Knowledge and Truth in Plato
Stepping Past the Shadow of Socrates
Catherine Rowett
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Preface
I. About the Reader’s Views on Plato
Almost everyone—among those who are likely to read this book, at least—has a view on what Plato was trying to do, and what Platonism is. Many also think that Plato was badly wrong about a great many things.
I will have achieved what I hope to achieve in this book if, after reading it, almost everyone has changed their mind, either wholly or partly, about what Plato was trying to do and what Platonism is, and I especially hope that, after reading it, those who used to think that what Plato was doing was wrongheaded have begun to think afresh. Perhaps there are some readers from whose eyes scales will fall. That would be good, if so.
If not, then I hope that will be because all these truths were already out there, and evident, and not everyone needed to rethink it. Perhaps some will need more time and more discussion. The present volume examines a very small part of the whole story.
II. What I Am Trying to Do in This Book
In this volume I try to reconsider, using Plato as a guide, some major and controversial issues in epistemology and philosophy of language. These have to do, first, with what I shall call ‘conceptual competence’—particularly with the issue of what kind of knowledge is involved in grasping a concept, such as when we know what a game is or what justice is. Is this a kind of knowing how? Is it knowledge of some fact or proposition, or of a definition, or necessary and sufficient conditions for applying a term, or a rule of conduct for applying a term? Is it like knowing an object? I shall argue that it is none of the above, but that it is something else, more primitive and fundamental, that underpins the ability to do those things—and that those abilities, some or all of them in each case, are characteristic of someone who knows, but not necessary or sufficient for someone to be a knower.
Second, I shall be concerned with the notion of ‘truth’. I shall argue that the range of things that can be true is more extensive than has typically been allowed in recent analytic philosophy, and that there is a connection between truth and a certain sort of ‘being’ that Plato attributes to the Forms. We shall consider what kind of being this is, and why it is still interesting. I aim to show that it occupies an irreducible place in Plato’s understanding of conceptual knowledge and meaning, and that it is worth recovering for our own use.
These are contributions to questions in contemporary philosophy, which also contribute to contemporary debates about how to read Plato. Using Plato’s leads, I shall be
putting forward proposals that I consider to be serious contenders for solving or clarifying these questions about knowledge, conceptual competence, and truth; but the proposals are also intended to be serious contenders for clarifying what Plato himself was talking about, and I aim to improve our understanding of what he meant when he referred to ‘knowledge’ (episteme), and when he talked about ‘truth’ (aletheia) and ‘being’ (ousia and to on).
Hence the main chapters of this book defend a novel reading of large parts of Plato’s corpus. This will naturally be of interest to those who already believe that Plato’s views are important. But I trust that it will be of interest also to some who may currently believe that there is nothing of any interest in what Plato had to say about Forms, or about truth, or about definitions and essences, or about science and what kind of thing we can know. My reading is designed to undermine many of the objections to Platonism that are typically bandied about, which are often directed against some caricature of Plato’s epistemology and metaphysics. To show that such objections typically miss Plato’s point, and thereby miss a range of promising answers to current topics of enquiry, I have included substantial chapters that explore key texts from some of the most famous dialogues, reinterpreting them to show that Plato probably means something quite different from what he has standardly been taken to mean. There is also more of this work to come, on texts not included in this book, but here we make a start towards developing these claims, defending them with close attention to some prominent texts.
My aim is to show that we should not try to reduce conceptual knowledge to some other kind of knowledge, as though the list of basic kinds of knowledge were complete at ‘know-how’, ‘acquaintance’, and ‘propositional’. Even less should we try to reduce one or more of those three to one among them that is supposedly more fundamental. I shall argue that there is a fundamental difference between knowledge of types and knowledge of tokens, and that all the kinds of knowledge that consist in seeing tokens as falling under types are parasitic on a more fundamental kind of knowledge—grasping the type in question—which is not reducible to anything else, because all our knowledge of facts, propositions, actions, and things presuppose a prior grasp of types. Whenever we see some item as belonging to a class or deserving a certain description, we call upon a repertoire of conceptual knowledge which—as I shall argue—cannot be reduced to any finite set of propositions and is often not even expressible in propositional form; nor is it reducible to any finite rule for how to continue a certain practice consistently (since the practice may be creative, inconsistent, impromptu, and innovative).
Any agent capable of using language or classifying and reading the world draws upon a repertoire of available descriptors (maybe linguistic, maybe practical/pragmatic) whose meaning and relevance to the task at hand the agent grasps, sometimes in a wholly inarticulate way. This repertoire enables conceptually equipped agents to see things as instantiating types or kinds,1 and to extend the concepts indefinitely, to
1 Among conceptually equipped agents I include all animals that see the world in terms of kinds relevant to their tasks and can engage with their environment on that basis.
embrace and redescribe new examples in an intelligent and creative way, rather than mechanically. Extensions and innovations are clearly not pre-programmed, since they can be controversial, a subject of debate and uncertainty, and innovations that were once unacceptable can become accepted.
Obviously we must possess a certain idea before we can innovate with it. But what is that knowledge, such that someone who possesses it can recognize familiar cases, handle unforeseen possibilities unfazed, apply the descriptor intelligently beyond its normal application and in metaphorical or strangely reconfigured circumstances, and reject it in other cases that are too alien? How is it that on the basis of our idea of justice, which we may never have seen properly instantiated anywhere, we can discern justice and injustice in situations never before envisaged, and discuss cases that might be unclear, ruling that they are or are not examples of justice, or that they are marginal or irrelevant to judgements of that kind? For an adequate account of this kind of knowledge, Plato’s model seems to me to be far superior to any propositional or definitional or rule-based models. Plato, I shall suggest, models this knowledge as a quasi-visual grasp of ‘justice itself’. A key theme of this book is what Plato has to say about the method by which we learn (or re-acquire) those ideas, and become philosophically aware of them: namely, as I shall argue, that we acquire this knowledge by a kind of analogical or pictorial reasoning, based on a very small sample—even just one example which could in fact be a bad or negative example (as e.g. we may come to see what justice is from encountering a peculiarly telling case of injustice). He correctly identifies, I suggest, a kind of picturing process that enables a conceptually competent thinker to grasp an abstract idea of great complexity and subtlety, by abstracting (or ascending) from small and unrepresentative samples. The process is not induction, or empirical generalization, since it can be done from one encounter alone, or from untypical ones, or even from the total absence of any instance. It is also possible to generate an understanding (as we shall see) by constructing an imaginary instance, unlike any known in real life.
To get hold of the idea of justice, we do not need to have encountered any sound or exemplary cases of justice; nor do we get the idea by habit or practice, or by learning from role models; but it is to our existing idea of justice that we turn to see what would be the just thing to do in situations not specified in advance. This grasp of the concept (our idea of what justice is) provides a more accurate and authoritative basis for judgement than common practices that are considered just. The latter will always fall short for various reasons, and our ability to pass judgement on those practices reveals that we have a more authoritative grasp of the notion in ourselves: so we can criticize ourselves and others for not doing in practice what we know in theory; and we can criticize ourselves and others for being unable to explain or define something that we know and can correctly deploy in practice. These discrepancies (a) between our intellectual grasp of things like justice, honesty, etc., and our attempts to be just or honest in real life, or (b) between our ability to act justly/honestly and our ability to explain what justice or honesty is in words—these show that we find ourselves able to correct both our actions
and our words by reference to something else—our knowledge of what justice and honesty are—which, I argue, is epistemically more basic than the practices, and generally inadequately enacted in practice and inadequately expressed, or even inexpressible, in words. On the basis of this fundamental knowledge of ‘what it is’ about the relevant concepts, we can also recognize which instances are truly exemplary and reject those that are not. Such corrective knowledge is the basis of all social, moral, political, and artistic criticism and progress. Knowledge of facts is as nothing in comparison with this, when it comes to its importance for human life. It is this knowledge, I suggest, that makes facts possible.
Thinking of this knowledge as quasi-pictorial helps us to understand how it can be dense with meaning, yielding unlimited answers to an infinite range of unforeseen questions. It is rather like consulting a map or drawing, in terms of the density of its information, as contrasted with written directions that tell you just one or two ways to go.
III. How to Read This Book
This book is addressed to two audiences. On the one hand, it is for those philosophers who want to know what I am saying about the missing notion of conceptual knowledge, and about the role of ‘picturing’ as a means of capturing what kind of knowledge that is. For them too, I want to explain in fairly straightforward terms how Plato emerges as a ‘good guy’ in his creative work on these things. On the other hand, it is also for those who want to see, in much more exegetical detail, exactly how that answer can be seen to emerge, and how richly it emerges, from Plato’s texts. For these readers there are substantial discussions of Plato’s texts, and some dialectical engagement with various earlier treatments of those texts that dominate existing readings.
To meet the needs of both audiences, I have structured the book in a somewhat unusual way. I hope that many readers will want to think deeply about both parts of my project: that even those whose primary interest is in some contemporary debate about conceptual knowledge will also want to understand Plato’s importance in that field and the dazzling splendour of his treatment of it. But it should also be possible to read this book (a) just for its new readings of certain well-trodden works of Plato (without asking whether the problem that he is solving is one that modern epistemology and philosophy of language need to address) or (b) just for its contribution to issues about knowledge and truth (without much concern for whether Plato was really saying all that). To enable both ways of reading the book, I have tried to signpost it so that readers can find the parts that are most relevant to their own concerns. First, the two chapters in Part I, one on knowledge and one on truth, explain my overall thesis, and situate it in relation to past work on Plato, and current issues in the relevant philosophical domains. This Part of the book offers some new ideas, but it is not designed to engage thoroughly with the immense current literature in either of those fields. After that, Parts II–IV explore Plato’s work in the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus respectively.
I begin each part with an ‘Introduction and Summary’, which sets out my basic claims with respect to the dialogue under discussion, and evaluates their significance for the overall thesis of the book. These are partly for hasty readers with no time for wading through the exegetical material, or for non-specialist readers who are not concerned with the detailed exegesis. Such readers can settle for reading the first chapter in each Part of the book. But those chapters are also designed as orientation for the specialist reader, setting the agenda and explaining the significance of each move, before embarking on the longer chapters in which the exegetical proofs are done. The exegetical chapters which comprise the rest of each Part of the book attempt to show how one can read the text with those results, and engage in varying levels of nitty-gritty detail with both the Greek text and with a selection of the work of other scholars, classic or recent, who have offered rival views.
Those seven exegetical chapters (Chapters 4–5, 7–8, and 10–12) are internally signposted with headings, which summarize the progress of the argument. This means that by reading just the headings, one gets a kind of précis or list of premises and conclusions. The headings are also designed to enable someone who is not reading the book from cover to cover, but looking for its argument on some particular passage or its solution to some tricky dilemma, to locate the argument and easily identify what my view on the issue is. The index locorum can also assist with this. Wherever possible, my proposed answer is stated in the heading.
The book concludes with a chapter that is neither exegetical nor evaluative, but more an outline promise of things to come, since there are many further texts that would be relevant.
IV. Numbering System for Quoted Texts
I discuss certain passages of text in some detail in the main exegetical chapters of the book, and occasionally in the ‘Introduction and Summary’ chapters for the main parts of the book. As well as referencing each excerpt in the standard way, I have also numbered these texts consecutively, in the order in which I present them within the chapter, preceded by the chapter number. For instance, Text 4.3 is the third text quoted in Chapter 4. I then cross-refer to those excerpts by their numbers. All translations are my own.
Contents
Part I. Knowledge, Truth, and Belief
1. Knowledge, Conceptual Knowledge, and the Iconic Route to Grasping an Idea 3
I. In Which We Consider Whether ‘Knowledge’ Is an Important Topic in Plato’s Work 3
I.i That there is an irreducible form of knowledge that has to do with grasping concepts and types or forms; I.ii That Lyons’s ‘structural semantics’ approach to understanding Plato’s term episteme needs to be superseded; I.iii Whether ‘knowledge’ is a useful translation for Plato’s knowledge words; I.iv That knowledge is not a species of (propositional) belief, and that Plato does not mean ‘belief’ when he speaks of doxa
II. In Which We Classify Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Plato’s Epistemology Into Roughly Three Distinct Views, and I Place My View in This Taxonomy (or Outside It) 11
II.i That there are two classic ways of understanding the relation between Plato’s Middle and Later dialogues, one unitarian and one developmental, and a third way that is also unitarian; II.ii Some further options; II.iii That my interpretation is a variant of the first type; II.iv That the contrast between episteme and doxa is the contrast between the grasp of types or concepts and the recognition of tokens or instances
III. In Which We Consider Whether it Is a Good Idea to Look for a Definition, and, If So, Why
III.i That definition can serve three different roles in philosophical work, only one of which is part of a philosophical method; III.ii That failing to find a definition can be a fruitful part of a philosophical investigation, when the author’s aim is to problematize faulty assumptions or diagnose confusion; III.iii That the definition does not need to be in terms understood by the interlocutor, nor does Socrates (or Plato) think that it does
IV. In Which We Investigate How Knowing Relates to Factual Information and Propositional Utterances or Beliefs
IV.i That knowledge should not be equated with the ability to do something, or to express a belief in words, although those abilities may be evidence of knowing; IV.ii That some other kinds of knowing, besides knowing particular facts about states of affairs, are more important for understanding what Plato is talking about; IV.iii That the ability to read the world as made up of tokens that instantiate types is like using a map, dense with pictorial information
V. In Which I Summarize the Plan for the Rest of This Book
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2. Truth and Belief
I. In Which We Consider the Relation Between Knowledge and Truth, and Between Knowledge and Belief
I.i That knowledge is about something, but not about a proposition, or about the truth of a proposition; I.ii That it is a mistake to suppose (with Vendler and others) that belief, but not knowledge, is a propositional attitude
II. In Which We Consider What Truth Is, and How It Can Be a Property of Things 40
II.i That there are several ways of talking of ‘truth’ in Greek; II.ii That we should understand the veridical sense of the verb ‘to be’ as a reference to the truth in things, which is a kind of being something; II.iii That truth in sentences and descriptions is derivative from the primary kind of truth in things; II.iv That some truth can be found in what Heidegger and Detienne say about aletheia; II.v That there is something similar in Aristotle; II.vi That it is time to reclaim the spectator model of knowledge and truth
III. That Truth Can Be Observed by Viewing the Things That Reflect It 49 III.i That all kinds of deliberate representations and naturally occurring instances can serve as icons, and that Plato’s methodology makes use of this
Part II. Plato’s Meno
3. Introduction and Summary for Part II: Plato’s Meno
I. In Which We Note That Plato Is Arguing on the Same Side as Wittgenstein, Against Socratic Essentialism
II. That the Geometry Episode Proves That One Can Identify a Precise but Indefinable Length by Pointing, Not Saying
III. That Socrates Turns to the Hypothetical Method Not as a Second Best, but as the Perfect Method for Dealing with Types That Have No Essential Definition
IV. That Knowing ‘What It Is’ About Some Type F Does Not Equate to Knowing Which Tokens Fall Under the Type, or to a Description of the Shared Properties of F Things, or to Any Classification of the F as a Token of a More Generic Type
IV.i That the dichotomy between knowing an object and knowing a proposition is a false one, and that Socrates means neither of those things when he speaks of knowing virtue ‘what it is’; IV.ii That the example of ‘knowing Meno, who he is’ is about a type, not a token, exactly like the case of virtue
V. That the Distinction Between Episteme and Doxa in Plato Is the Distinction Between the Intellectual Grasp of the Type and the Experiential Recognition of Particular Tokens, Whether With the Senses or Just in the Mind
4. Knowing What Virtue Is in Plato’s Meno
I. In Which We Consider How We Should Read the Meno
I.i That we must distinguish between Plato and his characters, including the Socrates character; I.ii A review of the key turning points in the dialogue, which show that Socrates caused the confusion by insisting on the priority of definition; I.iii That Plato’s chosen illustration, the search for the
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indefinable side of the double square, is intended to prove that what someone knows may not be definable (by anyone, in principle, not just in practice); I.iv That Socrates still wants to know ‘what virtue is’ before asking other questions, but knowing ‘what it is’ no longer means giving a definition
II. In Which We Note That the Hypothetical Method (If Well Done) Is Ideal for Poion Esti Questions About Vague Concepts With No Neat Definitions 76
II.i The failure of the hypothetical method: that Socrates is to blame; II.ii A better attempt at explaining how we become competent with the virtue concept without any need to define it
III. In Which We Conclude That Not Being Able to Say ‘What It Is’ Concerning Some Concept Is Perfectly Compatible With Knowing ‘What It Is’ 82
5. Knowledge and Correct Impressions in Plato’s Meno
I. Orientation: Issues About the Relation Between Doxa and Episteme Arising From Chapter 4
II. Concerning Passage A: The Opening Pages of the Meno (70a–71e)
II.i That there is no one left in Athens who can answer Meno’s question, ‘because Gorgias has gone to Larissa’; II.ii That Socrates cannot answer Meno’s question ‘because he does not know the answer’
III. Passage C: How Knowledge Differs From a Merely Correct Impression
III.i Passage C, stage 1: it is possible to answer a question from a position that is not knowledge; III.ii Passage C, stage 2: the road to Larissa;
III.iii Passage C, stage 3: knowledge about and knowledge of;
III.iv Passage C, stage 4: the advantage of knowledge over true seeming; III.v Passage C, stage 5: the statues of Daedalus, and explanatory reasoning; III.vi Passage C, stage 6: a difficulty—do seemings become knowings?
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IV. Passage B: Lessons From the Slave-Boy Passage 99 IV.i That ‘the boy did not already know’, meaning ‘the boy did not have the knowledge already available’; and that Socrates does not teach him anything that he did not know; IV.ii Passage B continues: the boy did have knowledge; IV.iii Locating the back reference in Passage C
V. Once Again, Can True Doxa Turn Into Knowledge? 103
VI. Conclusion: That Neither Doxa Nor Episteme Is a Propositional Attitude 106
Part III. Plato’s Republic
6. Introduction and Summary for Part III: Plato’s Republic 111
I. In Which We Consider the Plan of the Republic, and Why the Quest for a Definition Is Abandoned 111
II. That We Can Avoid Ascribing Fallacies to Plato Once We Understand Plato’s Method 112
7. Discovering What Justice Is in Plato’s Republic
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I. In Which We Examine the Argument of the Republic and Discover That Plato Is Not Trying to Define Justice but Is Using a Method That Bypasses the Need for Definition 115
II. In Which We Examine the Text More Closely, to Reconstruct the Hunt for the City’s Justice in Republic 4, and We Discover No Definition
II.i That the hunting in Passage A is a hunt for the city’s justice, not for justice as such; II.ii That the method and the finding are comparable to finding the line on the diagram in the Meno, and to the things admired by the lovers of sights and sounds; II.iii That this ought to be a bad answer to the ‘what is justice?’ question, by Socrates’ own previous standards; II.iv Ontological interlude: Forms and tropes
III. In Which We Consider How Socrates Is Able to Move Forward From Identifying the Justice of a Particular City, to Grasping What Justice Is
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123 III.i That Socrates uses the analogy of rubbing sticks together to explain his method; III.ii That there are other passages that explain the method; III.iii That the ambitions of the method are not to define justice
IV. In Which We Consider David Sachs’s Objection, That There Is a Fallacy of Equating ‘Platonic Justice’ With ‘Vulgar Justice’
IV.i That the shift to the inner disposition is already explained in Adeimantus’s challenge in Book 2; IV.ii Three ways to read the passage about temple-raiding in Republic 4, of which the third is neither fallacious nor reductionist
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V. In Which We Consider the Accusation From Bernard Williams That the Analogy Between Soul and State Will Not Support Socrates’ Desired Conclusions 134
V.i That Williams is assuming (a) that the soul/state comparison is an analogy and (b) that Plato is pursuing an essentialist agenda; V.ii That Williams constructs a story of crisis, and attempted, but ineffective, solution, which is of his own making; V.iii That a better interpretation is possible, if we avoid attributing any essentialist or reductionist moves to Plato
VI. Conclusion
8. Platonic Method: The Philosopher’s Route to Knowledge in Plato’s Republic
I. In Which We Juxtapose Socrates’ Comments About Short Versus Long Routes and About Outlines Versus Finished Drawings, to See Why Socrates Is Employing a Method That Is Not the Best
I.i That Socrates identifies, and follows, a shortcut method of enquiry that is not good enough for the Guardians, but is enough for now; I.ii That Socrates never embarks upon the longer way; I.iii That Socrates takes a route that is third best, in the Sun analogy; I.iv That the Republic aims at no more detail than is required for the target question, and that this is what is meant by contrasting outlines with finished works
II. In Which We Consider the Implications of 505a–506d, Where Socrates Rejects Two Candidate Definitions of the Good, Indicating a General Problem for the Definitional Project
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III. In Which We Consider the Role of Icons in the Divided Line 150
III.i That the Line is set up to explain why shadows are epistemically valuable, and informative, for philosophical enquiry; III.ii That the same
relation, of icon to original, characterizes the higher levels of the Divided Line, and this explains how the method in the Republic is supposed to work; III.iii That we can solve some puzzles about the ratios on the Divided Line, once we see that the degree of clarity is measured by how direct is the access to truth provided by that kind of investigation; III.iv That there is a missing section at the bottom of the Divided Line
IV. In Which We Consider What Is Meant by the Talk of ‘Hypotheses’ in the Divided Line
IV.i That the hypotheses (or ‘posits’) are entities, not axioms; IV.ii What it means to treat the posits as sources, at Level 3 of the Line; IV.iii What happens at Level 4 of the Line, when we no longer appeal to posits as sources; IV.iv That even at Level 4, the dialectician may use an iconic method; IV.v That the content of knowledge at all levels of the Line is perceptual or quasi-visual and conceptual, and never propositional
V. In Which We Consider Whether Socrates Still Thinks That a Person Who Knows Must Be Able to Give a Logos of What She Knows
V.i That the effect of knowledge is to make a person capable of giving an explanation, even if the knowledge does not consist of propositions or definitions; V.ii A counter-argument and my response
VI. Conclusion: That the Ideal City Serves Not to Provide a Definition but as an Icon of Justice, From Which We Can Ascend to a Grasp of Justice Itself
Part IV. Plato’s Theaetetus
9. Introduction and Summary for Part IV: Plato’s Theaetetus
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I. On the Post-Natal Role of Socrates as Midwife, and the Exposure of Theaetetus’s First Brainchild 171
I.i That the midwife has a twofold role; I.ii That Theaetetus’s first brainchild is consigned to the discard pile, once its auxiliary theories have been found too extreme to survive; I.iii That Theaetetus’s second proposal, that science is true discernment, is also supported with elaborate survival aids and then rejected as non-viable by the midwife; I.iv That the third brainchild also proves too sick to save
II. On the Search for a Science of Ousia
II.i That the Interlude redefines aisthesis as a technical term for sensory perception, as distinct from doxa; II.ii That Socrates and Theaetetus are mistakenly looking among the cognitive contents of doxa for what they need, namely a grasp of ousia; II.iii That Theaetetus is too young and inexperienced in dialectic to understand why his second thesis has failed; II.iv That perception and doxa, whether true or false, presuppose another kind of knowledge, namely knowing ‘what it is’ about the type
10. Geometry and the Scientific Project: Theaetetus 142a–184b
I. In Which We Discover the Significance of Theaetetus’s Aptitude for Geometry and of His Premature Death
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I.i That the search for a definition of episteme must fail, and this is partly because Theaetetus is too young
II. In Which We Consider Whether Listing Examples Could Be a Good Answer, and Discover Why Socrates’ Analysis of Clay Is an Unhelpful Model 185
II.i That mentioning examples is part of the iconic method, and that Socrates’ objections to the examples, and his recommended kind of analysis, are not the usual ones, but are nonetheless misguided; II.ii That Theaetetus’s three definitions of episteme are all designed to follow the model of a simple compositional analysis, which is a faulty model and leads to failure;
II.iii That there is nothing wrong with using the term that is to be defined, and that Socrates is confused on that score
III. In Which We Briefly Consider Theaetetus’s Proposal That Science Is ‘Perception’: Whether It Is a Good Suggestion and Why It Fails to Thrive 192
III.i That Theaetetus conceives his proposed definitions by the iconic method, generalizing from his experience of geometry as a science, and that his first proposal has some merits, since knowledge of concepts is a bit like perception;
III.ii That Socrates respects the standard constraints on what can count as science, in developing his support package for EA
IV. Conclusion: That Geometry Invites the Thought That We Perceive the Intelligible Types in the Diagram, and That No Other Scientific Knowledge Is Presupposed 195
11. The Division Between Sense Perception and Non-Sensory Doxa in the Interlude: Theaetetus 184a–187b 197
I. In Which We Clarify the Meaning of Doxa and Doxazein in the Rest of the Dialogue 197
I.i That ‘believe’ or ‘judge’ are not good translations for D, and why not;
I.ii That when Socrates lists ‘being’ as (hypothetically) one of the features accessible to D but not SP, he does not mean propositional form
II. In Which We Take Issue With Some Classic Interpretations of the Interlude and Their More Recent Descendants
II.i That there are four ways of reading the reference to ‘being’, and that the most popular reading takes it as marking a feature of propositions;
II.ii That many interpretations cobble together Reading C and Reading P, sometimes with other interpretations as well, in trying to make sense of Plato’s text
III. In Which We Embark on a Reading of the Interlude and Note That Socrates Distinguishes Two Faculties Equipped to Detect Non-Propositional Features, One With, and One Without, the Use of Bodily Organs
III.i That Socrates explains his distinction between SP and D by giving lists of paradigm cases; III.ii That the argument does not assume that all sensibles are special sensibles, accessible to only one sense; III.iii Whether we see with our eyes or with our souls, and why stipulating some technical terminology helps the argument here (but has nothing to do with correcting
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an earlier mistake or inventing a unified consciousness); III.iv That the thought experiment at 185b is not a mistake, but reinforces the key premise, to ensure it is understood; III.v That the ‘being’ in List B is not the copula, and that propositional form characterizes enquiry (both sensory and dianoetic), but not its conclusions; III. vi That nothing much hangs on the claim that some features in List A or B are ‘common’; III.vii That when Socrates links being with truth, this is not because they are propositional; III.viii That we should respect the fact that the text lists ‘being’ as one of several doxastic features
IV. In Which I Canvass a Solution to the Puzzle, by Suggesting That Socrates and Theaetetus are Right That Science Must Access the Truth, But Are Mistaken About What Truth Is, About Its Relation to Being, and That Doxa Captures the Relevant Kind of Truth
IV.i That situating the Interlude alongside the Phaedo and the ‘digression’ in the Theaetetus is informative; IV.ii That the Interlude seems to confuse the discovery of certain List B features with discovering the ‘ti esti’; IV.iii That an alternative possibility, whereby the Interlude draws the same distinction as the Phaedo, seems less convincing on balance; IV.iv That doxa can indeed discern instances of being, in some sense of ‘being’, but not in the sense relevant for episteme; IV.v That Plato has not changed his model of episteme, which is still the science that grasps ‘what it is’ about a type
V. Conclusion: That Doxa Will Not Be a Good Place to Look For Episteme, Given What Episteme Is About
12. On the Failure of the Remaining Two Attempts to Analyse Episteme: Theaetetus 187b–210a
I. In Which We Consider What ‘True’ Means, When Theaetetus Says That ‘There Is Also False Doxa’, and Conclude That He Is Noting the Difference Between Correct and Incorrect Answers to ‘What Is It?’ Questions
I.i That Theaetetus, being misled by the irrelevant contrast sketched in the Interlude, tries to analyse science as a subset of doxa; I.ii That there are two notions of truth at work in the dialogue; I.iii That when Theaetetus contrasts true and false doxa he must mean ‘true’ in the folk sense
II. In Which We Consider the Falsity Problems That Socrates Raises, and How They Contribute to the Discussion
II.i That ETD fails because it cannot distinguish knowledge of types from discernment of tokens, which is parasitic on the former; II.ii That the ETD brainchild cannot survive, because it undermines itself; for if it were correct, neither truth nor falsity would be possible, even in discerning the identity of singular tokens; II.iii That Plato is not confused and is not struggling; II.iv That false doxa of the relevant kind is not due to ‘ignorance birds’, but uses the same conceptual tools as true judgements on the same matters
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III. In Which We Examine Why Socrates Concludes the Examination of ETD With the Jury Example
III.i That the jury example is vague, intuitive, and offers no theoretical explanation of the reason why; III.ii That we should remember how, in the Digression, Socrates spoke about the lack of time for the lawyers to do their job properly in the law courts
IV. In Which We Consider the TDL Analysis, and Socrates’ Attempts to Devise a Rescue Package for It
IV.i That the Dream theory tries to explain what puts an object out of reach of science, on the mistaken assumption that science consists in the analysis of composites into their components; IV.ii That Socrates provides support by seeking potentially helpful meanings of logos, and that the first two kinds of logos—though inadequate for the task—are not so simple-minded as they seem; IV.iii That the third suggestion is also somewhat trickier to understand than it seems, and that Plato is not secretly recommending it; IV.iv That the survey of meanings of logos is probably not noticeably incomplete; IV.v That regardless of whether the discussion has been exhaustive, TDL still fails
V. Conclusion: That Plato Is Not in the Same Position as Socrates, Since He Never Approved of the Naturalistic Project That Socrates Pursues in This Dialogue
Part V. The Bigger Picture
I.i A retrospective on certain unexpected results of this enquiry; I.ii That we need a special sense of ‘is’ for knowing ‘what it is’ in the ti esti sense; I.iii That the key to reading Plato can sometimes lie in the dramatic setting; I.iv That Plato is right about the logical distinction between semantic tools and extensional objects; I.v That Plato is right about the special kind of knowing involved in grasping or possessing concepts; I.vi That Plato is right that searching for definitions is vacuous, and that there are better ways to make philosophical progress, by using images and icons; I.vii That Plato is not an opponent of images or illustrations; I.viii That Plato is on sound ground speaking of the truth in representations as derivative from a prior truth in the things
II. Where Do We Go From Here?
II.i About Plato’s Cratylus; II.ii About Plato’s Sophist; II.iii Conclusion: that conceptual knowledge is irreducible and primitive
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