2.4 Engagement and Learning

In the Socratic Dialogue, ^[2.38] The Meno, Plato seeks to explore the notion of learning through the dialogue of Socrates with the fifth century Athenian sophist Meno. The term "sophist", used by Plato, has the following synonyms in the thesaurus: doctrinaire, obfuscator, obscurantist, nit-picker, scholar, theoretician. One could charitably assume that Plato's intention was the term scholar, but we should not be alien to the notion that he was well aware of the other meanings of the term. In the dialogue:

Socrates then argues that all so-called learning is in fact the recovery of pre-existent knowledge in the soul, and if virtue is teachable it must be knowledge.

Although this argument relates to the ambiguous concept of virtue, Socrates also goes on to explore knowledge of a more concrete nature. In the presence of Meno, he asks a slave boy to construct two squares, with the second square having twice the area of the first. At the beginning the boy seems to be confident of his knowledge of geometric construction. However, as the dialogue goes on he becomes less certain and in the end quite confused by the concept of doubling the area of the square.

Socrates: Observe, Meno, the stage he has reached on the path of recollection. At the beginning he did not know the side of the square of eight feet. Nor indeed does he know it now, but then he thought he knew it and answered boldly, as was appropriate he...