Class 5 - Socrates Responds to Theaetetus's First Definition
Notes from Class 5
In this class, we’re going to talk about the work you did last time, and have a chance to discuss these things in dialogue.
I want to say something about dialogue first. From the very start, philosophy has always been about dialogue. You can see this reading Plato, when Socrates engages people in a complicated process of questions and answers. You can also see it in other traditions, for example in Confucius’s Analects. Later on in the European tradition, philosophy came to be seen as something private, something that, at least at some point, is conducted by the philosopher in solitude. You can see this in the work of Descartes, the French philosopher, or in the work of Edmund Husserl, the German philosopher. But perhaps even their work only comes alive when we get together and start talking it through. Last time you were working on your own, thinking through many of these issues in Plato’s text, so now the philosophy can really start and we can start to talk through these thoughts, these questions, and these puzzles.
Discussion
Before we launch into the questions I asked you, I want you to think about the arguments in this passage. One person replied on canvas that Socrates is a smart guy, he’s kind of a genius, and so I found the arguments hard to follow. But I wonder if this idea that Socrates is a smart guy, that he is a genius, stops us from really thinking through the dialogue. After all Socrates himself didn’t claim to be a smart guy. So I want you to start by looking at the text again, and I’m going to give you 10 minutes, and I want you to note down the places where Socrates seems at his least smart, when his arguments seem least persuasive, or even most stupid. Because I think if we can shake off this idea that Socrates is somehow a great genius, we can start to engage more deeply with his arguments we don’t need to read Plato to reverently and if we think Socrates is being an idiot we can call him out on that. Okay.
So first you have 10 minutes to look through the text, and find the places where you think Socrates arguments are least smart. When you have done that, I will put you into breakout groups to discuss the places where Socrates’s argument seems weakest, least persuasive, or just plain weird.
Reading Task
Read the text again (10 minutes) and highlight where Socrates’s argument is:
- Weak
- Unpersuasive
- Stupid
- Incomprehensible
- Just plain weird
Breakout Groups: Socrates the Know-nothing
Let’s talk about this in groups.
Break
Thinking Through Socrates and his Counter-argument
Here are the six questions we talked about last time. We’ll talk through in the main group first of all.
- What is the distinction that Socrates makes between seeing with the eyes, and seeing through the eyes?
- What is it that does the seeing if we only see through (and not with) the eyes?
- What is the significance of Socrates’s question about “being and not-being, likeness and unlikeness, same and different, also things being one or having some number”? (185 d1)
- Why does Socrates then conclude that perception is not the same as knowledge?
- What problems can you find with Socrates’s counter-argument?
- Can you find any better counter-arguments?
Writing Exercise: Holding Socrates to Account
I want you to spend 10 minutes writing a section of dialogue where Theaetetus questions Socrates, holding him to account for his bad reasoning. What does Theaetetus say? How does he object? How does Socrates respond to these objections?
Breakout Groups
I’ll get you to share these in small groups of 3 or 4. Then we’ll get back to gether again, and talk whether Theatetus’s claim that perception is knowledge is plausible after all, and if not, what better arguments we can find against it than those proposed by Socrates.
Next session
Theaetetus is going to have another go at defining knowledge, this time as true belief. Read through the text (Reading03 - Theaetetus.pdf) and ask this one apparently simple question (by the end of tomorrow) on Canvas:
- What makes a belief true?