Meno’s Paradox and Fallacy of Equivocation

I learned about 2 interesting concepts over the weekend, thanks to Reddit and MasterMementoMori.

The fallacy of equivocation is when the same concept or word is applied in two separate contexts but a conclusion is drawn disregarding those different contexts. “A PB&J is better than nothing. Nothing is better than being in love. Therefore a PB&J is better than being in love.” That would be an equivocation fallacy. “Nothing” is being equivocated to mean one thing in the first presupposition and another in the second.

My understanding of Meno’s Paradox is a bit rusty. Meno’s Paradox is a verification of knowledge problem. If you don’t know the capital of Russia, you cannot seek the knowledge in a way where you would be able to know with certainty unless you already know it because if you seek the knowledge and the knowledge you obtain is erroneous how could you know it was erroneous? If I asked you the capital of Russia and you say London how could I know you were wrong? We do have appeals to experts but how do you know they’re right? What if everyone believed in something that was erroneous? So if you apply this to all knowledge then if you already know something you don’t need to seek out the knowledge, but if you don’t know something you cannot seek it, yet we do have knowledge.

The solution to Meno’s paradox is that partial knowledge must exist meaning that you don’t need to know something in its entirety or absolutely before you have some understanding of it. We have different levels of confidence in our knowledge and that’s the solution.

Head on over to this Reddit comment to see the discussion. Original post… not so interesting.