Rationalism: Empiricism and Knowledge Essay

First published Thu Aug 19, 2004 satisfying revision Thu Mar 21, 2013 The repugn amongst clear-sightedism and empiricism bear upons the extent to which we argon dependent upon scent out m new(prenominal) in our effort to wee manageledge. Rationalists s cig atomic total 18tte that at that channelise argon signifi whoremongert delegacys in which our excogitations and association be kick upstairsed independently of good brain sustain. Empiricists claim that sense d ingest is the last stock of totally our theorys and intimacy. Rationalists in commonplace expatiate their view in both focal points.First, they consider that t here(predicate) argon cases where the content of our sentiments or companionship outstrips the training that sense engender digest furnish. Second, they construct names of how understanding in whatso invariably mixed bag or a nonher(prenominal) results that supernumerary in functionation astir(predicate) the natura lism. Empiricists be complementary stresss of persuasion. First, they develop cyphers of how assure provides the certifyation that positivists cite, insofar as we start it in the setoff place. (Empiricists get out at multiplication opt for skepticism as an alternating(a) to freethinking if experience bottom of the inning non provide the concepts or association the positivists cite, hence we dont harbour them.)Second, empiricists attack the positivists rates of how reason is a source of concepts or friendship. 1. Introduction The dispute surrounded by rationalism and empiricism points place within epistemology, the branch of philosophy grantn to studying the personality, sources and limits of noesis. The defining questions of epistemology include the following. 1. What is the disposition of mesmerismal hit the hayledge, get alongledge that a situation proposition close the creative twistivity is consecutive? To pick out a proposition, we essenti al believe it and it must be adjust, but approximatelything to a greater extent is indispensable, to a greater extent or less(a)thing that distinguishes getledge from a lucky guess.Lets call this additional element guaranty. A good deal of philosophical work has been invested in trying to plant the char pieceer of fleckment. 2. How endure we gather association? We burn down var. true tones scarcely by making lucky guesses. How to move in warranted pictures is less clear. to a greater extentover, to hit the sack the solid ground, we must echo almost it, and it is unclear how we gain the concepts we design in thought or what assurance, if every, we obligate that the behaviors in which we disunite up the mankind beings using our concepts correspond to divisions that factually exist. 3.What atomic number 18 the limits of our acquaintance? round flavors of the world whitethorn be within the limits of our thought but beyond the limits of our intimacy co nfront with competing descriptions of them, we butt joint non be intimate which description is true. both(prenominal) aspects of the world whitethorn evening be beyond the limits of our thought, so that we sensnot course of action intelligible descriptions of them, let simply know that a crabbed description is true. The variance betwixt rationalists and empiricists mainly concerns the turn question, calculateing the sources of our concepts and friendship.In around instances, their resistment on this topic leads them to take a leak impertinent chemical reactions to the another(prenominal) questions as brawny. They may disagree over the character of warrant or intimately the limits of our thought and acquaintance. Our focus here will be on the competing rationalist and empiricist responses to the second question. 1. 1 rationalism To be a rationalist is to adopt at to the lowest degree one of three claims. The comprehension/ implication dissertation con cerns how we become warranted in believing propositions in a special(a) contentedness ara.The suspiciousness/ synthetic thinking dissertation Some propositions in a special(a) consequence atomic number 18a, S, ar knowable by us by erudition alone serene others ar knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions. perception is a form of rational insight. Intellectually covetous a proposition, we just see it to be true in such(prenominal)(prenominal) a way as to form a true, warranted thought in it. (As discussed in percentage 2 below, the temperament of this quick seeing inescapably explanation. ) Deduction is a process in which we derive completions from intuited premises done mediocre phone lines, ones in which the conclusion must be true if the premises ar true.We intuit, for example, that the yield three is prime and that it is greater than twain. We thusly deduce from this association that there is a prime number greater than cardinal. comprehen sion and price reduction thus provide us with association a priori, which is to submit fellowship gained independently of sense experience. We understructure provide varied versions of the distrust/Deduction dissertation by substituting different subject relegates for the variable S. Some rationalists make for maths to be knowable by apprehension and deduction. Some place good truths in this category.Some include meta sensible claims, such as that paragon exists, we shed free will, and our mind and proboscis atomic number 18 plain substances. The often propositions rationalists include within the divagate of comprehension and deduction, and the more disputable the truth of those propositions or the claims to know them, the more radical their rationalism. Rationalists in any case vary the effectualness of their view by adjusting their understanding of warrant. Some take warranted beliefs to be beyond even the sligh psychometric test doubt and claim that i ntuition and deduction provide beliefs of this high epistemic status.Others encounter warrant more conservatively, say as belief beyond a reasonable doubt, and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of that caliber. Still another dimension of rationalism depends on how its proponents understand the connection mingled with intuition, on the one overstep, and truth, on the other. Some take intuition to be infallible, claiming that some(prenominal) we intuit must be true. Others get out for the opening move of false intuited propositions. The second thesis associated with rationalism is the ignorant intimacy thesis.The internal noesis thesis We shit acquaintance of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational reputation. Like the hunch/Deduction thesis, the nescient(p) experience thesis asserts the existence of familiarity gained a priori, independently of experience. The difference mingled with them rests in the accompanying unde rstanding of how this a priori fellowship is gained. The Intuition/Deduction thesis cites intuition and subsequent deductive cerebrate. The intrinsic Knowledge thesis offers our rational nature. Our innate knowledge is not learned through both sense experience or intuition and deduction.It is just part of our nature. Experiences may foundation a process by which we bring this knowledge to consciousness, but the experiences do not provide us with the knowledge itself. It has in some way been with us all along. According to some rationalists, we gained the knowledge in an earlier existence. According to others, perfection provided us with it at creation. Still others say it is part of our nature through congenital selection. We get different versions of the inhering Knowledge thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable S.in one case again, the more subjects included within the range of the thesis or the more polemical the claim to grant knowledge in them, the more radical the form of rationalism. Stronger and weaker understandings of warrant yield stronger and weaker versions of the thesis as well. The deuce-ace all all important(predicate)(predicate) thesis of rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis. The Innate Concept dissertation We throw some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. According to the Innate Concept thesis, some of our concepts are not gained from experience.They are part of our rational nature in such a way that, eon sense experiences may trigger a process by which they are brought to consciousness, experience does not provide the concepts or determine the learning they bar. Some claim that the Innate Concept thesis is entailed by the Innate Knowledge dissertation a particular instance of knowledge goat yet be innate if the concepts that are contained in the known proposition are also innate. This is Lockes position (1690, word of honor I, Chapter IV, Section 1, p. 91). Others, such as Carruthers, compete against this connection (1992, pp. 5354).The content and strong suit of the Innate Concept thesis varies with the concepts claimed to be innate. The more a concept seems take away from experience and the mental mental processs we privy perform on experience the more plausibly it may be claimed to be innate. Since we do not experience stainless trigons but do experience pains, our concept of the former is a more hopeful bring the bouncedidate for being innate than our concept of the latter(prenominal). The Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis, and the Innate Concept thesis are essential to rationalism to be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of them.Two other most connectd theses are generally adopted by rationalists, although one drive out veritablely be a rationalist without adopting either of them. The first is that experience send wordnot provide what we gain from reason. The Indispensabi lity of fence Thesis The knowledge we gain in subject area, S, by intuition and deduction, as well as the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to us, could not devour been gained by us through sense experience. The second is that reason is original to experience as a source of knowledge.The Superiority of think Thesis The knowledge we gain in subject area S by intuition and deduction or contract innately is superior to any knowledge gained by sense experience. How reason is superior needs explanation, and rationalists bewilder offered different accounts. unrivalled view, generally associated with Descartes (1628, Rules II and III, pp. 14), is that what we know a priori is certain, beyond even the slightest doubt, turn what we believe, or even know, on the buns of sense experience is at least somewhat uncertain. Another view, generally associated with Plato.(Republic 479e-484c), locates the superiority of a priori knowledge in the targets known. What we kno w by reason alone, a Platonic form, say, is superior in an important metaphysical way, e. g. unchanging, eternal, perfect, a higher degree of being, to what we are aware of through sense experience. intimately forms of rationalism exact notable commitments to other philosophical positions. One is a commitment to the denial of disbelief for at least some area of knowledge. If we claim to know some truths by intuition or deduction or to have some innate knowledge, we obviously recall scepticism with regard to those truths.Rationalism in the form of the Intuition/Deduction thesis is also committed to epistemic foundationalism, the view that we know some truths without basing our belief in them on any others and that we then use this foundational knowledge to know more truths. 1. 2 sensualism Empiricists endorse the following claim for some subject area. The sensualism Thesis We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience. Empiricism astir(predicate) a particular subject rejects the tally version of the Intuition/Deduction thesis and Innate Knowledge thesis. in so far as we have knowledge in the subject, our knowledge is a posteriori, dependent upon sense experience. Empiricists also deny the implication of the corresponding Innate Concept thesis that we have innate ideas in the subject area. sand experience is our lone(prenominal) source of ideas. They reject the corresponding version of the Superiority of Reason thesis. Since reason alone does not give us any knowledge, it certainly does not give us superior knowledge. Empiricists generally reject the Indispensability of Reason thesis, though they need not.The Empiricism thesis does not entail that we have trial-and-error knowledge. It entails that knowledge lav only be gained, if at all, by experience. Empiricists may assert, as some do for some subjects, that the rationalists are adapt to claim that experience bunsnot give us knowledge. The conclusio n they draw from this rationalist lesson is that we do not know at all. I have stated the basic claims of rationalism and empiricism so that each is singingal to a particular subject area. Rationalism and empiricism, so relativized, need not conflict.We can be rationalists in maths or a particular area of math and empiricists in all or some of the physical sciences. Rationalism and empiricism only conflict when formulated to share the identical subject. Then the logical lean, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, is joined. The fact that philosophers can be both rationalists and empiricists has implications for the variety schemes practically employed in the history of philosophy, particularly the one traditionally employ to appoint the Early Modern Period of the 17th and eighteenth centuries leading up to Kant.It is banal practice to group the major philosophers of this effect as either rationalists or empiricists and to refer that those under one heading voice a vulgar a genda in opposition to those under the other. Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are the Continental Rationalists in opposition to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, the British Empiricists. We should adopt such general classification schemes with caution. The views of the individual philosophers are more shrewd and complex than the simple-minded classification suggests. (See Loeb (1981) and Kenny (1986) for important discussions of this point.)Locke rejects rationalism in the form of any version of the Innate Knowledge or Innate Concept theses, but he nonetheless adopts the Intuition/Deduction thesis with regard to our knowledge of Gods existence. Descartes and Locke have remarkably similar views on the nature of our ideas, even though Descartes takes umpteen to be innate, while Locke ties them all to experience. The rationalist/empiricist classification also encourages us to carry the philosophers on each side of the divide to have common research programs in areas beyond epistemology .Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are mistakenly seen as applying a reason-centered epistemology to a common metaphysical agenda, with each trying to cleanse on the efforts of the one before, while Locke, Berkeley and Hume are mistakenly seen as gradually rejecting those metaphysical claims, with each consciously trying to improve on the efforts of his predecessors. It is also important to pock that the Rationalist/Empiricist distinction is not sodding(a) of the possible sources of knowledge.One might claim, for example, that we can gain knowledge in a particular area by a form of Divine revelation or insight that is a product of uncomplete reason nor sense experience. In short, when used carelessly, the labels rationalist and empiricist, as well as the slogan that is the title of this essay, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, can retard quite than advance our understanding. no.etheless, an important fence in correctly renderd as Rationalism vs. Empiricism is joined whenevert he claims for each view are formulated to cover the homogeneous subject. What is perhaps the most provoke form of the consider occurs when we take the relevant subject to be truths about the outdoor(a) world, the world beyond our own minds. A full-fledged rationalist with regard to our knowledge of the outdoor(a) world holds that some extraneous world truths can and must be known a priori, that some of the ideas required for that knowledge are and must be innate, and that this knowledge is superior to any that experience could ever provide.The full-fledged empiricist about our knowledge of the away world replies that, when it comes to the nature of the world beyond our own minds, experience is our bushel source of information. Reason might inform us of the relations among our ideas, but those ideas themselves can only be gained, and any truths about the outer reality they represent can only be known, on the buttocks of sense experience. This debate concerning our knowledge of the remote world will generally be our main focus in what follows.Historically, the rationalist/empiricist dispute in epistemology has extended into the area of metaphysics, where philosophers are concerned with the basic nature of reality, including the existence of God and such aspects of our nature as freewill and the relation between the mind and body. Major rationalists (e. g. , Descartes 1641) have presented metaphysical theories, which they have claimed to know by reason alone.Major empiricists (e. g. Hume 173940) have rejected the theories as either speculation, beyond what we can learn from experience, or nonsensical attempts to describe aspects of the world beyond the concepts experience can provide. The debate raises the issue of metaphysics as an area of knowledge. Kant puts the ride assumption clearly The very concept of metaphysics ensures that the sources of metaphysics cant be empirical.If something could be known through the senses, that would automatically ma noeuver that it doesnt belong to metaphysics thats an case of the moment of the word metaphysics. Its basic principles can never be taken from experience, nor can its basic concepts for it is not to be physical but metaphysical knowledge, so it must be beyond experience. 1783, Preamble, I, p. 7 The possibility then of metaphysics so understood, as an area of human knowledge, hinges on how we resolve the rationalist/empiricist debate. The debate also extends into ethics.Some chaste objectivists (e. g. , Ross 1930) take us to know some thorough butt clean-living truths by intuition, while some moral skeptics, who reject such knowledge, (e. g. , Mackie 1977) discern the appeal to a efficacy of moral intuition utterly implausible. More recently, the rationalist/empiricist debate has extended to discussions (e. g. , Bealer 1999, and horse parsley & Weinberg 2007) of the very nature of philosophical question to what extent are philosophical questions to be answered by appeals to reason or experience?2. The Intuition/Deduction Thesis The Intuition/Deduction thesis claims that we can know some propositions by intuition and liquid more by deduction. Many empiricists (e. g. , Hume 1748) have been willing to accept the thesis so long as it is restricted to propositions entirely about the relations among our own concepts. We can, they agree, know by intuition that our concept of God includes our concept of omniscience. Just by examining the concepts, we can intellectually grasp that the one includes the other.The debate between rationalists and empiricists is joined when the former assert, and the latter deny, the Intuition/Deduction Thesis with regard to propositions that contain substantive information about the outer world. Rationalists, such as Descartes, have claimed that we can know by intuition and deduction that God exists and created the world, that our mind and body are distinct substances, and that the angles of a trigon equal both right angles, where all of these claims are truths about an external reality independent of our thought.Such substantive versions of the Intuition/Deduction thesis are our concern in this section. One defense of the Intuition/Deduction thesis assumes that we know some substantive external world truths, adds an analytic thinking of what knowledge requires, and concludes that our knowledge must ensue from intuition and deduction. Descartes claims that knowledge requires proof and that foregone conclusion about the external world is beyond what empirical evidence can provide. We can never be sure our afferent impressions are not part of a dream or a massive, heller orchestrated, deception.Only intuition and deduction can provide the certainty needed for knowledge, and, wedded that we have some substantive knowledge of the external world, the Intuition/Deduction thesis is true. As Descartes tells us, all knowledge is certain and evident cognition (1628, Rule II, p. 1) and when we analyze all the actions of the intellect by convey of which we are able to arrive at a knowledge of things with no reverence of being mistaken, we recognize only two intuition and deduction (1628, Rule III, p. 3).This line of argument is one of the least make in the rationalist arsenal. First, the assumption that knowledge requires certainty comes at a effectual cost, as it rules out so much of what we commonly take ourselves to know. Second, as many another(prenominal) contemporary rationalists accept, intuition is not eternally a source of certain knowledge. The possibility of a deceiver gives us a reason to doubt our intuitions as well as our empirical beliefs. For all we know, a deceiver might cause us to intuit false propositions, just as one might cause us to have perceptions of non quick objects.Descartess absolute way of meeting this challenge in the Meditations is to argue that we can know with certainty that no such deceiver interferes with our intuitions and deductions. They are infallible, as God guarantees their truth. The problem, known as the Cartesian Circle, is that Descartess account of how we gain this knowledge begs the question, by attempting to deduce the conclusion that all our intuitions are true from intuited premises. Moreover, his account does not touch a rest problem that he himself notes (1628, Rule VII, p.7)Deductions of any appreciable length rely on our fallible memory. A more plausible argument for the Intuition/Deduction thesis again assumes that we know some particular, external world truths, and then appeals to the nature of what we know, quite an than to the nature of knowledge itself, to argue that our knowledge must result from intuition and deduction. Leibniz (1704) tells us the following. The senses, although they are necessary for all our actual knowledge, are not sufficient to give us the whole of it, since the senses never give anything but instances, that is to say particular or individual truths. no. all the instan ces which hold up a general truth, provided many they may be, are not sufficient to establish the universal necessity of this same truth, for it does not follow that what happened before will happen in the same way again. From which it come outs that necessary truths, such as we find in pure mathematics, and particularly in arithmetic and geometry, must have principles whose proof does not depend on instances, nor consequently on the testimony of the senses, although without the senses it would never have occurred to us to think of them (1704, Preface, pp.150151)Leibniz goes on to describe our mathematical knowledge as innate, and his argument may be directed to nurse the Innate Knowledge Thesis rather than the Intuition/Deduction Thesis. For our purposes here, we can relate it to the latter, however We have substantive knowledge about the external world in mathematics, and what we know in that area, we know to be necessarily true. Experience cannot warrant beliefs about what is necessarily the case. Hence, experience cannot be the source of our knowledge. The best explanation of our knowledge is that we gain it by intuition and deduction.Leibniz mentions logic, metaphysics and morals as other areas in which our knowledge also outstrips what experience can provide. Judgments in logic and metaphysics involve forms of necessity beyond what experience can support. Judgments in morals involve a form of obligation or value that lies beyond experience, which only informs us about what is the case rather than about what ought to be. The strength of this argument varies with its examples of purported knowledge. Insofar as we focus on controversial claims in metaphysics, e. g.that God exists, that our mind is a distinct substance from our body, the initial premise that we know the claims is less than compelling.Taken with regard to other areas, however, the argument clearly has legs. We know a great deal of mathematics, and what we know, we know to be necessari ly true. None of our experiences warrants a belief in such necessity, and we do not seem to base our knowledge on any experiences. The warrant that provides us with knowledge arises from an intellectual grasp of the propositions which is clearly part of our learning.Similarly, we seem to have such moral knowledge as that, all other things being equal, it is wrong to break a promise and that pleasure is intrinsically good. No empirical lesson about how things are can warrant such knowledge of how they ought to be. This argument for the Intuition/Deduction Thesis raises additional questions which rationalists must answer. Insofar as they nurture that our knowledge of necessary truths in mathematics or elsewhere by intuition and deduction is substantive knowledge of the external world, they owe us an account of this form of necessity.Many empiricists stand ready to argue that necessity resides in the way we let loose about things, not in the things we pour forth about (Quine 1966, p . 174). Similarly, if rationalists claim that our knowledge in morals is knowledge of an objective form of obligation, they owe us an account of how objective values are part of a world of apparently valueless facts. possibly most of all, rationalist defenders of the Intuition/Deduction thesis owe us an account of what intuition is and how it provides warranted true beliefs about the external world. What is it to intuit a proposition and how does that act of intuition support a warranted belief?Their argument presents intuition and deduction as an explanation of assumed knowledge that cantthey saybe explained by experience, but such an explanation by intuition and deduction requires that we have a clear understanding of intuition and how it supports warranted beliefs. figurative characterizations of intuition as intellectual grasping or seeing are not enough, and if intuition is some form of intellectual grasping, it appears that all that is grasped is relations among our concepts , rather than facts about the external world.Moreover, any intellectual faculty, whether it be sense perception or intuition, provides us with warranted beliefs only if it is generally reliable. The reliableness of sense perception stems from the causal connection between how external objects are and how we experience them. What accounts for the reliability of our intuitions regarding the external world? Is our intuition of a particular true proposition the exit of some causal interaction between ourselves and some aspect of the world? What aspect?What is the nature of this causal interaction? That the number three is prime does not appear to cause anything, let alone our intuition that it is prime. These issues are do all the more pressing by the classic empiricist response to the argument. The reply is generally credited to Hume and begins with a division of all true propositions into two categories. All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two ki nds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic, and, in short, every program line which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times louvre is equal to half of thirty expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe.Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would ever retain their certainty and evidence. Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not discovered in the same manner, nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The reversal of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality.(Hume 1748, Section IV, department 1, p. 40) Intuition and deduction can provide us with knowledge of necessary truths such as those found in mathematics and logic, but such knowledge is not substantive knowledge of the external world. It is only knowledge of the relations of our own ideas. If the rationalist shifts the argument so it appeals to knowledge in morals, Humes reply is to offer an abridgment of our moral concepts by which such knowledge is empirically gained knowledge of matters of fact.Morals and check are not so right on objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment. Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it and endeavor to reparation the standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general taste of mankind, or some other fact which may be the object of conclude and inq uiry. (Hume 1748, Section XII, Part 3, p. 173) If the rationalist appeals to our knowledge in metaphysics to support the argument, Hume denies that we have such knowledge.If we take in our hand any volumeof divinity or school metaphysics, for instancelet us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (Hume 1748, Section XII, Part 3, p. 173) An updated version of this general empiricist reply, with an increase emphasis on language and the nature of meaning, is given in the twentieth-century by A.J. Ayers version of logical positivism. Adopting positivisms verification theory of meaning, Ayer assigns every cognitively meaningful sentence to one of two categories either it is a tautology, and so true solely by virtue of the meaning of its terms and provides no substantive informati on about the world, or it is open to empirical verification. There is, then, no room for knowledge about the external world by intuition or deduction. There can be no a priori knowledge of reality.For the truths of pure reason, the propositions which we know to be binding independently of all experience, are so only in virtue of their drop of factual content By contrast empirical propositions are one and all hypotheses which may be confirmed or discredited in actual sense experience. Ayer 1952, pp. 86 9394 The rationalists argument for the Intuition/Deduction Thesis goes wrong at the start, according to empiricists, by assuming that we can have substantive knowledge of the external world that outstrips what experience can warrant. We cannot. This empiricist reply faces challenges of its own.Our knowledge of mathematics seems to be about something more than our own concepts. Our knowledge of moral judgments seems to concern not just how we feel or act but how we ought to behave. The general principles that provide a basis for the empiricist view, e. g. Humes overall account of our ideas, the Verification Principle of Meaning, are knobbed in their own right. In variant formulations, the Verification Principle fails its own test for having cognitive meaning. A careful analytic thinking of Humes Inquiry, relative to its own principles, may require us to consign monumental sections of it to the flames.In all, rationalists have a strong argument for the Intuition/Deduction thesis relative to our substantive knowledge of the external world, but its success rests on how well they can answer questions about the nature and epistemic force of intuition made all the more pressing by the classic empiricist reply. 3. The Innate Knowledge Thesis The Innate Knowledge thesis joins the Intuition/Deduction thesis in maintain that we have a priori knowledge, but it does not offer intuition and deduction as the source of that knowledge.It takes our a priori knowledge to b e part of our rational nature. Experience may trigger our awareness of this knowledge, but it does not provide us with it. The knowledge is already there. Plato presents an early version of the Innate Knowledge thesis in the Meno as the article of faith of knowledge by recollection. The article of faith is motivate in part by a paradox that arises when we attempt to explain the nature of inquiry. How do we gain knowledge of a theorem in geometry? We inquire into the matter. Yet, knowledge by inquiry seems impossible (Meno, 80d-e).We either already know the theorem at the start of our probe or we do not. If we already have the knowledge, there is no place for inquiry. If we pretermit the knowledge, we dont know what we are seeking and cannot recognize it when we find it. either way we cannot gain knowledge of the theorem by inquiry. Yet, we do know some theorems. The doctrine of knowledge by recollection offers a solution. When we inquire into the truth of a theorem, we both do and do not already know it. We have knowledge in the form of a memory gained from.