In Meno, Socrates proposes a question of searching for knowledge and whether one can actually search for something without knowing what it actually is.
“How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know in the least what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?” (Meno 80d-e).
These questions eventually became known as Meno’s Paradox, or the paradox of knowledge. Meno’s Paradox questions how anyone could ever truly know that the answer they find is the correct one. Even if someone were to find the correct answer, how would they justify and prove that their answer was indeed correct and was the proper one for the question? By what standards, or truths could one base their knowledge off of?
Socrates responds to Meno, but his explanation, The Theory of Recollection, fails to explain knowledge seeking (inquiry) as a process for acquiring unkown (non-empirical) information; when one applies the Theory of Recollection to empirical knowledge the theory does not seem to hold true. Socrates holds that is.
“As the Soul is immortal, has been born often and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect thethings it knew before, both about virtue and other things. As the whole of nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only – a process men call learning – discovering everything else for himself…” (Meno 81c-d).
This Theory of Recollection, proposes that because the soul is immortal, it has been reborn many times, (reincarnation) thus it has already learned everything and the process of learning is just a recognizing and awakening of the knowledge which is not present in the life currently, but exists in the knowledge of the soul.
In the Catholic tradition, reincarnation of the soul as...