From the past two lessons in TOK, the most intriguing article to me was Stephen’s Guide to the Logical Fallacies. This article, not only defines the fallacies individually but also, gave examples for each to let the readers comprehend it better. Not only the format is really well made, but the content was even more interesting for our daily learning. Take science experiments, how do we make sure that the results we’ve got are fair and square? Were they achieved only under certain conditions (unrepresentative sample) or are they even scientifically valid (hasty generalization). Or take Geography, how will we know if a questionnaire’s results are trustworthy? Say, is it okay to say that the policies working in a More Economically Developed Country are definitely suitable for the Less Economic Developed Countries?
Thus, the importance of using correct logical reasoning matters crucially towards the difference between a persuasive, reasonable argument and some kid yapping about.
In this part of Plate’s Meno, Meno starts to question himself about whether virtue can be taught or not. This question raised by Meno is now being challenged by opinions that were driven by his own statements and Socrates, with the help of a slave boy of Meno’s, taught him that both were wrong, believing the wrong fact to be right is worse than knowing to be wrong, to begin with.
What Socrates taught Meno in Part 2 is about the difference between popular opinion and widely acknowledged facts that are proven. Socrates by knowing he knows nothing is smarter than those who believed they knew everything yet the things they’ve believed are wrong.
In part 1 of Plato’s Meno, Socrates persuaded Meno that no mortal knows what Virtue truly is. He first attacked Meno from a logic perspective. If figures and specific variants of figures such as round or square are equal or say that blue or green or yellow are both equal, then there is no such thing as a bad virtue. It’s only from the perspective or a man’s own self standards to determine what’s good for himself. Thus, if nobody knows what to define “good virtue”, it isn’t known by anyone, surely can’t be taught.
Not all black and white; the most interesting bits are gray.
