Future, Present, & Past:



Speculative
~~ Giving itself latitude and leisure to take any premise or inquiry to its furthest associative conclusion.
Critical~~ Ready to apply, to itself and its object, the canons of reason, evidence, style, and ethics, up to their limits.
Traditional~~ At home and at large in the ecosystem of practice and memory that radically nourishes the whole person.

Oυδεὶς άμουσος εἰσίτω

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Unjustified, untrue beliefs about Plato


Brandon Watson at Siris has a short post where he points out for apparently the nth+1 time that Plato's account of knowledge is not one that describes it as "Justified True Belief." He points out that at the locus classicus, the Theatetus 201c-210b, Socrates does indeed consider a model of "knowledge" that could conceivably be considered a JTB analogue, but that Socrates expressly rejects it. This is by most reckonings a mature middle-to-later dialogue, and it reaches a conclusion every bit as "skeptical" as the early and supposedly faithfully "Socratic" ones like the Lysis or the Euthyphro:
"So, Theatetus, neither perception, nor true belief, nor the addition of an "account' to true belief, can be knowledge."
"Apparently not."
Sometimes I think that Plato had no express "doctrines" at all. Rather, he had a host of negative qualifications carving out the space for where a true doctrine would be, plus the hope of cultivating the realization (the famous spark leaping from soul to soul in the Seventh Letter) that would make the negative invert into a positive.

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