Andrea Meibos
Phil 201H
July 7, 1998

Although Socrates appears at first to be entirely serious in his dicourse with Meno, because of his egregious and uncharacteristically false premise, one gets the impression that he is toying with or testing Meno to see how the upstart young boy will respond to a false argument that gives him a nice definition he wants to hear. However, if Socrates' true motive is the discovery of truth, as the motive of true philosophers is wont to be, why would he mislead Meno? It also seems unlikely that Socrates would waste so much time with a stubborn boy who doesn't want to listen finding an answer that Socrates knows is false. Then again, I can see how Meno's constant agreement with Socrates' Sophist-like statements, whether true or no, could induce Socrates to play with the situation by using a false premise. I suppose the possiblity must be considered that Socrates did not realize his premise was false; however, had this been the case, I feel Plato would have recognized the false premise and not wrote it in the Meno, unless it was to show the fallibility of all men, even Socrates. Of all these, I feel the most probable case is the Socrates got fed up with Meno when he refused Socrates' less conventional definition, and therefore decided to deny him knowledge by giving him the wrong answer to his question.