Plato on True Belief and Knowledge

How would you "know" if it was "true belief" or not?

Men. The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.

Soc. What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?

Well, if you look deeper in the Meno (other dialogues as well)--and consult a better translation--it becomes obvious that there are four categories to which Plato refers--some more so than others. These are, in descending order of concreteness, wisdom/understanding, stable right opinion, mere right opinion, and chance right opinion. Stable right opinion is a kind of knowledge, but it is not as good as the knowledge held by the wise because it still can be prove to error.

Really, all you are digging at is an issue in translating ancient Greek to English. Knowledge is a blanket term in English, but not in Greek. Thus, to us, some meaning of the types of getting it right alluded to in the Meno do not come across very clear.

What Meno obviously meant was that he who has right opinion on a given occasion will sometimes be right on future occasons and sometimes not. He was clearly not claiming that someone can be right and wrong at the same time!

Socrates's response looks like a cheap debating point. He must have known what Meno really meant.

Well, what is correct is correct. The problem with right opinion is that it can be stumbled upon by chance. Having right opinion on accident is not reliable and thus, knowledge is preferred in general. That is really the only place they can differ, but I would much prefer that someone has knowledge rather than be merely lucky to have stumbled across right opinion.

It seems to me that what Meno said was what he meant. He said that someone who has a true belief ("right opinion") may sometimes be wrong. But, as Socrates points out, that certainly is not true.

(There is, however, an interesting and important modal ambiguity here, however, as between whether a true belief cannot be wrong, and whether a true belief is not wrong).

I wonder why you say that when it is still true that if the guide correctly believes where Larisa is, he will guide you to Larisa as well as if he knew where Larisa is. Why should you care as long as you get to Larisa just as efficiently?

By the way, true opinion need not be just a lucky guess as you seem to be assuming. You can have a true opinion, and have good reasons for it, except that those reasons are not enough for knowledge.

But it is true that a person who has a [one] true belief may sometimes be wrong. It's only untrue that he may be wrong about the thing that he truly believes. But that's obvious, isn't it?



"Cannot be wrong" is itself ambiguous. In one sense, a true belief cannot be wrong, because a wrong true belief is a contradiction, and a contradiction is necessarily false. In another sense, of course, a true belief can be wrong - or rather, could have been wrong - because the thing believed is a contingent truth.

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As Theaetetus says, it is a question of reliability. It is useful, for future occasions, to know whether the guide is knowledgeable or whether he was just lucky.



But it could be just a lucky guess...

In English it doesn't really make much sense to talk about having an opinion about where a place is.

In my opinion Canada is east of Texas. What?

I may believe Canada is east of Texas, but surely there is some basis for this belief... maybe somebody told me that. If I say I believe it, but don't know it, that reflects a lack of confidence in my source.

If we're trying to see a distinction between knowledge and belief by suggesting that one is based on authority and one is not, we're going to flounder.

To base knowledge on authority is equating knowledge to belief: belief in the authority.

this would be part of the attempt to differentiate doxa from episteme, might it not? Where doxa is an opinion, and episteme, true knowledge. It seems to me to be much easier to judge the equivalence of the two in a case where the outcome can be settled easily, such as the directions to a town, than in regards to abstruse questions regarding the nature of life.

Anyway - I would like to hear what further Socrates had to add....

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I wonder why you say that when it is still true that if the guide correctly believes where Larisa is, he will guide you to Larisa as well as if he knew where Larisa is. Why should you care as long as you get to Larisa just as efficiently?

By the way, true opinion need not be just a lucky guess as you seem to be assuming. You can have a true opinion, and have good reasons for it, except that those reasons are not enough for knowledge.

If I'm interpreting this correctly, then we should prefer knowledge to true belief because knowledge (unlike true belief) is dependable. He suggests that beliefs (like opinions) are fleeting and that we can't rely on them like we can knowledge. Perhaps Socrates might say something to the effect that only people with knowledge (and not people with mere true beliefs) have earned the position to command our respect-useful as they may be.

He seems to confuse true beliefs with beliefs though. To say back to him as he might talk: True beliefs are forever abiding! No, they are not fastened by the tie of the cause, but no true belief need be, for they are never subject to truancy. Like loyal slaves, they shall always be just where you would expect them to be.

Mere beliefs (or mere opinions) yes; they may go with the wind and do remain unfastened to the tie of the cause, I agree, but no true belief dare need a lock and chain or tie of any kind. They endure.

For Plato, one can have "pistis" or knowledge sufficient for action, that may be correct, but without knowing the ground for such beliefs. One can also have knowledge through the application of logical reasoning ("dianoia"). But, as we read in the Republic, when he writes of the "divided line" true knowledge ("episteme") not only is "correct belief" but the understanding of why it is correct (giving an account by reference to the Forms).

Thus an individual might chance on a true belief, but it remains a belief unless it can provide the assurance, or ground, for its truth.

So, in the metaphor Socrates suggests, true belief becomes knowledge when it is "fastened by the chain" of justification (the account or "logos"). But how, "fastened"? What does "fastened" mean here?

It means that it is not forgotten or better, less likely to be forgotten. The act of "fastening by a chain" is the process of habituation or repetition. This process anchors the information in one's own memory so it can be recalled when needed.