This section includes close readings and engagements with figures from the history of philosophy, particularly where historical arguments illuminate contemporary problems in epistemology and metaphysics.
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Recollection as Process in Meno—Strengths and Two Cautions
Thesis In Meno, recollection is a single, end-directed process that completes only in knowledge. Whitney Schwab is right to model it that way—and to treat false answers, aporia, and true opinion as stages within the same process—but two cautions matter: use Aristotle’s kinēsis as a heuristic, not a law, and distinguish recollecting from having recollected…
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IRAC Brief – Plato’s Protagoras
The Protagoras is often read as a clash between rhetoric and philosophy, or as an early skirmish over the unity of virtue. Read more narrowly, it is a dialogue about what must be shown before a practice may count as teaching at all. Plato does not ask, in the abstract, whether virtue can be taught.…
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Recollection as an Admissibility Rule — IRAC Brief on Plato’s Meno
The Meno is often read as a puzzle about learning or a myth about the soul’s pre-existence. Read more narrowly, it is also a dialogue about gatekeeping: which beliefs are allowed to count as knowledge at all. Plato stages this problem procedurally rather than metaphysically. He distinguishes beliefs formed through assertion, authority, or reputation from…
Nathan Whittingham 