the condition innatist claims that ‘opinion’ signifies the cognitive condition of opining, she is committed to the following reading of P2:

P2COND The slave is innately in the cognitive condition of merely opining the geometrical truth.

In (6) and (7), however, Socrates says that the transition from true opinion to knowledge predicted in (5) consists in taking up knowledge from or in oneself. As we argued above, (6), (7) and (8) commit Socrates to the view that the slave has innate knowledge, i.e. to P3. Since the condition innatist reads the claim about opinion (P2) in the condition sense, it is natural for her to read the claim about knowledge in the same way:

36 Further evidence for this claim is the fact that the conclusion he draws in (3), namely that the opinions were in the slave, is supported by the observation in (2) that the slave did not know the answer. However, if the latter is meant to support the former, then it must be mere opinions that are in the slave.

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P3COND The slave is innately in the cognitive condition of knowing the geometrical truth.

As some condition innatist interpreters acknowledge, this view involves a contradiction: if one merely opines X at t, one does not know X at t, and so one cannot simultaneously merely opine and know the same thing, even if only latently and innately.37 Plato cannot be a condition innatist about both mere true opinion and knowledge of the same things. If he is a condition innatist about opinion only, the defender of the condition reading must downplay or explain away the claims about knowledge. And if he is a condition innatist about knowledge only, the defender of the condition reading must downplay or explain away the claims about opinion.38 Our content innatist reading can make good sense of all of Socrates’ claims. When Socrates says in (3) that ‘these opinions were in him’, the ‘opinions’ (doxai) are the contents of the slave’s current states of (mere) opinion. In (3) Socrates is making two claims: first, that these contents are innate (they were in him even before he was questioned); second, that these contents are presently the contents of the slave’s states of (mere) opinion. So, when Socrates

37 Brown maintains that this contradiction cannot be avoided, but tries to mitigate the dam- age it has for Plato’s overall view (1991, 608-9 and 615). Scott also acknowledges the problem and concludes that Socrates’ claim that ‘the truths about beings are always in the soul’ is supposed to ‘smooth over the difference’ between the claim that the slave has innate knowledge and the claim that he has innate mere true doxa (2006, 118-20). However, on the condition reading the two claims are not merely different, they are in contradiction, and the claim about truth leaves the contradiction in place. 38 A similar problem arises for a dispositional innatist interpretation of P2 and P3, according to which the slave has both an innate disposition merely to opine the geometrical truth and an innate disposition to know that same truth. The problem is that it is difficult to understand why Plato would posit two separate innate dispositions, especially innate dispositions for mutually exclusive cognitive activities. A defender of this reading might counter that Plato does posit just one disposition, namely a disposition to know the geometrical truth; he calls this disposition both ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’ because it first manifests in a state of mere opinion and will later manifest in a state of knowledge. However, the difficulty with this response is that it makes a number of Socrates’ claims implausibly elliptical. For example, the claim that there was doxa in the slave is to be understood as the claim that there was a disposition to know in the slave, a disposition that first manifests in a state of mere opinion and not knowledge. Not only does this stretch the meaning of ‘doxa’ well beyond its ordinary uses, there is nothing in the text to prepare the reader for this unusual move. So while this version of the dispositional innatist reading avoids our main objection to the condition innatist reading, it does not seem preferable to our content innatist reading, according to which, as we now argue, ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’ are used in accordance with one of their ordinary meanings. (We are grateful to Joshua Mendelsohn for discussion here.)

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 22 Bronstein and Schwab claims that these opinions were in him, he means that these contents previously existed in the slave as possible contents of future occurrent states of opinion, not as actual contents of latent states of opinion. Throughout this passage Socrates uses the noun doxa, never the verbs dokein or doxazein, to describe what is in the slave innately. We argued above that in (1) ‘doxa’ refers to the content of the slave’s answers and thus of his states of opinion. The passage as a whole makes good sense if doxa has this meaning throughout. The content innatist reading can also make good sense of Socrates’ claim in (6), (7) and (8) that there is innate knowledge (epistēmē) in the slave. Here (5) plays a pivotal role. In (5) Socrates imagines a future time when the slave will know the same truths he now merely opines. This claim licenses the talk of knowledge in the lines that follow: because we can imagine a future time when the slave will be in the cognitive condition of knowing (which Socrates signals by using a form of the verb epistasthai) we are justified in speaking of the relevant innate truths as knowledge (epistēmē) that is in the slave. Socrates’ use of the noun epistēmē signals that these innate truths are knowledge in the sense that they are possible contents of future states of knowledge. It is in this sense that the slave now has knowledge. The slave now has knowledge, even before he is in the condition of knowing, in the same sense that he previously had opinions, even before he was in the condition of opining: he has, as part of his soul’s innate endowment, certain truths that can serve as the contents of his future states of knowledge, just as prior to meeting Socrates he had certain truths that could serve as the contents of his future states of opinion. And indeed, the contents are the same: it is the same innate truths that are first opined, and are thus called opinions (doxai), and will later be known, and are thus called knowledge (epistēmē). Socrates’ use of the nouns ‘doxa’ and ‘epistēmē’ indicates the status of these truths as possible contents of different cognitive states. To appreciate fully what Socrates is saying, let us transport ourselves back to a point in time t1 before the slave met Socrates—say, the day before. Socrates’ claim is that the slave has both innate mere true opinion and innate knowledge of the relevant geometrical truth at t1. On our content innatist reading, this claim is perfectly coherent, for it amounts to the claim that (a) the geometrical truth is in the slave innately at t1, and (b) this truth can be the content of a state of mere opinion at some time after t1, and (c) it can be the content of a state of knowledge at some time after t1. (It cannot however be the content of a state of mere opinion and a state of knowledge at the same time after t1.) Now let us consider the point in time when the slave correctly answers Socrates’ question, t2. Socrates’ claim is that, just as at t1, the slave at t2 has innate mere true opinion and innate knowledge of the geometrical truth. The only difference

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 23 between t1 and t2 is that at t2 but not at t1 the slave is (merely) opining—that is, in the cognitive condition of mere opinion concerning—the geometrical truth. Crucially, the claim that the slave is opining the geometrical truth at t2 is perfectly compatible with the claim that the slave has innate knowledge of the geometrical truth at t2. For the claim that the slave has innate knowledge at t2 amounts to the claim that at t2 the geometrical truth is in the slave as a possible content of his state of knowledge at some time after t2, and it is perfectly consistent to think that one can later know some truth one currently merely opines. So, we think that Socrates’ claim that the slave has innate mere true opinion of the geometrical truth (P2) is perfectly consistent with his claim that the slave has innate knowledge of that same truth (P3). For we understand P2 and P3 as follows:

P2CONT The slave has innate mere true opinion of the geometrical truth in the sense that the slave has innately the geometrical truth, which can be the content of his state of mere true opinion.

P3CONT The slave has innate knowledge of the geometrical truth in the sense that the slave has innately the geometrical truth, which can be the content of his state of knowledge.

In other words, P2 means that there are in the slave innate truths that exist in him as possible contents of future states of opinion; and P3 means that these same truths exist in him also as possible contents of future states of knowledge. When the slave cognizes these truths in states of opinion, as he does when he first answers Socrates’ questions correctly, Socrates says that there are true opinions (alētheis doxai) in him. When Socrates imagines a future time when the slave will cognize these same truths in states of knowledge, he says that there is knowledge (epistēmē) in him. However, he does not mean that there is knowledge in him only when he cognizes the truths in states of knowledge, just as he does not mean that there are true opinions in him only when he cognizes the truths in states of opinion. He means that knowledge is in him always, just as the opinions are in him always. For these are claims about innate truths, not about innate states or conditions: there always exist in the slave certain truths that can serve as the contents of his states of opinion and knowledge. So understood, the tension between P2 and P3 disappears. In addition, our content innatist interpretation can reconcile Socrates’ claim that the slave does not know now (P1) with his claim that knowledge is in him

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 24 Bronstein and Schwab now (P3). The first claim is about the slave’s current cognitive condition, which Socrates signals by using forms of the verb eidenai: he is not in the condition of knowing (οὐκ ᾔδει, 85c2; τῷ οὐκ εἰδότι … μὴ εἰδῇ … οὐκ οἶδε, 85c6-7). The second claim is about his current cognitive contents, which Socrates signals by using the noun epistēmē: he possesses certain truths that can serve as the contents of the condition of knowing. As we have argued, failing to be in the condition of knowing is compatible with possessing truths that can serve as the contents of that condition, and so P1 and P3 are consistent with each other.

4.3 The Argument for Immortality (85d12-86b5) The next section of the dialogue provides strong support for our content innatist interpretation. Socrates now uses the results of his examination of the slave, and of his commentary on it, to argue for the immortality of the soul and to exhort Meno to inquire. In the previous section, he established that the slave presently has knowledge (we have argued, in the content sense). Socrates states that there are two options for the origin of this knowledge: either the slave took it up at some time or has always had it. Socrates rejects the possibility that the slave took up the knowledge in this life, and from this premise he argues for immortality (85d12-86b5: we have again broken up the text into several parts):

(9) Soc.: Well then, if he always had it [sc. knowledge], he always would have been a knower (ἐπιστήμων). If he took it up at some time, he would not have taken it up in his present life. Or has someone taught him geometry? For he will perform in this same way concerning all geometry, and all the other subjects. Then has someone taught him everything? For it’s right, I suppose, that you would know, since he was born and brought up in your house. Meno: But I know that no one ever taught him (10) Soc.: But he has these opinions (δόξας), or not? Meno: It appears necessary, Socrates. (11) Soc.: But if he did not take them up in his present life, is this not indeed clear, that he had them and had learned them at some other time? Meno: It appears so. (12) Soc.: Well then this is the time that he was not a person? Meno: Yes (13) Soc.: If then, during both the time when he was and the time when he was not a human being, there will be present in him true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) which, when stirred by questioning, become

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knowledge (ἐπιστῆμαι), will his soul not be learned during all time? For it’s clear that at all times he either is or is not a person? Meno: It appears so. (14) Soc.: Well then, if the truth about beings (ἡ ἀλήθεια … τῶν ὄντων) is always in the soul, the soul would be immortal, so that confidently, concerning what you do not happen to know at present—that is, what you do not remember—you must attempt to search and to recollect. Meno: You seem to me to speak well, Socrates, but I don’t know how.

There is a difficulty with Socrates’ argument. He appears to argue that (a) either the slave took up the knowledge he now has or has always had it, and that, since (b) the slave did not take up the knowledge in this life, it follows that (c) the slave has always had it and thus that the soul is immortal. However, (c) does not follow from (a) and (b). Rather, what follows is that either the slave has always had the knowledge or he took it up prior to this life.39 Nevertheless, for our purposes, the crucial question is not whether the argument is valid but whether the passage espouses content or condition innatism. We think Socrates makes a number of claims that support our content innatist interpretation. First, consider Socrates’ claim in (11) that, since the slave did not take up in this life the opinions they have found to be in him, ‘he had them and had learned them at some other time’. The fact that the opinions are objects of the slave’s prior learning supports our contention that they are truths that can serve as the objects of the cognitive condition of opining (and knowing), rather than the cognitive condition of opining itself. For it would be strange if Socrates meant that the soul in a disembodied state acquired opinions in the cognitive condition sense, as though it were at that time (merely) opining, rather than knowing, the relevant truths. Indeed, in the initial statement of the theory of recollection, Socrates claims that the soul knew (ēpistato) all things (80c7-9). It makes better sense to understand Socrates’ claim that the soul had and learned opinions at some other time as meaning that the soul acquired truths that it could, at a later time, in an embodied state, opine.40

39 For this worry, see Dancy 2004, 233-5 and Scott 2006, 115. Scott attempts to remedy the argument (see 115-17). 40 Scott adds a further worry about innate doxa in the condition sense: ‘it would be very strange if [Socrates] were to claim that the soul possesses true beliefs (rather than knowledge) on all subjects for all eternity: for at 97e2-98a8 he will insist that true belief is by its nature unstable’ (2006, 118). Our content innatist interpretation solves this worry: it is only mere true doxa in the condition sense that is unstable; the contents of true doxa, so

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Second, in his clearest statement of content innatism, Socrates says that ‘the truth about beings is always in the soul’ (14). It is significant that Socrates’ final statement of innatism is the one that most explicitly concerns content rather than condition. His claim is that the soul innately possesses truths that can be the contents of the conditions of opining and knowing, which is what licenses the claim that the soul innately possesses opinion and knowledge in the content sense. Third, our content innatist reading can explain the otherwise puzzling move from talk of ‘knowledge’ in (9) to ‘opinion’ in (10) and then back from ‘opinion’ to ‘knowledge’ in (13). Let us start with (9) and (10). In (9) Socrates makes a claim, which serves as a premise in his argument for immortality, about the knowledge (epistēmē) that Socrates claims in (8) the slave now has: he has always had it or he took it up at some time prior to his present life.41 It makes sense for Socrates to have in mind ‘knowledge’ when he first introduces the premise because this is the term he used in the immediately preceding passage (6)-(8). On our reading, the slave now has knowledge in the sense that he now has truths that can later be the contents of his states of knowledge. It is reasonable for Socrates to claim that, if no one taught the slave these truths (and if he did not learn them on his own in his present life), then he has always had them or acquired them in a previous life. Why, then, does Socrates switch back to claiming that the slave now has ‘these opinions’ (doxas) in (10)? On our reading, the force of calling the slave’s contents ‘opinions’ is to signal their status as the contents of his current states of opinion. This helps explain the switch: Socrates wishes to remind Meno that the claim that the slave has innate truths—a claim key to the premise introduced in (9)—is not based solely on the prediction in (5) that the slave will know in the future; the claim is based on the concrete results of his examination of the slave. The examination showed, Socrates thinks, that the contents of the slave’s answers were in him prior to being questioned. So (10) takes us back to (3) and a crucial claim in Socrates’ commentary: the opinions were in the slave prior to their meeting. In other words, the move back to ‘opinions’ in (10) is explained by the fact that Socrates wishes to place his argument for immortality on the strongest possible footing: the concrete results reported in (3), not the prediction made in (5).42 Socrates’

long as they are also possible contents of epistēmē, are not inherently unstable and can thus exist in the soul innately for all time. 41 Although neither the term epistēmē nor a feminine singular pronoun appears in (9), it is clear that epistēmē (mentioned just before, in (8)) is the object of the verb ‘had’ (εἶχεν) in the first sentence of (9). 42 For a similar interpretation, see Scott 2006, 119-20.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 27 message is: ‘remember that the truths that will be the contents of the slave’s future states of knowledge are also the contents of his present states of opinion, which you yourself have witnessed, and that’s why you should believe that he’s always had them or learned them in a prior life, because how else could he be presently opining them?’ What about the move in (13) from ‘opinions’ back to ‘knowledge’? To understand (13) it will be useful to look back at a portion of (5). The two texts are very similar:

(5) These opinions (δόξαι) have now just been stirred up in him like a dream, but if he is asked these same questions many times and in various ways, you know that ultimately he will know (ἐπιστήσεται) about these things no less precisely than anyone else. (85c9-d1)

(13) There will be present in him true opinions (ἀληθεῖς δόξαι) which, when stirred by questioning, become knowledge (ἐπιστῆμαι). (86a7-8)

In (5) Socrates says that as a result of further questioning the slave will be in the condition of knowing. In (13) he says that as a result of further questioning the slave’s opinions will become knowledge. Socrates’ use of the noun epistēmai in (13) may seem like a problem for our view. For if, as we have argued, ‘will know’ (epistēsetai) in (5) means the condition of knowing, shouldn’t ‘knowledge’ in (13) also have this meaning, given the similarities between the two passages? If so, our claim that the verb / noun distinction tracks the condition / content distinction is undermined. We think that we can resolve this difficulty and explain the shift from ‘opinions’ to ‘knowledge’ in (13). The implicit grammatical subject of ‘will know’ in (5) is the slave. The claim is that by means of further questioning he will go from having truths as the contents of his current states of opinion to having those same truths as the contents of states of knowledge. In (13), however, the grammatical subject of the verb ‘become’ in ‘become knowledge’ is ‘opinions’. The claim is that the contents of the slave’s present states of opinion will become the contents of his future states of knowledge. In other words, (13) makes the same claim as (5) but more squarely from the point of view of the slave’s cognitive contents. (5) mixes content and condition terms: doxai, epistēsetai; (13) uses only content terms: doxai, epistēmai. But the result is the same. On our reading, the noun doxa signifies the content of the state of opinion and epistēmē signifies the content of the state of knowledge. To say of some subject

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S that S’s doxai will become epistēmai is to say that S will go from opining certain contents to knowing them—the very claim made in (5). It still remains for us to explain why in (13) Socrates wishes to remind Meno (and us) of the claim he made in (5). That is, we still need to explain why he shifts from ‘opinions’ to ‘knowledge’. (So far we have only argued that the shift is consistent with our content innatist reading.) Let us look at (13) as a whole (86a6-11):

(13) Soc.: If then, during both the time when he was and the time when he was not a human being, there will be present in him true opinions (alētheis doxai) which, when stirred by questioning, become knowledge (epistēmai), will his soul not be learned during all time? For it’s clear that at all times he either is or is not a person? Meno: It appears so.

We can see two possible reasons for Socrates’ shift from ‘opinions’ to ‘knowledge’. First, Socrates may wish to support his claim that the slave’s soul ‘is learned’ during all time. What the examination of the slave established con- cretely in (3) is that prior to meeting Socrates the slave had innate contents that could be the contents of states of opinion. Socrates, however, wants Meno to agree that the soul ‘is learned’ during all time, presumably to remind him of the initial statement of the theory of recollection in preparation for the exhor- tation to inquire in (14). Socrates may be worried, however, that the leap from ‘there are true opinions in the slave for all time’ to ‘his soul is learned for all time’ is too big. For being learned goes along more naturally with knowing— hence the shift back to ‘knowledge’. The second possible reason for the shift is in the same spirit. It may be that Socrates wishes to remind Meno of the move from true opinion to knowing predicted in (5) as additional enticement to inquire. For it is one thing to promise states of true opinion as the result of their joint inquiry; it is quite another to promise him states of knowledge. One possible difficulty for our reading might come in (9), where Socrates says: ‘if he always had it [sc. knowledge], he always would have been a knower (epistēmōn).’ Although Socrates’ suggestion that the slave would always have been ‘a knower’ might seem to suggest that the slave is always in the cognitive condition of knowing, it is important to note that what licenses this descrip- tion is the idea that the slave always had knowledge (epistēmē, the noun). As we understand this claim, what it means to say that the slave always has knowledge is that the slave always has in him certain truths that can serve as the content of states of knowledge. So this is all Socrates means by saying that the slave is always a knower: he always possesses truths that he can know.

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4.4 Meno’s Paradox We have argued that in the two main parts of the Meno in which Plato espouses innatism—Socrates’ comments to Meno at the end of his examination of the slave and the argument for the immortality of the soul that immediately follows—Plato is best understood as committed to content, not condition, innatism. In this section we consider how our content innatist interpretation understands Socrates’ response to Meno’s Paradox, which, after all, is part of Socrates’ motivation for positing innatism in the first place. The puzzle is as follows (80d5-8):

But Socrates, in what way are you going to search for this thing which you do not at all know what it is? For, what sort of thing among the things you do not know will you set up as the target for your search? And even if you do actually come across it, how will you know that this is the thing which you did not know?

Socrates then tells Meno that he is ‘bringing down an eristic argument’ on them, which Socrates presents in the form of a dilemma (80e2-5):

It is impossible for a person to search either for that which he knows or for that which he does not know. He would not search for what he knows—for he knows it, and no one in that condition is in need of a search—nor for what he does not know—for he does not know what he will search for.

Put schematically, the eristic argument is something like the following:43

[S1] For any X, either one knows X or one does not know X [S2] If one knows X, one cannot search for X [S3] If one does not know X, one cannot search for X [C] For any X, one cannot search for X

Note that S2 does not correspond to anything in Meno’s questions.44 Meno is entirely concerned about the prospects for inquiry into what someone does not know; he asks nothing about how someone who does know can never-

43 This schematization is given by Bronstein 2016, 13 and Fine 2014, 8 and 87. 44 For extensive discussion of the relationship between Meno’s questions and Socrates’ argument, see, among others, Benson 2015, 55-63, Fine 2014, 84-87, Moline 1969, 154 and Weiss 2001, 57-63.

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 30 Bronstein and Schwab theless inquire. This is natural, since a central upshot of the preceding discussion is that he does not know what virtue is, and his concern is whether someone in that position can proceed. Moreover, as we have repeatedly seen, in the ensuing discussion Socrates focuses on the case of someone who does not know something—i.e. Meno’s slave—nevertheless being able to inquire. And, in a passage we will consider in a moment, Socrates states that the central point he takes away from the entire discussion is that we should inquire into that which we do not know (86b6-c2). As we understand the ensuing discussion, then, Socrates’ entire focus is on responding to Meno’s worry about inquiring into what one does not know. Meno presents two problems facing inquiry for someone who does not know what virtue is: first, if you do not know what virtue is, how can you propose a candidate definition to inquire into? Second, if you do not know what virtue is, then, even if you happened to entertain the correct answer to the question ‘What is virtue?’, how could you know that it is the correct answer? On our reading, Socrates’ response to these worries is that inside the person who does not know what virtue is there is the truth about what virtue is. The most explicit statement of his response comes in the following passage (85c6- 8, presented above as (4)):

So, in the man who does not know, about the things which he does not know, there are in him true opinions about the things which he does not know?—It appears so.

Recall that, on the content innatist interpretation, Socrates’ claim here is that inside the person who does not know X, there is the truth about X, and that truth can serve as the content of that person’s opinions (and, ultimately, knowledge). Thus, we take Socrates’ official solution to Meno’s paradox to be that inside the person who does not know what virtue is (the kind of person Meno worried about) there is the truth about what virtue is. That is Socrates’ bare-bones answer to Meno’s worries. Let us now consider these two worries and Socrates’ response to them in more detail. To appreciate Meno’s first worry, we need to note that he does not simply ask how someone who does not know can inquire but how someone who does not know at all (τὸ παράπαν) can inquire.45 The exact interpretation of this qualification has been subject to much dispute among interpreters.46 On the

45 Meno only explicitly states this qualification in the first of his three questions, but we think it is naturally understood as implicit in his other questions. 46 For discussion, see Fine 2014, 86-7.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 31 interpretation with which we agree, Meno uses the qualification to indicate that he is in a cognitive blank about the nature of virtue, where this involves being unable to put forward any candidate for being what virtue is in which he has any confidence.47 It does not mean that Meno is unable to provide any verbal unit that would complete the phrase ‘virtue is …’.48 The point, rather, is that Meno has no confidence whatsoever that any such candidate would be correct and, so, has nothing that could count as a belief or opinion about what virtue is (these latter two cognitive states requiring at least some confidence). The support for understanding Meno’s qualification this way comes from the preceding discussion of the dialogue: Socrates has rejected every candidate he puts forward, rendering Meno in a position akin to someone who has been stung by a torpedo fish. Meno is ‘numb with respect to his soul and mouth, and has nothing that [he] can answer [Socrates]’ (80a8-b2) or, in other words, he no longer even has any opinions (in the condition sense) about what virtue is. Understood in this way, Meno is right to worry that he cannot inquire into what virtue is. Socrates responds to this worry by providing a different case sufficiently similar to Meno’s own in which someone lacking in opinions that could gener- ate plausible candidates for the answer to a question is nonetheless brought to the correct answer through questioning. This is what gets accomplished in the examination of the slave together with the theory of recollection. Socrates invites Meno to identify with the slave and infer that he too can make progress. Just as the slave was ignorant of the answer to the geometrical problem, so too Meno is ignorant of what virtue is; and just as the slave could, under questioning, arrive at the correct answer because it was in him, so too Meno can, under questioning, arrive at the truth about virtue because it is in him.49

47 For a similar interpretation, see Bronstein 2016, 12, Gentzler 1994, 272, McCabe 2009, 237- 8, Nehamas 1985, 4-8 and Scott 2006, 76. For a different view, see Ebrey 2014, 2-4. 48 As Ebrey notes (2014, 6), there are a great many ways to fill in the ellipsis to form a syn- tactically complete unit, and there is no reason to think that Meno would be unable to provide many such examples. 49 One might object that, when Socrates questions Meno about what virtue is, he does so without being familiar with the answer, but when he questions the slave, he is familiar with the answer. There is no doubt that Socrates’ prior familiarity structures his questioning of the slave in ways that help the slave reach the correct answer. Therefore, the objection goes, there is no reason for Meno to think that because the slave arrives at the correct answer, he can too. However, in response, Socrates’ argument seems to be that there is another factor that puts him in a position to be an effective questioner and Meno an effective respondent: the fact that the truth about the nature of virtue is in them. What Socrates emphasizes is that simply by being questioned the slave can move from not knowing at all what the answer is to having a correct opinion about it, and this is

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If this is Socrates’ response to Meno’s worry, he must be thinking that the possession of innate content has some effect on guiding inquiry from the start. That is, he must be thinking that the fact that the truth about the nature of virtue (sticking with that example) is in our soul is supposed to give us a reason to think that candidates we propose are on the right track. Unfortunately, we can see nothing in the text that suggests how to develop this proposal. Socrates seems content to have shown that someone who is ignorant of the answer to a question can, through questioning, be brought to the correct answer because it is already in him. In this way, Socrates’ response to Meno’s first worry may seem disappointing. For Socrates does not seem to give Meno a strong reason to think that a person who does not know at all (and has access only to people who also do not know at all) what virtue is has any reason to think that the candidates he proposes for being what virtue is are on the right track (apart from the vague and implicit suggestion that the presence in such a person of the correct answer will somehow guide him towards more rather than less plausible candidates). However, it is not clear that this is an entirely unsatisfying philosophical picture. The situation Meno is interested in—one in which someone does not know what virtue is and has no access to someone who knows what virtue is—is akin to the first human attempting to figure something out for the first time. It is not obvious that something like trial-and-error is not the correct method to employ in that situation. If so, this means that the primary pressure lays on the second of Meno’s specific worries, to which we now turn.50 Recall how Meno states his second worry (80d7-8): ‘Even if you do actually come across it, how will you know that this is the thing which you did not know?’ He seems here to raise a problem that will face someone who follows some such procedure as that suggested in the previous paragraph and just hap- pens, by sheer luck, to propose the correct answer to the question ‘What is virtue?’51 The problem Meno raises is that, if this person does not know what virtue is, how could he know that the proposed candidate is, in fact, the correct

evidently what is meant to impress Meno. (For further discussion, see Benson 2015, 27 and Bluck 1961, 13-14.) 50 One might argue that condition innatism provides a more satisfactory interpretation of the answer on this score, for cognitive states, unlike uncognized contents, are at least the kind of thing that guide behavior generally. However, we think that the arguments we have made against condition innatism and in favor of content innatism are not out- weighed by this consideration. In addition, some interpreters are pessimistic about the ability of unconscious cognitive states to guide inquiry: see Gentzler 1994, 274. 51 The emphatic καί in ἢ εἰ καὶ ὅτι μάλιστα ἐντύχοις αὐτῷ (80d7) may support understanding Meno in this way.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 33 one? Suppose, for example, that I am looking for my friend’s house but I have no idea where she lives or what her house looks like. If I happened to walk past it through some kind of haphazard wandering, I could not know that it was my friend’s house I was walking past. This is a worry to which Socrates, understood as a content innatist, can give a solid answer. According to the content innatist, the picture is something like the following: in a disembodied state we knew (i.e. were in the cognitive state of knowing) what virtue is. As a result of being in this cognitive state, the truth about the nature of virtue is in our soul in an embodied state. When we then come to entertain the correct answer to the question ‘What is virtue?’ (in whatever way has responded to Meno’s first specific worry) we can know that it is the correct answer by recognizing it as the thing that we once knew (in a disembodied state) to be virtue.52 That is, because the truth we entertain in an embodied state was previously the content of a state of knowledge we possessed in a disembodied state, we can know that it is the truth by recognizing it as the thing we knew to be the case before. This is strictly analogous to the way we might think that ordinary memory works.53 I have some experience, say the experience as of typing at 2 p.m. on Friday, August 31, 2018. Later, I can know that I was typing at 2 p.m. on Friday, August 31, 2018 by remembering the content of the experience I had as of typing at 2 p.m. on Friday, August 31, 2018. Thus, the content innatist interpretation can take Socrates’ talk of recollection quite literally.54 In addition, this interpretation fits well with Socrates’ initial account of recollection, according to which ‘the soul is able to recollect the things that it knew before’ (81c7-9). ‘The things that it knew before’ are the contents of the soul’s previous states of knowledge, and it is these contents that the soul recollects. Some commentators object to the sort of interpretation we have proposed on the grounds that the immediate result of Socrates’ examination of the slave—namely, the slave’s arriving at the correct answer—in combination with the positing of prenatal knowledge, is sufficient to answer Meno’s worries, and that Socrates’ (alleged) subsequent postulation of innate content is therefore superfluous.55 However, as we argued above, Socrates’ claim seems

52 For an interpretation of Aristotle’s critique of innatism in Posterior Analytics 2.19, according to which this claim is the target of Aristotle’s attack, see Bronstein 2017. 53 And to the way Plato in the Philebus thinks ordinary memory works: ‘the preservation of perception’ (34a10-11). 54 For further discussion of the connections among learning, ordinary memory and recollection in the Meno, see Benitez and Ley 2017. 55 Fine 1992, 207-15, Fine 2014, 140 and Irwin 1995, 132-6. Fine (1992, 213-14) argues that the success of the examination of the slave as a response to Meno’s worries depends on

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 34 Bronstein and Schwab to be that the slave’s success is best explained (perhaps can only be explained) by his proposal that the correct answer was in him all along. In this way, the postulation of innate content is the key to Socrates’ response to Meno’s puzzle: Meno should be convinced that he can inquire because he should be convinced that the slave was brought from ignorance to true opinion through questioning, which, he should be convinced, occurred because the correct answer was already in him.

5 Uncognized Cognitive Content?

We have argued that in the Meno Plato is an innatist in the following sense: he thinks that when a person is born her soul is furnished with innate contents that can be the contents of her future states of opinion and knowledge. Our account assumes that a truth can be in the soul without being the content of any of the soul’s cognitive states. That is, there can be in the soul uncognized cognitive contents. We can see two possible ways of explaining what this might mean.56 First, as we noted above, on our reading Plato thinks that just as there exist truths ‘out there’ in the world that are apt to be the contents of certain cognitive states without actually being so, so too he thinks that there exist truths ‘in here’, in the soul, that are apt to be the contents of its cognitive states without actually being so. If this is right, then Plato rejects the view that there is a significant difference between the space ‘out there’ and the space ‘in here’, at least in this respect: both are repositories of cognition-apt items that can exist as such without being cognized. Put differently, in the absence of a developed on- tology, the question of where truths, such as the geometrical truth, are located is very difficult to answer. This means that while the claim that the truth is in the soul without being cognized is mysterious, it is no more mysterious than the claim that the truth is out there in the world. The soul is as natural, and as mysterious, a repository of uncognized true propositions as the world is. This picture of the mind is certainly different from our own, but that on its own is not a reason to deny that it is Plato’s.57 In fact, it anticipates the Theaetetus’

certain facts (such as our tendency to favor true beliefs over false) that, for Plato, are explained by the soul’s prenatal knowledge. 56 See also Fine 2014, 141 for a brief discussion of this issue. Castagnoli 2018, 227 questions what this might mean in his review of Fine’s 2014 book. 57 This picture of the mind might seem similar to what Callard 2014 calls ‘the container view’. According to this view, which Callard argues Plato rejects in the Protagoras, knowledge exists in the mind as in a container in the sense that knowledge is (a) transferable

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 35 image of the mind as an aviary in which pieces of knowledge exist as possible contents of occurrent cognitive states.58 Second, it is possible that the innate contents Plato attributes to the soul are the contents of a cognitive state after all. For reasons we have explained, this cognitive state must be such that it itself is neither the state of opinion nor the state of knowledge but its contents can be the contents of states of opinion and knowledge. One cognitive state that possesses both of these features is, arguably, memory (if we understand memory in something like the way Plato understands it in the Philebus and Aristotle understands it in De Memoria as a kind of record of the contents of past acts of cognition). On this reading, the geometrical truth, and whatever other innate truths Plato attributes to the soul, are the contents of innate states of memory. These contents are actively remembered (recollected) in at least two stages: first, when they become the contents of states of opinion; second, when they become the contents of states of knowledge. This interpretation, then, sees a tight fit between Plato’s innatist theory and his account of recollection. Learning is recollection because it

from one person to another and (b) alienable from its possessor (2014, 74). However, the resemblance between this view and the picture of the mind as a repository of uncognized cognitive contents is merely verbal. For, as Callard’s reference to the Meno makes clear (76), the view she argues Plato rejects is that recollected knowledge in the condition sense exists in the mind as in a container. However, Plato can consistently reject this view and maintain (as we think he does in the Meno) that the mind is a repository of unrecollected knowledge in the content sense. Indeed, he can even consistently think that the mind is a repository of unrecollected knowledge in the content sense and that such knowledge is neither transferable from one person to another nor alienable from its possessor. In other words, he can consistently maintain that the mind is a repository of uncognized cognitive contents and reject the view that such contents exist in the mind as in a container in Callard’s sense. (However, if Plato did think this, it would be for reasons different from those Callard argues motivate his rejection of the container view for recollected knowledge in the condition sense.) 58 There are, however, two salient differences between the two dialogues. First, in the Theaetetus Plato ultimately rejects the aviary model of the mind on the grounds that it is unable to account for false judgment. Second, unlike in the Meno, in the Theaetetus’ aviary account, if x exists in S’s mind as a piece of knowledge (in the content sense), then S is in the condition of knowing x (or, in the language of the Theaetetus, merely ‘possessing’, as distinct from ‘having’, knowledge in the content sense is sufficient for being in the condition of knowing—call this ‘the sufficiency thesis’). We think, however, that the two dialogues may be more in agreement than it first appears. For it might be that Plato rejects the aviary model at least partly because of the sufficiency thesis, a thesis he (on our view) rejects in the Meno. If this is right, it suggests that the target of Plato’s attack is at least in part the sufficiency thesis and perhaps not the aviary model as such, which is in principle separable from it.

Phronesis (2019) 1-39 | doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 36 Bronstein and Schwab consists in taking up in conscious states of cognition certain truths that serve as the contents of our latent and innate states of memory. This reading attributes to Plato a form of condition innatism, but one that is different from the standard view. For the soul is born in the condition not of knowing (or opining) but of remembering, just insofar as it is born with latent innate states of memory. Plato, then, can consistently maintain that the slave does not know the geometrical truth and has knowledge of it in him, because by ‘knowledge’ he means the content of a latent innate state of memory, the possession of which is not sufficient for being in the condition of knowing. In addition, because the contents of our latent innate states of memory are possible contents of the states of opinion and knowledge, Plato can consistently maintain that both mere opinion and knowledge (in the content sense) exist in us innately. We take this interpretation to be a plausible way of developing a suggestion made by the anonymous commentator on the Theaetetus.59 Commenting on 148d4-7, where Socrates encourages Theaetetus to improve on his initial attempts to say what knowledge is, the commentator says:

For the natural concepts are in need of articulation. Before this, people apprehend things insofar as they have traces of them; but they do not apprehend them clearly. This is why Theaetetus was not in a position to give an adequate account of knowledge, but did not find it easy to listen to anyone else properly either, as Socrates encouraged him to do.60

The commentator states that we have innate ‘natural concepts’ (φυσικαὶ ἔννοιαι) that are ‘traces’ (ἴχνη) of the objects of knowledge (τοῖς πράγμασι), namely Forms.61 These ‘natural concepts’ seem to be the contents of innate memory states, and they are ‘traces’ of the objects of knowledge because they

59 Anonymi Commentarium in Platonis Theaetetum. Greek edition with Italian translation and commentary in Bastianini and Sedley 1995. 60 In Theaet. coll. 46.43-47.7. Translation from Boys-Stones [BS] 2018, 385 (= text 13D). Gonzalez 2007, 281-2 discusses the same passage in connection with the Meno but interprets it differently. 61 Just a few lines below our passage, the commentator discusses Socrates’ art of midwifery, which the commentator connects to the theory of recollection, and states that ‘when he [i.e. Socrates] was teaching, he prepared his students to talk about things themselves, un- folding and articulating their natural concepts.’ (col. 47.37-48) As Boys-Stones has pointed out to us, the expression ‘things themselves’ (τῶν π[ραγ]μάτων … αὐτῶν) seems to correspond to the expression ‘beings’ (τὰ ὄντα) at 48.3-4, which suggests that they are Forms.

doi:10.1163/15685284-12341969 | Phronesis (2019) 1-39 Is Plato an Innatist in the Meno? 37 are produced by the disembodied soul’s previous acts of knowing.62 That is, these concepts and traces, stored in innate memory states, are cognitive contents that come to be present in the disembodied soul as a result of its acts of knowing. These contents then get taken up by the embodied soul in acts of cognition during the process of recollection. In this way, the innate concepts and traces—the contents of our innate memory states—serve as the persisting entities linking the embodied soul’s present cognition to the disembodied soul’s past acts of knowing. Now one difference between this view and Plato’s view in the Meno is that for the anonymous commentator the contents of our innate memory states are concepts, not propositions, whereas for Plato they are ‘truths’, which, arguably, have propositional form. Despite this difference, we can see in the anonymous commentator a development of the view we have argued we find in the Meno. It is not clear to us which of these two ways of developing Plato’s innatist theory is the most promising. We do hope to have shown, however, that Plato has a philosophically interesting theory, one that is importantly different from the view usually attributed to him.63

References

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62 See Boys-Stones 2018, 371-2. (Note, however, that scholars are divided over the exact meaning for Middle Platonists of the phrase ‘natural concepts’, which is Stoic in origin: see Boys-Stones 2018, 378 with references.) Boys-Stones 2018, 372 points out that we find a similar view in Alcinous Didaskalikos 4.6 (= 13A BS). Boys-Stones also argues that for Alcinous and the anonymous commentator, recollection, insofar as it consists in taking up the contents of our innate memory states, does not ‘lead us back to a direct experience of the forms’ (2018, 372). For (as is hinted at in the anonymous commentary at col. 53.3-8 = 13E BS, and stated more explicitly by Alcinous in Didaskalikos 4.6) it is only the disembodied soul that can cognize Forms directly: the embodied soul can cognize Forms only indirectly, by taking up the contents that are produced by the soul’s previous acts of knowing and that are stored in its innate memory states. (Some commentators dispute these claims: see Boys-Stones 2018, 379, with references.) Other Platonists hold a different view according to which recollection can lead us back to direct cognition of Forms; see Boys-Stones 2018, 374-5. 63 For helpful comments and discussion, we would like to thank George Boys-Stones, Gail Fine, Joshua Mendelsohn, Katja Vogt and audiences in Adelaide, Chicago and London.

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