In the Meno, we get a solution to the puzzle of why it is that virtue
does not seem, as an empirical matter of fact, to be teachable. The
solution is that instead of involving knowledge, virtue involves true
belief, and true belief is not teachable in the way knowledge is.
The distinction between knowledge and true belief seems to be that
knowledge is true opinion made firm by explanatory account
(aitias logismoi, 98a).
This may seem to the modern philosophical reader to confuse
explanation and justification. It is justification, not explanation,
that is needed for knowledge. One can know that sunflowers turn to the
sun without anyone knowing why or how they do so. But what Plato seems
to be after here is not merely justified true belief, but something like
the scientia of the Aristotelians, an explanatorily structured
understanding.
But not every area seems like the case of sunflowers. There would be
something very odd in a tribe knowing Fermat’s Last Theorem to be true,
but without anybody in the tribe, or anybody in contact with the tribe,
having anything like an explanation or proof. Mathematical knowledge of
non-axiomatic claims typically involves something explanation-like: a
derivation from first principles. We can, of course, rely on an expert,
but eventually we must come to something proof-like.
I think ethics is in a way similar. There is something very odd about
having justified true belief—knowledge in the modern sense—of
ethical truths but not knowing why they are true. Yet it seems humans
are often in this position. They know the ethical truths but not why
they are true. Yet they have correct, and maybe even justified, moral
judgments about many things. What explains this?
Socrates’ answer in the Meno is that it is the gods. The gods instill
true moral opinion in people (especially the poets).
This is not a bad answer.
