Plato

Born and Died

429–347 B.C.E.

Professing or insisting a person is ignorant to a subject but in reality they are not. Socrates used the phrase "I know that I know nothing" and "...that he knew nothing except that he knew that very fact."

Socrates is not saying he doesn't know anything rather that one cannot know anything with absolute certainty but can feel confident about certain things.

Socratic method

The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions.

Using questions, the Socratic method searches for general, commonly held truths that shape opinion, and scrutinizes them to determine their consistency with other beliefs. 

The theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.

Theaetetus' agrument Knowledge is perception is an example of emperical thought.

Stimulated by the rise of experimental science, it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, expounded in particular by John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.

intellectual offspring

The job, as Socrates sees it, is to assist men in the “labor of their souls.” There are other layers to flesh out and explain the analogy: Socrates helps men draw out from within themselves all sorts of beautiful things – thoughts, ideas, insights, truths – which might be described as their “intellectual offspring.” Furthermore, Socrates explains, this process he oversees is, like childbirth, painful, distressing, often fraught with much suffering. This explanation, he hopes, will encourage Theaetetus to persevere in spite of Socrates’ criticisms of him along the way.

man is the measure of all things

Such a definition of knowledge implies that all knowledge is relative to – indeed, all knowledge is a function or product of – the individual who knows it. Moreover, an important consequence of this way of thinking is that what is true for me may not be what is true for you, or for anyone else,

for that matter.

everything is in flux

things themselves have no fixed or static sensible qualities; rather, these qualities come into being (or, as Socrates puts it, are always becoming) through the interaction of these things with the individual who is perceiving them. It is important to note what this means, if it is true: there is no independent, objective reality out there in the world; rather, “reality” is whatever individuals in their subjectivity happen to be perceiving.

Relativist Contradiction

(a) Whatever anyone thinks is true. (This is the relativist principle.)

(b) If I think that (a) is false, then according to (a),what I think is true.

(c) But (b) very clearly contradicts (a)

truth-claim  - example

Nothing is true.

There is no truth. These two statements, curiously enough, are themselves truth-claims. That is to say, each of these statements is an attempt to express something meaningful and in fact true about reality. But at the same time, they assert that there is no such truth to be found in reality! So these claims themselves are internally inconsistent, absurd, and indeed false!

What is the nature of a Socratic dialogue?

A Socratic dialogue is Plato’s characteristic literary form. It is a dramatic, conversational style in which the main character, Socrates, engages in philosophical questioning with the other characters.

Briefly explain the ideas of Socratic ignorance.

“I know that I know nothing” is a typical statement of this Socratic ignorance. This is Socrates’ justification for conversing with others in search of the truth, and with this seemingly humble approach he draws people into discourse with him on all sorts of issues.

The “Socratic method” is the process of questioning and answering whereby Socrates leads his interlocutors (and, by extension us, the readers) to re-examine seriously and often revise their (and perhaps our) previously held views.

Why do we distinguish the historical Socrates from the character Socrates who appears in the dialogues?

The historical Socrates lived and taught in ancient Greece, but there are no writings of his for us to study to learn of his own thought directly and in his own words. The character Socrates is the creation of the historical Socrates’ student Plato.

What is Theaetetus’ initial answer to the question “What is knowledge?” and why is this answer inadequate, according to Socrates?

Theaetetus’ first answer is to enumerate a variety of crafts or disciplines, such as carpentry and cobbling. But Socrates says these are only things that knowledge is about; they are not what knowledge itself is. He is looking for a single account or definition to cover all of these examples.

What is empiricism?

Empiricism is the view that roots all knowledge in the sensory experience of individuals.

What is relativism?

Relativism is the view that truth is something determined by the individual.

What does it mean to say, as Heraclitus does, that “everything is in flux”?

This is to say that things themselves have no fixed or static sensible qualities; rather, these qualities come into being (or, as Socrates puts it, are always becoming) through the interaction of these things with the individual who is perceiving them. This also means that there is no independent, objective reality out there in the world; rather, “reality” is whatever individuals in their subjectivity happen to be perceiving.

Explain the internal inconsistency of the claim, “Whatever anyone thinks is what’s true.”

If I assert that this statement – call it statement

(a) – is false, then according to (a) itself, my statement must be true. But this constitutes an obvious contraction of (a) itself; so we conclude that (a) is logically or internally inconisent.

What would happen to language and discourse if it were true that everything is in flux?

If everything were truly in flux, then it would be impossible ever to say, “It is thus.” That is, it would be impossible to use words to “put one’s finger” and describe truly any state of affairs. So this means that language becomes meaningless for stating truth, and discourse ordered toward grasping truth becomes impossible.

How do we know that knowledge is not sense perception?

Our senses simply present us with a “bombardment of impressions.” That is, they give us only a variety of sense data, including colors, shapes, sounds, textures, scents, etc. But none of these is adequate to explain what exactly is going on in our minds when we know things, for the objects of our minds are apparently quite different from these objects of our senses.

A form is the purely intelligible content that is the same (as opposed to sensible qualities, which are different) across all the examples or members of any particular category of things. It is the reason why all members of a class of things actually belong to that group.