Plato on True Belief and Knowledge

Do you think 'certainty' is another word for 'absolute' in this context? Are they saying, knowledge is not worthy of the name unless it is absolute? I suppose the corollary is that if knowledge is not certain, but it is all we have, is there anything certain? Archimedes said 'give me a lever and I will move the world'. Do we have such a point in modern thought?

Do you think 'certainty' is another word for 'absolute' in this context? Are they saying, knowledge is not worthy of the name unless it is absolute? I suppose the corollary is that if knowledge is not certain, but it is all we have, is there anything certain? Archimedes said 'give me a lever and I will move the world'. Do we have such a point in modern thought?

I wish I had a Greek text of the Meno, because I would be able to see what is actually meant by "absolute" in the context of the original language. There are so many subtleties in the ancient Greek language that are not carried through the translation to English. The forms, which are not discussed in the Meno but are in the Phaedo, are things that are absolute, so if someone has knowledge of them, that knowledge would be absolute.

I suggest, though, that all that Plato is doing is distinguishing between strong and weak knowledge or wisdom/understanding and stable right knowledge. Wisdom seems to be a form of knowledge that could be considered absolute, because if it wasn't, is the wise man truly wise?

Plato distinguished between wisdom and stable right opinion (strong and weak knowledge) in the Republic, but this discussion is supposed to be dealing with the Meno so I am leaving it at that.

You are missing the point that words that we use have different meanings and subtleties in the ancient Greek language than we are accustomed to. Not to mention, the word meaning wisdom in Greek is often mistranslated as knowledge (which happens in Jowett's translation of the Meno). This is also the reason why many have made the same confusion since Plato's days.

All I have to say is that if you want to know what Plato is truly saying you must consult with the Greek text. I have been lucky enough to have a professor who has done that for me to save me much time and effort.

And Meno, who was right the first time, relents (of course). He should have replied to Socrates, "Yes, Socrates. A person can, indeed, be wrong even though he has right opinion". "For example" Meno might have continued, "I believe Larisa is a city in Greece, and I am right to believe that. But it is possible for me to be wrong. I could have been mistaken about Larisa being a city in Greece. But I am not". Could not have Meno replied that way to Socrates?

I am afraid that many people are not conversant with ancient Greek, and so, I am afraid that if you are right, they will never know what Plato is truly saying. But some of them (I for instance) would still like to discuss the problem raised in Meno about true belief and knowledge. Are we barred from doing that? It seems to me that we can discuss the philosophical problems raised in Meno although we do not know ancient Greek. For example, whether Socrates makes the mistake I accuse him of. Certainly, we can ask this question: If Socrates does say what Jowett says he said, did Socrates make a mistake? You do not object to that, do you?

He could have, but he didn't. What Socrates explains afterward does that, although it is done so in a confusing way talking about the statues being bound. Right opinion is not bound so it is possible to be mistaken, but as Socrates says "they are beautiful possessions" when they are correct. What you are looking for is there in the text, although Plato hides it very well.

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I agree with you totally. We can discuss the difference between true belief and knowledge, and we pretty much have beaten Plato dead in the discussion. Maybe it is time to move away from the Meno and either look at other instances in the dialogues where Plato makes the distinction or just focus on our understanding of the differences since we are not getting anywhere trying to find the answer in Plato. Plato is going to move on to the theory of the forms to further expand on what he presents in the Meno, and from there it gets rather ridiculous.

I am afraid that many people are not conversant with ancient Greek, and so, I am afraid that if you are right, they will never know what Plato is truly saying. But some of them (I for instance) would still like to discuss the problem raised in Meno about true belief and knowledge. Are we barred from doing that? It seems to me that we can discuss the philosophical problems raised in Meno although we do not know ancient Greek. For example, whether Socrates makes the mistake I accuse him of. Certainly, we can ask this question: If Socrates does say what Jowett says he said, did Socrates make a mistake? You do not object to that, do you?

But isn't it at least possible that the grounds for the difficulty are that we are not actually understanding what Plato is saying? I certainly do not read Greek, and am no scholar of Plato either. However it seems to me (purely on intutuition) that to believe that Socrates is wrong about this issue, and also to 'leave aside' all of what Plato has to say about 'anamnesis' and 'the soul', may mean you never will know what Plato is saying, because you are not prepared to accept his major premisses, or 'where he is coming from'. It might be necessary to be more sympathetic to his perspective. What if, for example, there is a type of knowledge which is completely certain, which we (culturally) don't have? Is it not at least possible?

Also I wonder what the Meno says about Justice? (if anything). I have a feeling this will help illuminate something about knowledge as well.

I don't think there is a resolution available within your terms of reference.

Speaking on behalf of analytical philosophy, Russell said "We refuse to believe that there some 'higher' way of knowing, by which we can discover truths hidden from science and the intellect." (History of Western Philosophy, Unwin, 1979, p789)

I am sure Plato's whole outlook was based on an understanding that there was just such a higher way of knowledge. If you reject that, then indeed much of what is in platonism, and neoplatonism, makes no sense whatever. So why bring it up?

"In certain passages (e.g. Meno 81cd; Phadoe 75cd-79c; Syposium 211-121; Republic 479, 490a-b, 500b-d, 508d, 514 ff; Phaedrus 249e - 250c, 247d;Timaeus 41d) it requires special pleading to deny that Plato speaks of a mystical knowledge..... Here [is one] example:

[INDENT] When returning into itself, the soul reflects, then it passes into the other world, the region of purity and eternity and immortality and unchangeableness which are its kindred and with them ever it lives, when it is by itself and is not let or hindered; then it ceases from its erring ways being in communion with the unchanging, is unchanging. And this is the state of the soul called knowledge. (Phaedrus 79c - emphasis added.) [/INDENT]

Plato presents this special knowledge as the crux of his philosophy. it is the culimating topic of the Phaedo, the Symposium, the Republic, The Phaedrus, and the Meno, and is assumed as background in most of the other major dialogs. If such ecstatic verbiage is only an elevated way of talking about logical thought or academic investigation, then Plato seems a bit simplistically amazed by it all. Does he mean a truth only on the level of concepts and their interactions? He denies this emphatically in several places.

The usual view of modern western scholars is that Plato is merely distiniguishing between sense consciousness on the one hand and intelligible cogitations such as those of math and deductive logic on the other. In the Philebus, Plato distinguishes them like this:

[INDENT]"Knowledge differs from knowledge - one having regard to the things that come into being and perish, the other to those that do not come into being nor perish, but are always unchanging and unaltered. revising them on the score of truth, we concluded that the latter was truer than the former" ( Philebus 61d-e) MacEvilly, p 187 [/INDENT]

Well I don't think it is above criticism, but I do think that it is a controversial idea in the modern world and will generally be rejected.

I am reading The Shape of Ancient Thought by Thomas McEvilly. His basic thesis is that there are much greater correspondences between Ancient Greek and Classical Indian philosophy than has been commonly accepted in the past. The contact came about partially through trade and commerce and also through the conquests of Alexander.

He draws quite a few parallels between Platonism and Indian philosophy, especially the Upanisads, which are the esoteric spiritual texts of the latter, and portrays Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato very much as 'spiritual sages' in the same sense as the Upanisadic seers.

In support of this he says as follows:



The text at this point presents a number of comparisons between Platonic and Hindu thought on the topic of the 'true object of knowledge' and 'real nature of being'.

Hence, I still say the difficulty you are having with Plato's idea of knowledge is that he is not talking about where in the world is Quito. He is talking about something else altogether and it is quite probable that none of us really has much of an idea as to what it might be.

I am not so much interested in what he is actually saying in Greek as I am what he is translated as saying in English.

OK correction, I won't say 'none of us knows what Plato is talking about'. But I will say that what he is talking about is not well understood and there are major cultural impediments to understanding him. I don't think Plato is confused. Do you really think he would have been remembered as one of the founders of Western culture if he was simply 'confused'? It is more likely that we no longer understand or meet his standards.

Ha! Don't know if I concur, but I love the idea of 'wonderful mistakes'. Wish my mistakes were wonderful....

The problem is that many scholars have translated the Meno, which are available to the general public, and they tend to vary on what Plato is saying. Jowett's translation is easily one of the worst since he was not even a philosopher, and thus, is not going to understand the philosophic subtleties employed by a philosopher. Both of the translations I usually consult differ from each other, but they are far more consistent and clear than the woefully murky Jowett translation. Just the difference between Jowett's use of true belief, and most other translations use of right opinion already throws off the whole conversation. And after looking at the Greek text, I can say that right opinion is a much better translation.

But Jowett does, in fact, use "right opinion". So I don't know why you say that. I used, "true belief". At Oxford (in those days) those who took "Greats" were steeped in Greek philosophy. And, Balliol, Jowett's college, was especially famous for that. In any case, I would have thought there was an advantage in having a philosophically neutral view when translating.