/lit/ - Literature

>>15496172
Nothing, this is fiction by Plato to try to indirectly affirm forms. The use of Socrates as a character simply makes the explanation of an argument for forms more convoluted.

>>15496172
how did he know if no one taught him?

>>15496172
E

Reincarnation my dudes

>>15496296
He could have taught himself. It's not that hard to add four and four together. That's the kind of thing you can teach yourself.

>>15496172
>common sense
>>15496573
you are just not seeing the problem Plato is getting at, how can you get from not knowing to knowing? Let's put it in this way, if your past experience is what makes your judgement in the here and now experience, how can you ever know anything new?

>>15496172
I think you're failing to interpret it. The basic idea is that if a slave, who is inferior in every way to a citizen, is able to learn mathematics faster and is better at solving problems, there must a reason that this is so. Modern science says genetics. Socrates argues that the slave must have been something like a nobleman in a past life. The connection isn't hard to see. He got the basic idea that the origin is something before and outside the slave, and the idea that a smart slave was the result of genetics would be hard to believe at that time since they didn't know about mutations.

>>15496594
You gain more experience and analyze them? Duh

>>15496594
it's basic ass maths you fool not rocket science
huur duur I got two rocks
now I got two more rocks
now I got four rocks
stupid ass Greek boomers thinking too highly of themselves for stacking rocks up so any dead shit who can do a dead shit action such as stack rocks must be a genius right

>>15496626
So Darwinian eugenics refutes Plato here?

>>15496721
no, in Phaedro he just says it's because the soul is immortal and knows everything, yet when you are born you forget and start progressively remembering

>>15496172
>he's ignorant of geometry
lmao'ing at the philistines.

>>15496594
How do you go from not knowing to knowing that 1+1=2 ?
It's hard to say, part of the brain is responsible for simple logic like that, I guess someone who is a neuroscientist could explain how it really works.
One time I remember I had a fever and took some meds, what really surprised me is I remember looking at some article or something and I just could not comprehend the number like 578, I could see the the symbols, I knew its a number but I couldn't recall the meaning 5 or 7 or 8.

>>15496172
The original question Socrates posed was "Can Virtue be taught?". He went on a tangent about inborn knowledge to show that it can not be taught since knowledge comes from within. The slave already knew geometry. His ignorance wasn't because he lacked the knowledge, but because he didn't realize he already knew. Therefore he wasn't learning he was remembering.

>>15496172
It was that knowledge was inherent to things. He particularly used this to prove the soul and its reincarnations but if you take a cat to imply animals exist then it's not a bad structure

>>15496172

>>15496626
>The basic idea is that if a slave, who is inferior in every way to a citizen
That's the first thing Plato emphasises heavily. It's not only a slave, it's also a child: he is a παις in two ways. A παις (you most probably know the genitive παιδος/paidos - better) is a child but also a slave, someone who isn't able to fend for himself. Therefore, he needs others who reign over him instead of himself. And he can't reign over himself, because he lacks the proper reasonabilty to do so.

>Adding four and four would be common sense that even a slave could do.
They're not discussing a problem as easy as that. Instead they're discussing a problem which isn't solvable arithmetically at the time, it's only solvable geometrically. Plato even hints that jokingly since he tells the slave: if you can't tell me the very number, just point on the length.
This problem is: There's a square with the side length of 2. We want to construct another square double the size of this square. What's the side length of the second square?
The answer to this is: the square root of 2.
But noone could give that answer at the time. Sqrt(2) is an irrational number - that means, it can't be represented as a fraction of two integers. The concept of irrational numbers was unknown, then. Nevertheless, the slave could point at that length since the diagonal of the square with a side length of 2 is sqrt(2) long.

What's interesting about this are two things which kind of contradict each other. On the one hand, Plato seems to prove the immortality of the soul which is a Pythagorean concept. On the other hand, he attacks the very Pythagorean concept said immortality is based on, namely the concept "everything is number" which includes the indivisiblity (and therefore indistructibility) of certain basic things.
Although the concept of irrational numbers wasn't known at that time, you could prove there were numbers which couldn't be represented as a fraction of two integers. For example, the very symbol of the Pythagoreans (a Pentagram) included a certain proportion which was one of them.

>>15496754
>muh brain

>>15496594
intuition. how does a bird know how to make a nest?

>>15497632
>intuition
you are talking about the same but labeling it in a different manner

>>15496754
Your brain has innately the ability to recognize quantities of 1/2/3/many independent of numeracy. Therefore you never go from nothing. The understanding of quantity is innate to the structure of your brain, as well as other highly intelligent animals(monkeys for example, can understand quantity in tests, and will get absolutely irate if given less than another or less than is expected).

There's a basis that you can derive numeracy from built into you.

>>15496705
Absolutely retarded take.

It's not literally about elementary math, it's questioning how knowledge can be gained at all. There exist plenty of frameworks for how to teach someone, but it's still quite unclear as to how an individual can rationalize knowledge even with little to no prior experience.

If you think anyone has truly sussed out the root of epistemology you're either fucking deluded or simply being dense for the sake of it.

>>15497878
The problem they're talking about was far from trivial at the time. See >>15496963
>>15496705
Just doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't have the slightest clue about hermeneutics.

It proves inborn knowledge

>>15498026
The problem is most of the knowledge wasn't inborn. Socrates led him along the way and he basically just stood and agreed.