Plato's Warning

In the Meno, Plato discusses the question of whether virtue can be taught and in the process presents a conundrum that confronts all investigators. This "Paradox of Inquiry" proceeds (roughly) as follows.

  1. If S can meaningfully inquire about some kind of thing X, then S understands enough about X to discern whether the purported instances of X that S examines are in fact genuine instances of kind of thing X.
  2. However, if S understands enough about X to discern whether these purported instances of X are genuine, then S already understands X.
  3. But if S already understands X, then it is false that S can meaningfully inquire about kind of thing X.
  4. Thus, it is false that S can ever meaninfully inquire about kind of thing X.

There are many responses to this supposed paradox. One of the most common is to attack premise 2 and argue that there are in fact cases where we can justifiably claim to discern instances of the kind we are investigating and yet still not fully understand the nature of that kind. But regardless of whether one agrees with this response, we think that one should take heed of the implicit "warning" that the "Paradox" provides:

In order to inquire meaningfully about some kind, one must first become sufficiently clear about how to identify instances of that kind. Prima facie, this is more problematic for some kinds than for others. For example, we do not fully understand the nature of our own species, homo sapiens, yet we think we have reasonably clear "criteria of identity" that allow us to distinguish humans from chinchillas, chimpanzees and the like. But included among the attributes we routinely ascribe to humans are such things as consciousness, virtue and, what is here our major concern, creativity, and it is these kinds of things for which Plato's warning seems particularly apt.

One of the research thrusts of the Creative Agents Group is to search for better and better definitions of creativity.