Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 214-238.

Plato articulates a deep perplexity about inquiry in ?Meno's Paradox??the claim that one can inquire neither into what one knows, nor into what one does not know. Although some commentators have wrestled with the paradox itself, many suppose that the paradox of inquiry is special to Plato, arising from peculiarities of the Socratic elenchus or of Platonic epistemology. But there is nothing peculiarly Platonic in this puzzle. For it arises, too, in classical Indian philosophical discussions, where it is formulated with (...) great clarity, and analysed in a way that casts it in a new light. We present three treatments of the puzzle in Indian philosophy, as a way of refining and sharpening our understanding of the paradox, before turning to the most radical of the Indian philosophers to tackle it. The Indian philosophers who are optimistic that the paradox can be resolved appeal to the existence of prior beliefs, and to the resources embedded in language to explain how we can investigate, and so move from ignorance to knowledge. Highlighting this structural feature of inquiry, however, allows the pessimist philosopher to demonstrate that the paradox stands. The incoherence of inquiry is rooted in the very idea of aiming our desires at the unknown. Asking questions and giving answers rests on referential intentions targeting objects in a region of epistemic darkness, and so our ?inquiry sceptic? also finds structurally similar forms of incoherence in the pragmatics of interrogative discourse. (shrink)

Plato gives us two model philosophical figures, apparently in contrast with each other—one is the otherworldly philosopher who sees truth and reality outside the cave and has the knowledge to rule authoritatively within it; the other is the demotic figure of Socrates, who insists that he does not know but only asks questions. I consider Plato’s contrasting idioms of seeing and asking or talking, and argue that the rich account of perception that is represented in the Republic requires both idioms, (...) and both models, to explain the development of epistemic virtue. Furthermore, the conditions he places on the giving and taking of reasons show how Plato takes intellectual virtue to be inseparable from moral virtue. That integrated picture of virtue may—however disposed we may be towards the role of virtue in either ethics or epistemology—have something to say to us about how philosophy might best be carried on. (shrink)

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. (shrink)