Could the platonic theory of recollection decide between constructivism and nativism?

Abstract

Our problem here consists of answering the following question on the demonstration of the theory of recollection that appears in the Dialogue Meno of Plato: Is this old demonstration capable of providing a decision between Piaget s constructivism and Chomsky s ideas of human innate capacity? Our answer here is definitively negative. We argue that if a positive answer were possible, then the decision would be in favour of  Chomsky. However, an eventual positive answer would involve a paradoxical situation: Plato s theory of innate knowledge concerns the intelligible world existing in our immortal soul and so it has nothing to do with the sense world and also it has nothing to do with the genetically determined innate capacity proposed by Chomsky. However, we show that the platonic demonstration is false. The weakness of Plato s demonstration concerns the falsehood of the assumed hypothesis according to which the formulation of questions is allowed, but not the corresponding teaching. We make, tentatively, an approximation between Piaget and Chomsky with the help of the mediation of the Aristotelian theory of act and potency. This approximation, however, leads to antinomies and to other problems of high complexity.