Plato’s Meno asks a deceptively simple question: can virtue be taught? This episode pairs the dialogue with the disruptive assignment “Fluency or Thought: Peer Reviewing AI” to challenge higher education’s over-emphasis on quantified assessment and career preparation. By contrasting fluent AI writing with imperfect human philosophical struggle, and reading Socrates’ slave-boy demonstration as a disruption of passive learning, the episode shows how genuine understanding resists metrics and polish, and must instead be discovered through inquiry and self-achieved insight—which turn out to be highly marketable skills in the workplace.
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Sources
• Ashford-Rowe, K., et al. “Establishing the critical elements that determine authentic assessment.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 39, no. 2, 2014, pp. 205-222.
• Biesta, Gert. “School-as-Institution or School-as-Instrument? How to Overcome Instrumentalism Without Giving up on Democracy.” Educational Theory, vol. 72, no. 3, 2022, pp. 319-333.
• Hendricks, Christina. "Authentic assessment and philosophy." You're the Teacher, 2015, blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/?p=2325.
• Jollimore, Troy. "I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats." The Walrus, 5 Mar. 2025, thewalrus.ca/i-used-to-teach-st…ch-chatgpt-cheats/.
• Kirby, Christopher C. "Fluency or Thought: Peer Reviewing AI." Unpublished Course Document, 2024.
• ---. "Virtue, Knowledge, and the Art of Recollection in Plato’s Meno." Medium, 15 Sep. 2021, christopher-kirby.medium.com/virtue-kno…a11f2d216d.
• Metcalf, Robert. Philosophy as Agôn: A Study of Plato’s Gorgias and Related Texts. Northwestern University Press, 2018.
• Prinzing, Michael, and Michael Vazquez. “Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 11, no. 4, 2025, pp. 640-658.
• Reid, Heather L., William J. Rakowski, and Kevin J. Zoller, editors. Athletics, Gymnastics, and Agōn in Plato. Parnassos Press, 2023.
• Walker, Lisa. "Using AI tutor in philosophy class leads to deeply human conversation." UMN Morris Campus News & Events, 25 June 2025, news.morris.umn.edu/news/collier-ai-tutor.
• Xenophon. Anabasis. Translated by Carleton L. Brownson, revised by John Dillery, Harvard University Press, 1998. Loeb Classical Library.
Episode Credits
**The views expressed in this program are not necessarily those of Eastern Washington University
