In the book The Last Days of Socrates written by Plato, in the chapter of Phaedo,
Socrates presents a strong argument about recollection. What he is trying to prove throughout his discussion is that everything we are learning in life we really are just recollecting. Socrates' argument about recollection in my opinion is a mixture of a deductive hypothetical syllogism and an inductive based on prediction. Socrates concludes that the fact that everything we learn we are simply recollecting, implies that our souls existed before our actual current life. This leads to
Socrates arguing that there is a fixed amount of souls already in the world that are dying and reincarnating, which is to overall prove that there is an afterlife after death.…show more content… Inductive arguments are not certain, and Socrates is predicting that people may be reminded of one thing or another when recollecting something, but cannot be one hundred percent certain because he cannot prove that to be true for every person. However, assuming all the premises are true, than I would argue that although it is inductive, it is strong and cogent because the conclusion is highly possible. Later Socrates goes on to talk about examples falling short of ideas, where in my opinion is using a inductive argument based on generalization because he is assuming that all ideas fall short of the example, however once again I would argue that there is a high probable chance for that to be possible, so this too is a strong cogent argument. Lastly when Socrates argues about being able to perceive right at birth he is assuming that since we are born with previous knowledge then it is at birth that we begin to perceive, therefore this too can be classified as an inductive argument based on prediction, because technically there is no way Socrates can truly prove that we are born with