Teeteto Por La Stanford Encyclopedia
Teeteto Por La Stanford Encyclopedia
Teeteto Por La Stanford Encyclopedia
Introduction
The Theaetetus, which probably dates from about 369 BC, is arguably Plato's greatest
work on epistemology. (Arguably, it is his greatest work on anything.) Plato (c.427347
BC) has much to say about the nature of knowledge elsewhere. But only
the Theaetetus offers a set-piece discussion of the question What is knowledge?
Like many other Platonic dialogues, the Theaetetus is dominated by question-andanswer exchanges, with Socrates as main questioner. His two respondents are
Theaetetus, a brilliant young mathematician, and Theaetetus' tutor Theodorus, who is
rather less young (and rather less brilliant).
Also like other Platonic dialogues, the main discussion of the Theaetetus is set within a
framing conversation (142a-143c) between Eucleides and Terpsion (cp. Phaedo 59c).
This frame may be meant as a dedication of the work to the memory of the man
Theaetetus. Sedley 2004 (68) has argued that it is meant to set some distance between
Plato's authorial voice and the various other voices (including Socrates') that are heard
in the dialogue. Alternatively, or also, it may be intended, like Symposium 1723, to
prompt questions about the reliability of knowledge based on testimony. (Cp. the lawcourt passage (Theaetetus 201a-c), and Socrates' dream (Theaetetus 201c-202c).)
The Theaetetus most important similarity to other Platonic dialogues is that it
is aporeticit is a dialogue that ends in an impasse. The Theaetetus reviews three
definitions of knowledge in turn; plus, in a preliminary discussion, one would-be
definition which, it is said, does not really count. Each of these proposals is rejected,
and no alternative is explicitly offered. Thus we complete the dialogue without
discovering what knowledge is. We discover only three things that knowledge
isnot (Theaetetus 210c; cp. 183a5, 187a1).
This matters, given the place that the Theaetetus is normally assigned in the chronology
of Plato's writings. Most scholars agree that Plato's first writings were the Socratic
dialogues (as they are often called), which ask questions of the What is? form and
typically fail to find answers: What is courage? (Laches), What is self-control?
(Charmides), What is justice? (Alcibiades I;Republic 1), What is holiness?
(Euthyphro), What is friendship? (Lysis), What is virtue? (Meno), What is
nobility? (Hippias Major). After some transitional works (Protagoras, Gorgias,
Cratylus, Euthydemus) comes a series of dialogues in which Plato writes to a less
tightly-defined format, not always focusing on a What is? question, nor using the
question-and-answer interrogative method that he himself depicts as strictly Socratic:
the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, theSymposium, and the Republic. In these dialogues Plato
shows a much greater willingness to put positive and ambitious metaphysical views in
Socrates' mouth, and to make Socrates the spokesman for what we call Plato's theory
of Forms.
After these, it is normally supposed that Plato's next two works were
the Parmenides and theTheaetetus, probably in that order. If so, and if we take as
seriously as Plato seems to the important criticisms of the theory of Forms that are
made in the Parmenides, then the significance of theTheaetetus's return to the aporetic
method looks obvious. Apparently Plato has abandoned the certainties of his middleperiod works, such as the theory of Forms, and returned to the almost-sceptical manner
of the early dialogues. In the Theaetetus, the Forms that so dominated theRepublic's
discussions of epistemology are hardly mentioned at all. A good understanding of the
dialogue must make sense of this fact.
dismisses D2 just by arguing that accidental true beliefs cannot be called knowledge,
giving Athenian jurymen as an example of accidental true belief.
Theaetetus tries a third time. His final proposal (D3) defines knowledge as true belief
with an account (logos) (201c-d). The ensuing discussion attempts to spell out what it
might be like for D3 to be true, then makes three attempts to spell out what a logos is.
In 201d-202d, the famous passage known as The Dream of Socrates, a two-part
ontology of elements and complexes is proposed. Parallel to this ontology runs a theory
of explanation that claims that to explain, to offer a logos, is to analyse complexes into
their elements, i.e., those parts which cannot be further analysed. Crucially, the Dream
Theory says that knowledge of O is true belief about O plus an account of O's
composition. If O is not composite, O cannot be known, but only perceived (202b6).
When Socrates argues against the Dream Theory (202d8206b11), it is this entailment
that he focuses on.
Socrates then turns to consider, and reject, three attempts to spell out what a logos is
to give an account of account. The first attempt takes logos just to mean speech or
statement (206c-e). The second account (206e4208b12) of logos of O takes it as
enumeration of the elements ofO. The third and last proposal (208c1210a9) is that to
give the logos of O is to cite the smeion ordiaphora of O, the sign or diagnostic
feature wherein O differs from everything else.
All three attempts to give an account of account fail. The day's discussion, and the
dialogue, end in aporia. Socrates leaves to face his enemies in the courtroom.
3. Overall Interpretations of
the Theaetetus
The Theaetetus is a principal field of battle for one of the main disputes between Plato's
interpreters. This is the dispute between Unitarians and Revisionists.
Unitarians argue that Plato's works display a unity of doctrine and a continuity of
purpose throughout. Unitarians include Aristotle, Proclus, and all the ancient and
mediaeval commentators; Bishop Berkeley; and in the modern era, Schleiermacher, Ast,
Shorey, Dis, Ross, Cornford, and Cherniss.
Revisionists retort that Plato's works are full of revisions, retractations, and changes of
direction. Eminent Revisionists include Lutoslawski, Ryle, Robinson, Runciman, Owen,
McDowell, Bostock, and many recent commentators.
Unitarianism is historically the dominant interpretive tradition. Revisionism, it appears,
was not invented until the text-critical methods, such as stylometry, that were developed
in early nineteenth-century German biblical studies were transferred to Plato.
In the twentieth century, a different brand of Revisionism has dominated Englishspeaking Platonic studies. This owes its impetus to a desire to read Plato as charitably
as possible, and a belief that a charitable reading of Plato's works will minimise their
dependence on the theory of Forms. (Corollary: Unitarians are likelier than Revisionists
to be sympathetic to the theory of Forms.)
Unitarianism could be the thesis that all of Plato's work is, really, Socratic in method
and inspiration, and that Plato should be credited with no view that is not endorsed in
the early dialogues. (In some recent writers, Unitarianism is this thesis: see Penner and
Rowe (2005).) But this is not the most usual form of Unitarianism, which is more likely
to read back the concerns of the Phaedo and the Republic into the Socratic dialogues,
than to read forward the studied agnosticism of the early works into these more
ambitious later dialogues. Likewise, Revisionismcould be evidenced by the obvious
changes of outlook that occur, e.g., between the Charmides and the Phaedo, or again
between the Protagoras and the Gorgias. But the main focus of the
Revisionist/Unitarian debate has never been on these dialogues. The contrasts between
theCharmides and the Phaedo, and the Protagoras and the Gorgias, tell us little about
the question whether Plato ever abandoned the theory of Forms. And that has usually
been the key dispute between Revisionists and Unitarians.
Hence the debate has typically focused on the contrast between the the Middle Period
dialogues and the Late dialogues. Revisionists say that the Middle Period dialogues
enounce positive doctrines, above all the theory of Forms, which the Late dialogues
criticise, reject, or simply bypass. The main place where Revisionists (e.g., Ryle 1939)
suppose that Plato criticises the theory of Forms is in the Parmenides (though some
Revisionists find criticism of the theory of Forms in theTheaetetus and Sophist as well).
The main places where Revisionists look to see Plato managing without the theory of
Forms are the Theaetetus and Sophist.
Ryle's Revisionism was soon supported by other Oxford Plato scholars such as
Robinson 1950 and Runciman 1962 (28). Revisionism was also defended by G.E.L.
Owen. More recently, McDowell 1976, Bostock 1988, and Burnyeat 1990 are three
classic books on the Theaetetus of a decidedly Revisionist tendency. (McDowell shows
a particularly marked reluctance to bring in the theory of Forms anywhere where he is
not absolutely compelled to.)
Revisionists are committed by their overall stance to a number of more particular
views. They are more or less bound to say that the late Plato takes
the Parmenides' critique of the theory of Forms to be cogent, or at least impressive; that
the Sophists theory of the five greatest kinds (Sophist254b-258e) is not a
development of the theory of Forms; and that the Timaeus was written before
the Parmenides, because of the Timaeus' apparent defence of theses from the theory of
Forms. Their line on the Theaetetus will be that its argument does not support the
We should not miss the three philosophical theses that are explicitly advanced in the
Introduction. They are offered without argument by Socrates, and agreed to without
argument by Theaetetus, at 145d7145e5:
1. The wise are wise sophiai (= by/ because of/ in respect of/ as a result of
wisdom:145d11).
2. To learn is to become wiser about the topic you are learning about (145d89).
3. Wisdom (sophia) and knowledge (epistm) are the same thing (145e5).
All three theses might seem contentious today. (1) seems to allude to Phaedo 100e's
notorious thesis about the role of the Form of F-ness in any x's being F
that x is F by the Form of F-ness. (2) looks contentious because it implies (3); and (3)
brings me to a second question about 142a-145e (which is also an important question
about the whole dialogue): What is the meaning of the Greek word that I am translating
as knowledge, epistm?
Much has been written about Plato's words for knowledge. One important question
raised by Runciman 1962 is the question whether Plato was aware of the commonplace
modern distinction between knowing that, knowing how, and knowing what (or whom).
Nothing is more natural for modern philosophers than to contrast knowledge of objects
(knowledge by acquaintance or objectual knowledge; French connatre) with
knowledge of how to do things (technique knowledge), and with knowledge of
propositions or facts (propositional knowledge; French savoir). Runciman doubts that
Plato is aware of this threefold distinction (1962, 17): At the time of writing
the Theaetetus Plato had made no clear distinction [between] knowing that, knowing
how, and knowing by acquaintance.
Against this, Plato's word for knowing how is surely tekhn, from which we get the
English word technique. Plato obviously thinks tekhn incidental to a serious
discussion of epistm. This is part of the point of the argument against definition by
examples that begins at 146d (cp. 177c-179b).
As for the difference between knowing that and knowledge by acquaintance:
the Theaetetus does mix passages that discuss the one sort of knowledge with passages
that discuss the other. This does not imply that Plato was unaware of the difference.
Perhaps he wants to discuss theories of knowledge that find deep conceptual
connections between the two sorts of knowledge.
A grammatical point is relevant here. The objectual I know Socrates in classical
Greek is oida (orgignsk) ton Skratn; the propositional I know Socrates is
wise is oida (or gignsk) ton Skratn sophon einai, literally I know Socrates to
be wise. The to be (einai) is idiomatically dispensable; dispensing with it, we
get oida ton Skratn sophon, literally I know (the) wiseSocrates. Thus Greek idiom
can readily treat the object of propositional knowledge, which in English would most
naturally be a that-clause, as a thing considered as having a quality. We might almost
say that Greek treats what is known in propositional knowledge as just one special case
of what is known in objectual knowledge. This suggests that the ancient Greeks
naturally saw propositional and objectual knowledge as more closely related than we do
(though not necessarily as indistinguishable). If so, Plato may have felt able to offer a
single treatment for the two kinds of knowledge without thereby confusing them. The
point will be relevant to the whole of theTheaetetus.
examples of kinds of knowledge. (See e.g., 146e7, We weren't wanting to make a list
of kinds of knowledge.) This is a different matter.
Why, anyway, would the Platonist of the Republic think that examples of the objects of
knowledge are enough for a definition of knowledge? He is surely the last person to
think that. The person whowill think this is the empiricist, who thinks that we acquire
all our concepts by exposure to examples of their application: Locke, Essay II.1,
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 100a49. For the Platonist, definition by examples is
never even possible; for the empiricist, definition by examples is the natural method in
every case. This suggests that empiricism is a principal target of the argument of
the Theaetetus. More about this in sections 68.
Theaetetus is puzzled by his own inability to answer Socrates' request for a definition of
knowledge, and contrasts it with the ease with which he can provide mathematical
definitions. He gives an example of a mathematical definition; scholars are divided
about the aptness of the parallel between this, and what would be needed for a
definition of knowledge. Socrates' response, when Theaetetus still protests his inability
to define knowledge, is to compare himself to a midwife in a long and intricate analogy.
Many ancient Platonists read the midwife analogy, and more recently Cornford 1935
has read it, as alluding to the theory of recollection. But it is better not to import
metaphysical assumptions into the text without good reason, and it is hard to see what
the reason would be beyond a determination to insist that Plato always maintained the
theory of recollection. With or without this speculation, the midwife passage does tell
us something important about how the Theaetetus is going to proceed. In line with the
classification that the ancient editors set at the front of the dialogue, it is going to
bepeirastikos, an experimental dialogue. It will try out a number of suggestions about
the nature of knowledge. As in the aporetic dialogues, there is no guarantee that any of
these suggestions will be successful (and every chance that none of them will be).
So read, the midwife passage can also tell us something important about the limitations
of theTheaetetus' inquiry. The limitations of the inquiry are the limitations of the main
inquirers, and neither (the historical) Socrates nor Theaetetus was a card-carrying
adherent of Plato's theory of Forms. Perhaps the dialogue brings us only as far as the
threshold of the theory of Forms precisely because, on Socratic principles, one can get
no further. To get beyond where the Theaetetus leaves off, you have to be a Platonist.
(For book-length developments of this reading of the Theaetetus, see Sedley 2004 and
Chappell 2005.)
Between Stephanus pages 151 and 187, and leaving aside the Digression, 172177
(section 6d), 31 pages of close and complex argument state, discuss, and eventually
refute the first of Theaetetus' three serious attempts at a definition of knowledge (D1):
Knowledge is perception.
As before, there are two main alternative readings of 151187: the Unitarian and the
Revisionist. On the Unitarian reading, Plato's purpose is to salvage as much as possible
of the theories of Protagoras and Heracleitus (each respectfully described as ou
phaulon: 151e8, 152d2). Plato's strategy is to show that these theories have their own
distinctive area of application, the perceptible or sensible world, within which they are
true. However, the sensible world is not the whole world, and so these theories are not
the whole truth. We get absurdities if we try to take them as unrestrictedly true. To
avoid these absurdities it is necessary to posit the intelligible world (the world of the
Forms) alongside the sensible world (the world of perception). When this is done,
Platonism subsumes the theories of Protagoras and Heracleitus as partial truths. On this
reading, the strategy of the discussion of D1 is to transcend Protagoras and Heracleitus:
to explain their views by showing how they are, not the truth, but parts of a larger truth.
In the process the discussion reveals logical pressures that may push us towards the
two-worlds Platonism that many readers, e.g., Ross and Cornford, find in
the Republic and Timaeus.
On the Revisionist reading, Plato's purpose is to refute the theories of Protagoras and
Heracleitus. He thinks that the absurdities those theories give rise to, come not from
trying to take the theories asunrestrictedly true, but from trying to take them as true at
all, even of the sensible world. Anyone who tries to take seriously the thesis that
knowledge is perception has to adopt theories of knowledge and perception like
Protagoras' and Heracleitus'. But their theories are untenable. Bymodus tollens this
shows that D1 itself is untenable. On this reading, the strategy of the discussion of D1 is
to move us towards the view that sensible phenomena have to fall under the same
general metaphysical theory as intelligible phenomena.
This outline of the two main alternatives for 151187 shows how strategic and tactical
issues of Plato interpretation interlock. For instance, the outline shows how important it
is for an overall understanding of the Theaetetus to have a view on the following
questions of detail (more about them later):
1. At 156a-157c, is Socrates just reporting, or also endorsing, a Heracleitean flux
theory of perception?
2. What is the date of the Timaeus, which seems (2829, 45b46c, 49e) to present a
very similar theory of perception to that found in Theaetetus 1567?
3. What does Plato take to be the logical relations between the three positions
under discussion in 151184 (D1, Protagoras' theory, and Heracleitus' theory)?
The closer he takes them to be, the more support that seems to give to the
Revisionist view that the whole of 151187 is one gigantic modus tollens. The
more separate they are, the better for those versions of Unitarianism that suggest
that Plato wants to pick and choose among the positions offered in 151187.
So much for the overall structure of 151187; now for the parts.
3. (The dice paradox:) changes in a thing's qualities are not so much changes in that
thing as in perceptions of that thing (154a9155c6).
These shocking implications, Socrates says, give the phenomenal subjectivist his reason
to reject the entire object/quality metaphysics, and to replace it with a metaphysics of
flux.
In 155c-157c the flux theory is used to develop a Protagorean/Heracleitean account of
perception, to replace accounts based on the object/property ontology of common sense.
Socrates notes the subversive implications of the theory of flux for the meaningfulness
and truth-aptness of most of our language as it stands. (He returns to this point at 183ab.) The ontology of the flux theory distinguishes kinds of process (kinsis), i.e., of
flux, in two ways: as fast or slow, and as active or passive. Hence there are four such
processes. On these the flux theory's account of perception rests.
A rather similar theory of perception is given by Plato in Timaeus 45b-46c, 67c-68d.
This fact has much exercised scholars, since it relates closely to the question whether
Plato himself accepts the flux theory of perception (cp. Theaetetus 157c5). The question
is important because it connects with the question of whether the Revisionist or
Unitarian reading of 151187 is right. (For more on this issue, see Cornford 1935 (49
50); Crombie 1963, II (2122); Burnyeat 1990 (1718); McDowell 1973 (139140),
Chappell 2005 (7478).)
At 157c-160c Socrates states a first objection to the flux theory. This asks how the flux
theorist is to distinguish false (deceptive) appearances such as dreams from the true
(undeceptive) appearances of the waking world. The flux theorist's answer is that such
appearances should not be described as true and false appearances to the same
person. Rather they should be described as different appearances to different people.
According to the flux theorist, we have the same person if and only if we have the same
combination of a perception and a perceiving (159c-d). So there is no need to call any
appearances false. Thus we preserve the claim that all appearances are truea claim
which must be true if knowledge is perception in the sense that Socrates has taken that
definition.
160b-d summarises the whole of 151-160. Socrates shows how the exploration of
Theaetetus' identification of knowledge with perception has led us to develop a whole
battery of views: in particular, a Protagorean doctrine of the incorrigibility of
perception, and a Heracleitean account of what perception is. Thus perception has one
of the two marks of knowledge, infallibility (Cornford 1935, 58); and, if we can
accept Protagoras' identification of what appears to me with what is, ignoring the
addition for me and the distinction between being and becoming, the case will be
complete.
Protagorean claim that judgements about sense-awareness are incorrigible (which the
Unitarian Plato denies).
The criticism of D1 breaks down into twelve separate arguments, interrupted by the
Digression (172c-177c: translated and discussed separately in section 6d). There is no
space here to comment in detail on every one of these arguments, some of which, as
noted above, have often been thought frivolous or comically intended (cp. 152e1
153d5). Some brief notes on the earlier objections will show what the serious point of
each might be.
The first objection to Protagoras (160e-161d) observes that if all perceptions are true,
then there is no reason to think that animal perceptions are inferior to human ones: a
situation which Socrates finds absurd.
If this objection is really concerned with perceptions strictly so called, then it obviously
fails. Protagoras just accepts this supposedly absurd consequence; and apparently he is
right to do so. If we consider animals and humans just as perceivers, there is no
automatic reason to prefer human perceptions. Many animal perceptions are superior to
human perceptions (dogs' hearing, hawks' eyesight, dolphins' echolocatory ability, most
mammals' sense of smell, etc.), and the Greeks knew it, cf. Homer's commonplace
remarks about far-sighted eagles, or indeed Aristotle, in theEudemian Ethics, 1231a5
6. The objection works much better rephrased as an objection aboutjudgements
about perceptions, rather than about perceptions strictly so called. Humans are no more
and no less perceivers than pigs, baboons, or tadpoles. But they are different in their
powers of judgement about perceptions.
This distinction between arguments against a Protagorean view about perception and a
Protagorean view about judgement about perception is relevant to the second objection
too (161d-162a). This objection (cp. Cratylus 386c) makes the point that Protagoras'
theory implies that no one is wiser than anyone else. Notably, the argument does not
attack the idea that perception is infallible. Rather, it attacks the idea that the opinion or
judgement that anyone forms on the basis of perception is infallible (161d3). (This is an
important piece of support for Unitarianism: cp. distinction (2) above.)
A third objection to Protagoras' thesis is very quickly stated in Socrates' two rhetorical
questions at 162c26. Since Protagoras' thesis implies that all perceptions are true, it not
only has the allegedly absurd consequence that animals' perceptions are not inferior to
humans. It also has the consequence that humans' perceptions are not inferior to the
gods'. This consequence too is now said to be absurd.
As with the first two objections, so here. If we consider divinities and humans just as
perceivers, there is no automatic reason to prefer divine perceptions, and hence no
absurdity. Plato may well want us to infer that the Greek gods are not different just in
respect of being perceivers from humans. But they are different in their powers of
judgement about perceptions.
The next four arguments (163a-168c) present counter-examples to the alleged
equivalence of knowledge and perception. The fourth observes that, if perception =
knowledge, then anyone who perceives an utterance in a given language should have
knowledge of that utterance, i.e., understand itwhich plainly doesn't happen. The fifth
raises a similar problem about memory and perception: remembering things
is knowing them, but not perceiving them. The sixth (the covered eye) objection
contrasts not perceiving an object (in one sensory modality) with not knowing it. If
perception = knowledge, seeing an object with one eye and not seeing it with the other
would appear to be a case of the contradictory state of both knowing it and not knowing
it. The seventh points out that one can perceive dimly or faintly, clearly or unclearly, but
that these adverbial distinctions do not apply to ways of knowingas they must if
knowing is perceiving.
In 165e4168c5, Socrates sketches Protagoras's response to these seven objections.
Protagoras makes two main points. First, he can meet some of the objections by
distinguishing types and occasions of perception. Second, teaching as he understands it
is not a matter of getting the pupil to have true rather than false beliefs. Since there are
no false beliefs, the change that a teacher can effect is not a change from false belief to
true belief or knowledge. Rather, Protagoras' model of teaching is a therapeutic model.
What a good teacher does, according to him, is use arguments (or discourses: logoi) as a
good doctor uses drugs, to replace the state of the soul in which bad things are and
appear with one in which good things are and appear. While all beliefs are true, not
all beliefs are beneficial.
A difficulty for Protagoras' position here is that, if all beliefs are true, then all beliefs
about which beliefs are beneficial must be true. But surely, some beliefs about which
beliefs are beneficial contradict other beliefs about which beliefs are beneficial;
especially if some people are better than others at bringing about beneficial beliefs. (For
example, no doubt Plato's and Protagoras' beliefs conflict at this point.) This means that
Protagoras' view entails a contradiction of the same sort as the next objectionthe
famous peritropseems to be meant to bring out.
The peritrop (table-turning) objection (171a-b) is this. Suppose I believe, as
Protagoras does, that All beliefs are true, but also admit that There is a belief that
Not all beliefs are true. If all beliefs are true, the belief that Not all beliefs are true
must be true too. But if that belief is true, then by disquotation, not all beliefs are true.
So I refute myself by contradicting myself; and the same holds for Protagoras.
The validity of the objection has been much disputed. Burnyeat, Denyer and Sedley all
offer reconstructions of the objection that make it come out valid. McDowell and
Bostock suggest that although the objection does not prove what it is meant to prove
(self-contradiction), it does prove a different point (about self-defeat) which is equally
worth making.
Socrates' ninth objection presents Protagoras' theory with a dilemma. If the theory is
completely general in its application, then it must say that not only what counts
as justice in cities, but also what benefits cities, is a relative matter. As Protagoras has
already admitted (167a3), it is implausible to say that benefit is a relative notion. But
the alternative, which Protagoras apparently prefers, is a conceptual divorce between
the notions of justice and benefit, which restrict the application of Protagoras' theory to
the notion of justice. Socrates obviously finds this conceptual divorce unattractive,
though he does not, directly, say why. Instead, he offers us the Digression.
the Republic, it strains credulity to imagine that Plato is not intentionally referring to the
Forms in that passage.
On the other hand, as the Revisionist will point out, the Theaetetus does not seem
to do much with the Forms that are thus allegedly introduced. But perhaps it would
undermine the Unitarian reading of the Theaetetus if the Forms were present in the
Digression in the role of paradigm objects of knowledge. For the Unitarian reading, at
least on the version that strikes me as most plausible, says that the aim of
the Theaetetus is to show that, in the end, we cannot construct a theory of knowledge
without the Forms--a claim which is to be proved by trying and failing, three times, to
do so. So if the Forms were there in the Digression, perhaps that would be a case of
giving the game away.
a false prediction, and so must have had a false belief. Either way, the relativist does not
escape the objection.
Moreover, this defence of Protagoras does not evade the following dilemma. Either
what I mean by claiming (to take an example of Bostock's) that The wine will taste
raw to me in five years' time is literally that. Or else what I mean is just It seems to
me that the wine will taste raw to me in five years' time.
Suppose I mean the former assertion. If the wine turns out not to taste raw five years
hence, Protagoras has no defence from the conclusion that I made a false prediction
about how things would seem to me in five years. Or suppose I meant the latter
assertion. Then I did not make aprediction, strictly speaking, at all; merely a remark
about what presently seems to me. Either way, Protagoras loses.
Another piece of evidence pointing in the same direction is the similarity between
Plato's list of the common notions at Theaetetus 186a and closely contemporary lists
that he gives of the Forms, such as the list of Forms (likeness, multitude, rest and their
opposites) given at Parmenides 129d, with ethical additions at Parmenides 130b. There
are also the megista gen (greatest kinds) ofSophist 254b-258e
(being, sameness, otherness, rest and change); though whether these gen are Forms is
controversial.
I cannot mistake X for Y unless I am able to formulate thoughts about X and Y. But I
will not be able to formulate thoughts about X and Y unless I
am acquainted with X and Y. Being acquainted with Xand Y means knowing X and Y;
and anyone who knows X and Y will not mistake them for each other.
Why think this a genuine puzzle? There seem to be plenty of everyday cases where
knowing some thing in no way prevents us from sometimes mistaking that thing for
something else. One example in the dialogue itself is at 191b (cp. 144c5). It is perfectly
possible for someone who knows Socrates to see Theaetetus in the distance, and
wrongly think that Theaetetus is Socrates. The First Puzzle does not even get off the
ground, unless we can see why our knowledge of X and Y should guarantee us against
mistakes about X and Y. Who is the puzzle of 188a-c supposed to be a puzzlefor?
Some authors, such as Bostock, Crombie, McDowell, and White, think that Plato
himself is puzzled by this puzzle. Thus Crombie 1963: 111 thinks that Plato advances
the claim that any knowledge at all of an object O is sufficient for infallibility
about O because he fails to see the difference between being acquainted with X and
being familiar with X. But to confuse knowing everything about Xwith knowing
enough about X to use the name X is really a very simple mistake. Plato would not be
much of a philosopher if he made this mistake.
If (as is suggested in e.g. Chappell 2004, ad loc.) 187201 is an indirect demonstration
that false belief cannot be explained by empiricism (whether this means a developed
philosophical theory, or the instinctive empiricism of some people's common sense),
then it is likely that the First Puzzle states the basic difficulty for empiricism, to which
the other four Puzzles look for alternative solutions. The nature of this basic difficulty is
not fully, or indeed at all, explained by the First Puzzle. We have to read on and watch
the development of the argument of 187201 to see exactly what the problem is that
gives the First Puzzle its bite.
just by itself; on the other version, it is to believe what is not about one of the things
which are. The argument of the first version, according to Bostock, is just that there
is no such thing as what is not (the case); it is a mere nonentity. But just as you cannot
perceive a nonentity, so equally you cannot believe one either. Bostock proposes the
following solution to this problem: We may find it natural to reply to this argument by
distinguishing propositions [from] facts, situations, states of affairs, and so on. Then
we shall say that the things that are believed are propositions, not facts so a false
belief is not directed at a non-existent.
This raises the question whether a consistent empiricist can admit the existence of
propositions. At least one great modern empiricist, Quine 1953: 1567, thinks not. Plato
agrees: he regards a commitment to the existence of propositions as evidence
of Platonism, acceptance of the claim that abstract objects (and plenty of them)
genuinely exist. So an explanation of false judgement that invoked entities called
propositions would be unavailable to the sort of empiricist that Plato has in his sights.
Bostock's second version of the puzzle makes it an even more transparent sophistry,
turning on a simple confusion between the is of predication and the is of existence.
As pointed out above, we can reasonably ask whether Plato made this distinction, or
made it as we make it.
If the structure of the Second Puzzle is really as Bostock suggests, then the Second
Puzzle is just the old sophistry about believing what is not (cp. Parmenides DK 29B8,
Euthydemus 283e ff., Cratylus429d, Republic 477a, Sophist 263e ff.). Moreover, on this
interpretation of the Second Puzzle, Plato is committed, in his own person and with full
generality, to accepting (at least provisionally) a very bad argument for the conclusion
that there can be no false belief. It would be nice if an interpretation of the Second
Puzzle were available that saw it differently: e.g., as accepted by him only in a context
where special reasons make the Second Puzzle very plausible in that context.
One such interpretation is defended e.g., by Burnyeat 1990: 78, who suggests that the
Second Puzzle can only work if we accept the scandalous analogy between judging
what is not and seeing or touching what is not there to be seen or touched: A model
on which judgements relate to the world in the same sort of unstructured way as
perceiving or (we may add) naming, will tie anyone in knots when it comes to the
question What is a false judgement the judgement/ name of?. The only available
answer, when the judgement is taken as an unstructured whole, appears to be: Nothing.
Notice that it is the empiricist who will most naturally tend to rely on this analogy. It is
the empiricist who finds it natural to assimilate judgement and knowledge to
perception, so far as he can. So we may suggest that the Second Puzzle is a mere
sophistry for any decent account of false judgement, but a good argument against the
empiricist account of false judgement that Plato is attacking. The moral of the Second
Puzzle is that empiricism validates the old sophistry because it treats believing or
judging as too closely analogous to seeing: 188e47. For empiricism judgement, and
thought in general, consists in awareness of the ideas that are present to our minds,
exactly asthey are present to our minds. It cannot consist in awareness of those ideas as
they are not; because (according to empiricism) we are immediately and incorrigibly
aware of our own ideas, it can only consist in awareness of those ideas as they are. Nor
can judgement consist in awareness of ideas that are not present to our minds, for
(according to empiricism) what is not present to our minds cannot be a part of our
thoughts. Still less can judgement consist in awareness of ideas that do not exist at all.
The old sophists took false belief as judging what is not; they then fallaciously slid
from judging what is not, to judging nothing, to not judging at all, and hence
concluded that no judgement that was ever actually made was a false judgement. The
empiricism that Plato attacks not only repeats this logical slide; it makes it look almost
reasonable. The point of the Second Puzzle is to draw out this scandalous consequence.
mental image, and then identifies believing what is with having a mental image, too
and so proves the impossibility of false belief. The Third Puzzle restricts itself (at
least up to 190d7) to someone who has the requisite mental images, and adds the
suggestion that he manages to confuse them by a piece of inadvertency. Socrates'
rejoinder is that nothing has been done to showhow there can be inadvertent confusions
of things that are as simple and unstructured, and as simply grasped or not grasped, as
the empiricist takes mental images to be. Just as speech is explicit outerdialogue, so
thought is explicit inner dialogue. What the empiricist needs to do to show the
possibility of such a confusion is to explain how, on his principles, either speech or
thought can fail to be fully explicit and fully in touch with its objects, if it is in
touch with them at all.
In the discussion of the Fourth and Fifth Puzzles, Socrates and Theaetetus together
work out the detail of two empiricist attempts to explain just this. It then becomes
clearer why Plato does not think that the empiricist can explain the difference between
fully explicit and not-fully-explicit speech or thought. Plato thinks that, to explain this,
we have to abandon altogether the empiricist conception of thought as the concatenation
(somehow) of semantically inert simple mental images. Instead, we have to understand
thought as the syntactic concatenation of the genuine semantic entities, the Forms.
Mistakes in thought will then be comprehensible as mistakes either about the logical
interrelations of the Forms, or about the correct application of the Forms to the sensory
phenomena.
This proposal faces a simple and decisive objection. No one disputes that there are false
beliefs thatcannot be explained as mismatches of thought and perception: e.g., false
beliefs about arithmetic. The Wax Tablet does not explain how such false beliefs
happen; indeed it entails that they can'thappen. Such mistakes are confusions of two
objects of thought, and the Wax Tablet model does not dispute the earlier finding that
there can be no such confusions. So the Wax Tablet model fails.
There is of course plenty more that Plato could have said in criticism of the Wax Tablet
model. Most obviously, he could have pointed out the absurdity of identifying any
number with any individual's thought of that number (195e9 ff.); especially when the
numerical thought in question is no more than an ossified perception. In the present
passage Plato is content to refute the Wax Tablet by the simplest and shortest argument
available: so he does not make this point. But perhaps the point is meant to occur to the
reader; for the same absurdity reappears in an even more glaring form in the Aviary
passage.
for thought: a kind of object that can be thought of under different aspects (say, as the
sum of 5 and 7, or as the integer 12). There are no such aspects to the items of
knowledge that the Aviary deals in. As with the conception of the objects of thought
and knowledge that we found in the Wax Tablet, it is this lack of aspects that dooms the
Aviary's conception of the objects of knowledge too. Like the Wax Tablet, the Aviary
founders on its own inability to accommodate the point that thought cannot consist
merely in the presentation of a series of inert objects of thought. Whether these
objects of thought are mental images drawn from perception or something else, the
thinking is not so much in the objects of thought as in what is done with those objects
(186d24).
We may illustrate this by asking: When the dunce who supposes that 5 + 7 = 11 decides
to activate some item of knowledge to be the answer to What is the sum of 5 and
7?, which item of knowledge does he thus decide to activate? At first only two answers
seem possible: either he decides to activate 12, or he decides to activate 11. If he
decides to activate 12, then we cannot explain the fact that what he actually does is
activate 11, except by saying that he mistakes the item of knowledge which is 11 for the
item of knowledge which is 12. But this mistake is the very mistake ruled out as
impossible right at the beginning of the inquiry into false belief (188a-c). Alternatively,
if he decides to activate 11, then we have to ask why he decides to do this. The most
plausible answer to that question is: Because he believes falsely that 5 + 7 = 11. But
as noted above, if he has already formed this false belief, within the account that is
supposed to explain false belief, then a regress looms.
In fact, the correct answer to the question Which item of knowledge does the dunce
decide to activate? is neither 12 nor 11. It is that number which is the sum of 5
and 7. But this answer does not save the Aviary theorist from the dilemma just pointed
out; for it is not available to him. To be able to give this answer, the Aviary theorist
would have to be able to distinguish that number which is the sum of 5 and 7 from
12. But since 12 is that number which is the sum of 5 and 7, this distinction
cannot be made by anyone who takes the objects of thought to be simple in the way that
the Aviary theorist seems to.
At 199e1 ff. Theaetetus suggests an amendment to the Aviary. This is that we might
have items ofignorance in our heads as well as items of knowledge. As Socrates
remarks, these ignorance-birds can be confused with knowledge-birds in just the same
way as knowledge-birds can be confused with each other. So the addition does not help.
A second question, which arises often elsewhere in the Theaetetus, is whether the
argument's appearance of aporia reflects genuine uncertainty on Plato's part, or is rather
a kind of literary device. Is Plato thinking aloud, trying to clarify his own view about
the nature of knowledge, as Revisionists suspect? Or is he using an aporetic argument
only to smoke out his opponents, as Unitarians think?
The evidence favours the latter reading. There are a significant number of other
passages where something very like Theaetetus' claim (D3) that knowledge is true
belief with an account is not only discussed, but actually defended: for
instance, Meno 98a2, Phaedo 76b56, Phaedo 97d-99d2,Symposium 202a5-9, Republic
534b3-7, and Timaeus 51e5. So it appears that, in the Theaetetus, Plato cannot be
genuinely puzzled about what knowledge can be. Nor can he genuinely doubt his own
former confidence in one version of D3. If he does have a genuine doubt or puzzle of
this sort, it is simply incredible that he should say what he does say in 201210 without
also expressing it.
What Plato does in 201210 is: present a picture (Socrates' Dream) of how things may
be if D3 is true (201c-202c); raise objections to the Dream theory which are said
(206b12) to be decisive (202c-206c); and present and reject three further suggestions
about the meaning of logos, and so three more versions of D3 (206c-210a). But none of
these four interpretations of D3 is Plato's own earlier version of D3, which says that
knowledge = true belief with an account of the reason why the true belief is true. If
what Plato wants to tell us in Theaetetus 201210 is that he no longer
acceptsany version of D3, not even his own version, then it is extraordinary that he does
not even mention his own version, concentrating instead on versions of D3 so different
from Plato's version as to be obviously irrelevant to its refutation.
Unitarians can suggest that Plato's strategy is to refute what he takes to be false versions
of D3 so as to increase the logical pressure on anyone who rejects Plato's version of D3.
In particular, he wants to put pressure on the empiricist theories of knowledge that seem
to be the main target of theTheaetetus. What Plato wants to show is, not only that no
definition of knowledge except his own, D3, is acceptable, but also that no version of
D3 except his own is acceptable.
Taken as a general account of knowledge, the Dream Theory implies that knowledge is
only of complexes, and that there can be no knowledge of simples. Socrates attacks this
implication.
A common question about the Dream Theory is whether it is concerned with objectual
or propositional knowledge. Those who take the Dream Theory to be concerned
with propositionalknowledge include Ryle 1990: 2730: from 201 onwards Plato
concentrates on know (connatre): [Socrates' Dream] is a logician's theory, a theory
about the composition of truths and falsehoods. Those who take the Dream Theory to
be concerned with objectual knowledge include White 1976: 177, and Crombie 1963:
II: 4142; also Bostock 1988. A third way of taking the Dream Theory, which may well
be the most promising interpretation, is to take it as a Logical Atomism: as a theory
which founds an account of propositional structure on an account of the concatenation
of simple objects of experience or acquaintance such as sense data.
The Logical-Atomist reading of the Dream Theory undercuts the propositional/
objectual distinction. On this reading, the Dream Theory claims that simple, private
objects of experience are the elements of the proposition; thus, the Dream Theory
is both a theory about the structure of propositions and a theory about simple and
complex objects. It claims in effect that a proposition's structure is that of a complex
object made up out of simple objects, where these simple objects are conceived in the
Russellian manner as objects of inner perception or acquaintance, and the complexes
which they compose are conceived in the phenomenalist manner as (epistemological
and/ or semantic) constructs out of those simple objects.
This supposition makes good sense of the claim that we ourselves are examples of
complexes (201e2: the primary elements (prta stoikheia) of which we and everything
else are composed). If the Dream theorist is a Logical Atomist, he will think that
there is a clear sense in which people, and everything else, are composed out of sense
data. He will also think that descriptions of objects, too, are complexes constructed in
another way out of the immediately available simples of sensation.
For such a theorist, epistemology and semantics alike rest upon the foundation provided
by the simple objects of acquaintance. Both thought and meaning consist in the
construction of complex objects out of those simple objects. Philosophical analysis,
meanwhile, consists in stating how the complexes involved in thought and meaning are
constructed out of simples. This statement involves, amongst other things, dividing
down to and enumerating the (simple) parts of such complexes.
What then is the relation of the Dream Theory to the problems posed for empiricism by
the discussion of D2 in 187201? The fundamental problem for empiricism, as we saw,
is the problem how to get from sensation to content: the problem of how we could start
with bare sense-data, and build up out of them anything that deserved to be
called meaning. Plato thinks that there is a good answer to this, though it is not an
empiricist answer. Sense experience becomes contentful when it is understood and
arranged according to the structures that the Forms give it. So to understand sense
experience is, in the truest sense, to give an account for it.
The empiricist cannot offer this answer to the problem of how to get from sensation to
content without ceasing to be an empiricist. What the empiricist can do is propose that
content arises out of sets of sense experiences. We get to the level of belief and
knowledge only when we start to consider such sets: before that we are at the level only
of perception. Our beliefs, couched in expressions that refer to and quantify over such
sets, will then become knowledge (a) when they are true, and (b) when we understand
the full story of their composition out of such sets.
If this is the point of the Dream Theory, then the best answer to the question Whose is
the Dream Theory? is It belongs to the empiricist whom Plato is attacking.
compromise its singularity. And if the elements are not the parts of the syllable, nothing
else can be. So the syllable has no parts, which makes it as simple as an element. Thus
if the element is unknowable, the syllable must be unknowable too. This result
contradicts the Dream Theory too.
Finally, in 206a1-c2, Plato makes a further, very simple, point against the Dream
Theory. Our own experience of learning letters and syllables shows that it is both more
basic and more important to know elements than complexes, not vice versa as the
Dream Theory implies. The thesis that the complexes are knowable, the elements
unknowable, is false to our experience, in which knowledge of the elements is
primary (Burnyeat 1990:192).
9. Conclusion
The Theaetetus is an extended attack on certain assumptions and intuitions about
knowledge that the intelligent man-in-the-streetTheaetetus, for instancemight find
initially attractive, and which some philosophers known to PlatoProtagoras and
Heracleitus, for instancehad worked up into complex and sophisticated philosophical
theories. Basic to all these assumptions and intuitions, which here have been grouped
together under the name empiricism, is the idea that knowledge is constructed out of
perception and perception alone.
The first part of the Theaetetus attacks the idea that knowledge could be
simply identified with perception. Perceptions alone have no semantic structure. So if
this thesis was true, it would be impossible to state it.
The second part attacks the suggestion that knowledge can be defined as true belief,
where beliefs are supposed to be semantically-structured concatenations of sensory
impressions. Against this Plato argues that, unless something can be said to
explain how impressions can be concatenated so as to give them semantic structure,
there is no reason to grant that the distinction between true and false applies to such
beliefs any more than it does to perceptions.
Finally, in the third part of the Theaetetus, an attempt is made to meet this challenge,
and present some explanation of how semantic structures can arise out of mere
perceptions or impressions. The proposed explanation is the Dream Theory, a theory
interestingly comparable to Russellian Logical Atomism, which takes both propositions
and objects to be complexes logically constructed out of simple sensory impressions.
On this conception, knowledge will come about when someone is capable not only of
using such logical constructions in thought, but of understanding how they arise from
perception.
Socrates' basic objection to this theory is that it still gives no proper explanation
of how this logical construction takes place. Without such an explanation, there is no
good reason to treat the complexes that are thus logically constructed as anything other
than simples in their own right. We need to know how it can be that, merely by
conjoining perceptions in the right way, we manage to achieve a degree of semantic
structure that (for instance) makes it possible to refer to things in the world, such as
Theaetetus. But this is not explained simply by listing all the simple perceptions that are
so conjoined. Norand this is where we reach the third proposal of 208b11210a9is
it explained by fixing on any of those perceptions in particular, and taking it to be the
special mark of Theaetetus whereby reference to Theaetetus is fixed.
The third proposal about how to understand logos faces the difficulty that, if it adds
anything at all to differentiate knowledge of O from true belief about O, then what it
adds is a diagnostic quality ofO. If there is a problem about how to identify O, there is a
problem about how to identify the diagnostic quality too. This launches a vicious
regress.
One way of preventing this regress is to argue that the regress is caused by the attempt
to work up a definition of knowledge exclusively out of empiricist materials. Hence
there is no way of avoiding such a vicious regress if you are determined to try to define
knowledge on an exclusively empiricist basis. The right response is to abandon that
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