Dominic Scott's article on 'Platonic Recollection'

Dominic Scott, 'Platonic Recollection'

"Recollection" in Plato is the idea that at some time in the past we acquired knowledge outside of our current sensible life and in some sense still have it. What is more, "recollection" holds that "learning" in this life is the way that we recall that knowledge that we already know from outside of this life. Before we recollect, perhaps we are simply not aware of the knowledge or perhaps there is some more complicated problem which makes us unable to simply access, use, and be aware of that knowledge. Platonic recollection is introduced in the dialogue called Meno, and occurs also in the Phaedrus and the Phaedo.

Scott's article argues for one interpretation of recollection and against another, more widespread interpretation of recollection.

Recollection: Phaedrus 249b:

"But a soul that never saw the truth cannot take a human shape, since a human being must understand speech in terms of general forms, proceeding to bring many perceptions together into a reasoned unity. That process is the recollection of the things our soul saw when it was traveling with god, when it disregarded the things we now call real and lifted up its head to what is truly real instead."

The widespread interpretation is that everyone recollects to some degree right from birth. "Recollection," or at least one stage of it, is simply the process by which we observe several particulars and form a universal, a concept of the type of thing of which all those particulars are tokens. Our knowledge of the Forms is what enables us to move from individual perceptions to universals. This interpretation resembles Kant's use of intuitions and concepts as the source of our empirical knowledge: hence Scott calls it "K" for Kant. Everyone recollects whenever he or she thinks or speaks, says K.

Scott's interpretation holds that the process of moving from individual perceptions to universals is not recollection. Recollection is a later stage which only a few people reach, which enables us to see the underlying reality of the world. Starting from a fragment of Plutarch, Scott calls his interpretation the "Demaratus" or "D" interpretation, after a man who sent a secret message using a wax tablet. Wax tablets consist of a flat tray-like container for the wax, and the wax which was poured into the tray. The message would be incised in the wax. The tablet could be reused by applying fresh wax. Demaratus inscribed his secret message in Greek on the flat container, and another message in Persian on the wax. The Persians thought the wax message was harmless and let it pass right under their eyes. They did not see the secret message hidden underneath, which betrayed their intention to invade Greece to the Greeks. Plutarch thinks that recollection is like uncovering the secret message of Demaratus' wax tablet.

On D, we can see with our sense of sight that something is beautiful or that two sticks are equal, but that does not involve forms, except insofar as the forms are what is responsible for things' being beautiful or equal: our perception sees beauty and equality only in sensible things, but that beauty and equality is deficient. When we are born, we can use our perceptions to form all sorts of concepts without ever using knowledge of the forms.

K uses recollection and sense to form ordinary thought. D comes after ordinary thought. K is optimistic about human knowledge. D is pessimistic: only a few can attain knowledge of reality. At Phaedo 81b4-5, non-philosophers think that only corporeal things are real (i.e only perceptibles). From that passage we know that Plato thinks Forms are known by only the few, the philosophers. But whatever knowledge is obtained in K is going to be the result of a continuous process of recollection that infuses our thought from infancy through to becoming philosophers. D postulates a discontinuity between ordinary thought and thought about reality.

There are three dialogues which speak of recollection: Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. All three dialogues seem on first glance to support K, but Scott argues that they all three are more coherently read by using D.

In reading the dialogues, Scott is cautious about using myth as though it were argument, but he still does so, largely because that is what most of the evidence for recollection consists of. Simply put, he is claiming that if one uses Plato's myths as evidence, D is the right interpretation.

The Meno and Recollection

Recollection is brought up in the Meno as a way for Socrates to explain how we can solve a paradox which Meno poses.

Meno's Paradox: if we don't know something at all, how can we know that we are making progress toward discovering it?

The slave-boy episode in the Meno is offered as a paradigm of recollection. The episode shows stages in recollection:

The slave boy realizes that what he thought was right is in fact wrong: "Now watch how he recollects things in order--the proper way to recollect" (Meno 82e12-13). Between 82e and 84a, the slave boy reaches perplexity, the stage where he is aware of what he does not know, which is one of the first signs of recollection.
From Meno 84d-85b, the slave boy moves from ignorance to acquiring true opinions. "So someone who does not know about something, whatever it may be that he doesn't know, has in himself true opinions on a subject without having knowledge ... and at the moment these opinions have just been stirred up in him as if he were in a dream." (Meno 84c6-10).
The final stage of recollection is not illustrated, but it is suggested at Meno 98a4 that once we tie down true opinion with ties of adamant, with "explanatory reasoning," an aitios logismos, recollection is achieved, and thereby knowledge is acquired.

What is clear from the slave-boy episode is that the slave boy was not recollecting before he met Socrates, although he was certainly forming ordinary concepts, and so Scott deems this passage support for D.

But Meno 81d4-5 says "learning and research are wholly recollection," which seems at face value to imply that all learning is recollection. But it does not really say that: surely Plato does not mean us to think that things like learning the baptismal name of Barzanes are examples of recollection.

In general, Scott points out that the slave boy comes to the examination in the Meno with a full panoply of concepts. He can speak Greek, and so has many many ordinary concepts. Thus the slave-boy episode is not likely to be meant to illustrate ordinary concept formation: it must be meant to illustrate something else, which Scott claims is recollection according to his D theory of recollection.

What is more, Socrates elicits false answers as well as true ones from the slave boy: is the slave boy really meant to be recollecting when he forms false answers? Scott says no. It must be the case, says Scott, that those false answers are steps on the way to recollection, not recollection itself.

The Phaedo and Recollection

72e3-77a5 is the most important passage.

Scott asks two questions:

What is recollection used to explain?
Who recollects?

The answer to these questions is important, because on K everyone recollects and recollection explains ordinary thought. On D, however, only a few recollect, because recollection explains only advanced thought, thought about the forms.

73c1-74a8

"We surely agree that if anyone recollects anything, he must have known it before.
Quite so, he said.
Do we not also agree that when knowledge comes to mind in this way, it is recollection? What way do I mean? Like this: when a man sees or hears or in some other way perceives one thing and not only knows that thing but also thinks of another thing of which the knowledge is not the same but different, are we not right to say that he recollects the second thing that comes onto his mind?
How do you mean?
Things such as this: to know a man is surely a different knowledge from knowing a lyre.
Of course.
Well, you know what happens to lovers: whenever they see a lyre, a garment of anything else that their beloved is accustomed to use, they know the lyre, and the image of the boy to whom it belongs comes into their mind. This is recollection, just as someone, on seeing Simmias, often recollects Cebes, and there are thousands of other such occurrences.
Thousands indeed, said Simmias.
Is this kind of thing not recollection of a kind? he said, especially so when one experiences it about things that one had forgotten, because one had not seen them for some time?
Quite so.
Further, he said, can a man seeing the picture of a horse or a lyre recollect a man, or seeing a picture of Simmias recollect Cebes?
Certainly.
Or seeing a picture of Simmias, recollect Simmias himself?
He certainly can.
In all these cases the recollection can be occasioned by things that are similar, but it can also be occasioned by things that are dissimilar?
It can.
When the recollection is caused by similar things, must one not of necessity also experience this: to consider whether the similarity to that which one recollects is deficient in any respect or complete?
One must. Consider, he said, whether this is the case: we say that there is something that is equal. I do not mean a stick equal to a stick or a stone to a stone, or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the Equal itself. Shall we say that this exists or not?
Indeed, we shall, by Zeus, said Simmias, most definitely."

This text contains four requirements for recollecting x:

We must have known X beforehand (73c1-3)
We must not only recognize Y but also think of X (73c6-8)
X must not be the object of the same knowledge as Y but of another (73c8-9)
When X resembles Y, we must consider whether Y is lacking at all in relation to X (74a5-7)

74a9-d3

When Simmias says "most definitely," he is using a Greek word that would not be appropriate for the ordinary thought that two sticks are equal: it is close to "remarkably" or "amazingly."
"We say that there is something that is equal. I do not mean a stick equal to a stick or a stone to a stone, or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the Equal itself"

This sentence refers to the Form Equal, and so this is not ordinary thought.

If when we see two equal sticks, the only way that we can recognize that they are equal is via a recollected form, then the form is already there. So the two sticks cannot cause us to recollect the Form, because the form has to be there already recollected. So recollection cannot be ordinary thought, for we are supposed to be caused to recollect by seeing things like two equal sticks.

Bailly question: But what if that's the point of "recollection"? namely, that the Forms are all "already there" in some way.

In the "affinity argument" for the immortality of the soul, at 78c10ff., Plato says that the Forms cannot be perceived, but particulars can. He also says that we perceive the beautiful horse, etc. So when we see two equal sticks, we cannot be seeing the Form Equal yet. Maybe Plato means that we perceive sticks, but we don't perceive equality when we perceive equal sticks. If so, why did he not say so? He makes a big deal out of the fact that we perceive our body but not our soul. He ought to make a big deal here too if he means that part of equal sticks is perceptible and part is not, Scott says. 75b6-7 seems to hold that we perceive equal things, and so supports Scott's contention.

74d4-75a4 The claim is that we compare perceptibles to the Forms, and they fall short, and that is recollection. Remember the four requirements for recollection: the fourth was that we compare X to the Form. Thus we are talking here only about philosophers, not about ordinary people, since only philosophers know or believe in Forms.

74e9-75c6
The argument for immortality of the soul which depends on recollection is found in this passage.

In order to compare two things, you have to have knowledge of the two things.
You cannot get knowledge of a Form from sense-perception (Forms are not perceptible: see 65d11ff. and 82d9ff.).
A sense-perception is necessary (in this life) to jog our memories to think of a Form.
The only thing that prompts us to compare perceptibles to Forms is sense-perception.
Thus, since the only way we could get knowledge of Forms in this life is through sense-perceptions, but senses cannot directly acquire knowledge of the forms, we must have had knowledge of the Forms before we were born (sense-perception starts at birth).

Plato is saying that it is not the case that one sense-perception puts us in mind of the Form, then another later one puts us in mind of the comparison. The comparison necessarily is prompted by the same perception that puts us in mind of the Form, because that is the nature of a Form: it is superior to the particulars that share in it. The whole thought of a Form is a thought of something superior, not simply a thought of a sense-perception.

75d7-76d6
Scott argues that this passage makes it clear that not everyone recollects, but only those few who are learning.

In all, Recollection cannot simply be concept formation, because everyone does that, and it is clear that Plato is speaking of a select few people as recollecting, the philosophers. 76b5-c3 and 74b2-3 make that clear: the first says that the many do not know Forms, and the second says that "we" know the Form equal. The "we" thus must be philosophers, the select few.

So what is recollection if it is not concept formation? How does it differ? That is the million dollar question. To answer it, it might help to know how we come to know the Forms in the first place.

A possible objection to Scott: on Scott's reading, only a few people ever recollect, but recollection is supposed to prove that all human souls are immortal. Scott answers by saying that Plato generalized.

A further point is that the Demaratus analogy stresses deception. Why say that people are deceived? Why not just say they are missing out on something? Scott replies that Plato argues that the senses deceive us from 82d9 ff.: senses tempt us to think what is not real is real, and they are connected to bodily pleasure and pain, which is connected to whether we act well or badly: thus we are deceived by the senses into sin (i.e. paying attention to the body).

That might help us to understand what recollection is: it is a turning away from the senses that is itself prompted by the senses. We see something, and are reminded of a Form, which in turn prompts us to see how deficient the seen thing is compared to the Form. So we pay more attention to the Form, and we start to act well, because we act in accordance with what is real, instead of what is not real. For a beautiful version of this path to the forms proceeding from the sensible towards the forms, read Diotima's speech near the end of the Symposium.

The Phaedrus

246a-257b is the relevant passage.
It is the passage that speaks of the experience of love as a madness and assimilates it to philosophy.

Passages like 249b5-c4 seem to say that all human souls have to have knowledge of the Forms, otherwise they could not become human. It looks like recollection might be invoked to explain conceptual thought again, which is precisely what Scott wants to deny.

And there is a sentence at 249b6-8, which reads, "man must understand the language of forms, passing from a plurality of perceptions to a unity comprehended by reasoning." That sentence seems to speak of ordinary concept-formation.

But the soul of a human has contact with a beautiful human and is reminded of the Beautiful Form, and is driven mad by that. Recollection is an extraordinary experience: it is not ordinary thought, clearly. In recollecting, the lover undergoes a transition (250e) and is considered mad because he sees an extraordinary object through the particular he loves (249c8-d3). 251b1-c5 also shows that the lover feels pain at the experience, and grows wings. . .

And there are those who do not see the Forms thru their beloved: they just want sex. Plato calls them non-lovers (250e). The real lover does not desire the sensible beloved, but thru him the Forms.

Back to that sentence at 249b6-8, which reads, "man must understand the language of forms, passing from a plurality of perceptions to a unity comprehended by reasoning." Scott says that the "must" means "ought," and the "understand" is not the ordinary sense of understanding, as in "I understand that you have dyed your hair": rather, it is real understanding, that is only possible via Forms. "Reasoning" too is a stronger thing than we might at first suspect: it refers to the thought of the philosopher that goes towards the Forms. On this reading, Plato is not talking about ordinary thought at all. The point is that this passage does not necessarily count against Scott: you need only admit that his reading makes sense of the words and coincides with his interpretation.