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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>From: "Micha Berger" <A
href="mailto:micha@aishdas.org">micha@aishdas.org</A></FONT></DIV><FONT
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<DIV><BR>> SOCRATES: Without any one teaching him he will recover his
knowledge<BR>> for himself, if he is only asked questions?<BR><BR>>
MENO: Yes.<BR><BR>> SOCRATES: And this spontaneous recovery of
knowledge in him is<BR>> recollection?<BR><BR>> MENO:
True.<BR><BR>> SOCRATES: And this knowledge which he now has must he
not either<BR>> have acquired or always possessed?<BR><BR>> MENO:
Yes.<BR><BR>> SOCRATES: But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this
life, then<BR>> he must have had and learned it at some other
time?.....</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>> SOCRATES: And if the truth of all things always existed in the
soul,<BR>> then the soul is immortal. ....</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>--end quote--<BR><BR>>>And so, Plato has Socrates prove that the real
unchanging Platonic<BR>Truths are learned before birth, and "learning is
recollection".<BR><BR>Given this context, I think the chiddush isn't that we're
prepared<BR>knowing Torah in order to make Torah learning easier. Rather,
Chazal's<BR>point is that those Truths aren't limited to geometry or
the<BR>rigorously provable, but are/include Torah.<<</DIV>
<DIV><BR> </DIV>
<DIV>>>>>><BR>I think this quoted dialogue has more to do with
math than with Torah. It has to do with the question of whether
mathematics is "discovered" or "invented" -- with Socrates' line of thought
seeming to weigh in more on the side of "discovered" -- i.e., when
mathematicians created their system of mathematics, step by step, at each step
it was intuitively obvious to them that this step was "true."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don't know if this type of innate knowledge -- that when one is
confronted with step-by-step logic one intuitively sees that it is true, even
though one didn't know it before one took tenth grade geometry -- this type of
innate knowledge hints at but certainly does not prove the existence of a
soul.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It is in any case a different kind of knowledge than the knowledge of
Torah. Torah really does have to be taught and cannot be "discovered" or
reconstructed by logic. In fact all the recent discussion on
Avodah of whether there are "Torah rules of discovery" bears on
this. It seems there are not such clear rules, not clear like
mathematics.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>BTW aren't the Japanese working on computers that excel at "fuzzy logic"
which can solve problems that step-by-step straight logic cannot solve?
"Fuzzy logic" doesn't mean "illogical thinking" (or "typical female way of
thinking" -- as the subject line here might suggest.) It means that a
number of different kinds of rules all operate at the same time, and that there
is always a range of possibilities rather than One Right
Answer.<BR></DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>=============</B></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">See what's new at <A title="http://www.aol.com?NCID=AOLCMP00300000001170" href="http://www.aol.com?NCID=AOLCMP00300000001170" target="_blank">AOL.com</A> and <A title="http://www.aol.com/mksplash.adp?NCID=AOLCMP00300000001169" href="http://www.aol.com/mksplash.adp?NCID=AOLCMP00300000001169" target="_blank">Make AOL Your Homepage</A>.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>