How do you look for something when you don't know what it is? — Philosophy of knowledge | Brainrot Research

How do you look for something when you don't know what it is?

Searching seems to require knowing what to look for, yet discovery means finding what you did not know.

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A little context

You walk into the kitchen and can't remember what you came for. You stand there, and then you know it when you see it: the scissors. Somehow you were looking for the scissors without knowing you were. The question is how any search for the genuinely unknown can work at all.

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ReadingPlato, Meno, 80d (tr. Jowett), c. 385 BCEMeno's paradoxMeno: And how will you inquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of inquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know? Socrates: I know, Meno, what you mean… You argue that a man cannot inquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to inquire; and if not, he cannot.

Meno: And how will you inquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of inquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know? Socrates: I know, Meno, what you mean… You argue that a man cannot inquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to inquire; and if not, he cannot.

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