Meno's paradox: Meno claims that learning is impossible. He suggests that either a person knows the knowledge, or he does not know it. If he knows it, there is no need to inquire(learn) something he already knows. So, he cannot learn it. And, if he does not know it, he can neither start nor end the inquiry because his ignorance is complete, so he does not know where to start and can’t recognize its end when it ends. Therefore, he cannot learn it (80d-e). 

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Socrates rejects Meno’s first premise that someone either knows the knowledge or he does not know it because there is partial knowledge in between. To resolve the paradox, he reconceives the concept of knowledge by distinguishing the “latent knowledge” and the “manifest knowledge”. He refers to a myth saying that our souls have learned all things before they are locked into our body, and those are the “latent knowledge” we have no access to unless we recollect them and transform them into our “manifest knowledge”. In this way, if recollection is learning, then we can learn the knowledge even if we already know it (81b-e).

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The slave lesson helps Socrates to show that it is possible to start the inquiry, the recollection, of knowledge. Through answering Socrates’ questions, the slave recognized that he does not know the thing he thought he knows, which are named "beliefs" by Socrates. So, examining our beliefs allow us to recognize and start the inquiry of knowledge, in other words, our beliefs make learning that going from latent to manifest knowledge possible (82b-86c). 

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I think that Socrates’ recollection theory does not satisfactorily dissolve the paradox. First, if learning is to inquire new knowledge, only recollecting the latent knowledge and transforming it into manifest knowledge is not learning. Second, in the slave lesson, the slave is in some way being taught by Socrates to recognize his error, so it is not like Socrates said that he didn’t teach anything. Third, the slave has related manifest knowledge that helps him to get to the point of Socrates' questions.  

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-- Notes and reflection, written by Heidi, April 2019; Ancient Greek Philosophy