Plato had argued in Meno for a theory of anamnesis—that souls were immortal, knowledge was innate, and learning just was a process of rediscovering that which you had forgotten. Reason functions to tether a knowledge that was always there. When a slave boy learns geometry he is not making a discovery, he is only recollecting what he once knew. Then what would Plato make of Alice? Did she forget now only the muddled truths that stood in reason’s way? Or was she forgetting all that innate knowledge as well?
