Abstract
Meno’s paradox raises serious challenges against most fundamental epistemological quest regarding the possibility of inquiry and discovery. In his response, Socrates proposes the theory of anamnesis and his ingenious distinction between doxa and episteme. But, he fails in his attempt to solve the paradox and some recent responses have also not succeeded in settling it, satisfactorily. We shall argue that epistemological issues approached in a Darwinian spirit offer a therapeutic resolution without rejecting the basic tenets of Plato’s epistemology. Drawing from Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge, Darwinism is regarded as a metaphysical research program, rather than using it to collapse Plato’s metaphysics into biology.
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Notes
Weimer attempts to reinvent Platonic doctrine in psycholinguistics and defends it by arguing that it has not lost its scientific relevance in the present context. He advocates that ‘anamnesis’ needs to be retained by Platonists, as a mechanism accounting for the "ideas," capacities of prior lives—a mechanism provided by the theory of evolution (Weimer 1973: 15).
Nickles extends the possibility of addressing and resolving Meno’s paradox by the evolutionary mechanisms of trial-and-error and blind variation and selective retention. He claims all knowledge can be treated as a form of design and, conversely, that all adaptive design can be construed as a form of knowledge” (Nickles 2003: 56).
Popper, while explicating the logic of social sciences, outlines twenty-seven theses for explaining and analyzing the epistemological issues related to rational justification and criticism of theories, scientific knowledge, sociology of knowledge, role, and status of ignorance, errors and mistakes in an epistemic endeavor. While appreciating Socratic discovery that we know nothing, he mentions that it is still a half discovery, “although we cannot justify our theories rationally and cannot even prove that they are probable, we can criticize them rationally. And we can often distinguish better from worse theories.” (Popper 1976: 104).
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Saraswat, L., Sirola, V.S. Popper’s Evolutionary Therapy to Meno’s Paradox. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 36, 151–166 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-018-0162-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-018-0162-x