Plato’s Meno: a collateral inquiry into concepts

Plato's Meno is a short but nevertheless complex dialogue, rich in profound philosophical reflections.The topics covered in the dialogue range from Platonic epistemology to a philosophical theory of the soul, to ethics and the definition of virtue.We also find a clear exposition of Socrates' elenctic method and an explanation of its importance within a philosophical discussion.In this thesis I will argue that, in addition to these philosophical inquiries, there is a collateral one, which can be observed by giving a conceptual interpretation of the dialogue.This inquiry concerns the way we think, represent, categorize and comprehend reality.By providing a conceptual reading of some sections of the dialogue, I will show that there is a strong resemblance between what is been discussed in the dialogue and what contemporary philosophy would identify as an inquiry into concepts that explains their fundamental cognitive function, conceiving them as that which enables us to represent and know reality through our thinking.Although concepts are not the direct object of inquiry in this dialogue, some issues can be understood in the light of modern theories of concepts.In particular, issues concerning definitions, the structure of definitions and their importance for our ability to categorize can be seen as early suggestions towards the Classical Theory of Concepts, which claims that concepts have a definitional structure, while the theory of recollection can be read as a prototypical nativist theory of concepts, since both claim that we possess some innate cognitive resources.The purpose of this thesis is to show the connections between the Classical Theory of Concepts, concept innatism and the philosophical reflections we find in the Meno.