Thoughts on Plato's Theaetetus

My latest book is Plato’s Theaetetus, in which the question is asked, “What is knowledge?” I again read the Oxford World Classics version and have no complaints about the introduction or notes, which were all excellent, and informed that me that this is a particularly influential work in the field of epistemology. Overall, I found this to be a challenging dialogue—close to Republic level of difficulty or maybe even greater. In part, this is because a number of the arguments Socrates puts forth are actually weak arguments that he later breaks down. As I was reading though, a bunch of times I’d say to myself, “Where’s Socrates going with this?” or “I’m just not understanding this argument” or “This seems stupid to me.” In many (but not all) of those cases, the argument was intended as a false start to be broken down or mocked. That may be fine from a literary perspective, but from a “2400 years later reading this in my spare time and this is the first time Plato has really done this” perspective, it was a bit frustrating.

A few interesting bits from the introduction/notes stuck out to me. First, Socrates does not differentiate between different kinds of knowing, which weakens some of his conclusions and arguments. Knowing what a toaster is can’t entirely be examined the same way as knowing the Pythagorean theorem or knowing how to build a house. Plato is certainly capable of making that type of differentiation, but for whatever reason chooses not to. Second, there’s some discussion of how we are supposed to read Plato’s works—as one body with one system? As lots of opposing viewpoints? As advancing hidden messages he doesn’t state? This last one I assumed was some stupid crap someone who wanted tenure made up to get attention in the last 20 years, but apparently some ancients even though this could be right.

Socrates and his companions examine a few different theories of the meaning of knowledge, beginning with the idea that knowledge is perception. We sort of know intuitively that this isn’t quite what we mean by the world “knowledge,” but Socrates does not immediately take that line of attack. Instead, an extended discussion begins equating this view with Protagoras’ view that man is the measure of all things, or, in other words, that there’s no objective truth or reality. Plato hates this view, and I agree with him, although it’s difficult to say why. I find it to be abhorrent and nihilistic on an intuitive and empirical level, but I also find it abhorrent on a practical level. If there is no objective truth or reality then pretty soon you get people arguing seriously, like they are now, that 2+2 = 5 or can equal 5 or that math is racist. From there, I think you get the downfall of civilization and all the nice things like electricity and surplus of labor that it allows us to enjoy. I also agree with Plato in that I oppose moral relativism, although that’s a harder argument to make, is only touched on in this dialogue, and I’m unclear to what extent Plato actually may be a moral relativist. Edit: At least based on Copleston’s History of Philosophy, Plato accepts that our sense perceptions are relative but rejects moral relativism and believes there are eternal truths and eternal moral values.

Plato makes a few arguments against the Man-Measure idea. One that goes along with what I’m saying above is that even if we grant that our subjective views about something are right in the present tense, experts are better than others at predicting what is going to happen in the future. If someone who does not know how to build bridges says that a bridge that won’t stand up will do so, he’s simply going to be wrong no matter how much he believes. Protagoras (who Socrates speaks for) objects that of course his theory doesn’t intend to go this far, but I think that it has to. We all sort of know there is an objective reality we share because when we need advice (like medical care) we hire actual experts instead of just making a random choice about what to do.

Another argument he makes is that since he doesn’t believe Man-Measure, and Protagoras does believe it, Protagoras must accept his view of its falsity, thereby disproving his own theory. Plato, I think, considers this the stronger argument, but as the notes point out, it doesn’t really prove Protagoras wrong since the theory is still right for Protagoras and wrong for Socrates and we haven’t moved forward. On the other hand, as the notes also point out, surely when Protagoras or anyone else advances the Man-Measure doctrine, they consider it to convince everyone and not just be a random statement of what one person believes. Otherwise, what is the point of even bringing it up? Interesting side note on this—apparently controversy has stirred since ancient times as to whether Protagoras meant the individual man is the measure of all things or whether he meant that mankind is the measure of all things, although apparently Plato believed he meant the individual theory (this is from Copleston).

At this point, Socrates dispenses with perceptions and starts discussing the idea that knowledge is a true belief plus an account to go along with it. My favorite thing in this part of the dialogue was the analogies that our minds and there grasp of knowledge is like a wax table or like a bird collection where we may not quite read the tablet right or we may mistakenly grab the wrong bird.

Socrates returns a few times to a paradox that false beliefs are not possible, which frankly I didn’t really grasp. The basic idea is that it’s impossible for us to have a false belief where we mistake object “a” for object “b” because if we know both objects we can’t make the mistake and if we don’t know both objects, we’ll never form a belief in the first place to allow us to make the mistake. I get the general idea, but I also don’t find this enlightening because it’s really not what we mean when we say knowledge—knowledge allows for the possibility of mistaken identity. Socrates knows this too, and hence the analogies described above, but he seemed to keep returning to the mistaken identity idea in one form or another. I also don’t buy the argument that having an account is not enough because an account could be a stupid one that doesn’t make sense—surely we are implying that we are requiring a logically consistent account.

Likewise, I did not really grasp the point of Socrates “dream” regarding elements, compounds, and why we can make an account of one but not the other. This was one of the times that Socrates actually was crafting a model with the intent to break it down later, but I couldn’t grasp the point of going in this direction to begin with. I also did not grasp the point of the analogy to words and spelling—I sort of see what Socrates is saying, but don’t understand the reasoning or see how it gets us anywhere. I suppose the point is that he needed to dispute an alternate view of another ancient philosopher, but to a modern reader it didn’t seem that edifying. Edit: The point of these analogies was to break down the idea of an account, and to point out that if someone can “account” for parts of a word or parts of a wagon, they don’t actually know those things.

Overall, I think this is a dialogue where I’m going to need some help from secondary sources to get my head around everything and have chosen to next tackle Frederick Copleston’s history of philosophy book dealing with this era for help and then will likely revisit this dialogue. Edit: After reading more of Copleston, I have a somewhat better grasp of this dialogue, which he breaks down in great detail. He claims that the point to be drawn from the dialogue is basically negative—that true knowledge of individual sense objects is simply impossible and that we can only have true knowledge of the universal and abiding.