The Immortal Soul

During the second section of Meno, Socrates is confronted with a difficult question where Meno asks  “How will you look for [virtue] when you do not know at all what it is?.” Socrates responds with a complex answer in which he brings up a claim about the soul being immortal. This immortality entails that your soul is something that knows everything already. The idea of learning is not so much as being taught but rather the right questions force you to remember the information you forgot in the previous state of your soul. He attempts to demonstrate this by showing a slave a square and trying to make him understand areas without actually telling him (i.e he asks questions). Although on the surface it seems like the slave is simply “remembering” I disagree with the actual situation. Socrates may not tell him the answer but the slave is still learning what is wrong from Socrates. This means that he is narrowing down the possibilities which means that he is simply using inductive reasoning to come to a conclusion. He learns what is wrong and therefore looks for a different pattern or trend. This does not imply that he is remembering but rather it implies that he is learning a pattern.