Class 8 - Logos, and Giving an Account of Giving and Account

2025-02-27
5 min read

The Theaetetus: A Final Attempt at Defining Knowledge

Today’s Class

In today’s class, we’re going to look at how Theaetetus modifies his previous proposal, to say that knowledge is true belief with an account. But what is an account (logos in Greek)? And does this solve the problem? The section of the text is 201d–210a.

After Theaetetus says that knowledge is true belief with an account, Socrates intervenes to ask what he means by “an account.” The two of them discuss three possibilities.

Writing Exercise

Today, we will be finishing our reading of the Theaetetus. So to get started, I’m going to give you a writing exercise in response to the following questions:

  1. What do you know now that you didn’t know at the beginning of this journey?
  2. What questions about knowledge do you now have that you didn’t have at the beginning of this journey?

Discussion

What is Logos (or “an account”)?

  1. It is speech
  2. It is listing the elements of something
  3. It is recognising a “distinguishing mark”

Let’s discuss this in groups! Can you find the these three definitions in the text? What is your understanding of these three definitions?

Three Possibilities

Possibility 1: Logos is Speech

So this is the first possibility: logos means

making one’s thought evident through speech with verbal expressions and names, imprinting the belief on the stream issuing through the mouth like a reflection in a mirror or in water. [206d1]

This is rejected, because (more or less) anyone can say anything at all. We can all bullshit (that’s a proper philosophical term… see Harry G. Frankfurt’s book On Bullshit, which we’ll talk about later).

Possibility 2: Logos is enumerating the elements of something:

Maybe the speaker wasn’t saying that, but rather that an ‘account’ was a matter of being able when asked what anything is to give the questioner the answer by listing its elements. [206e5 - 207a1]

What is a cake? It is eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder, etc. etc. etc.

But is this enough? Do you know the name “Theaetetus” by simply knowing that it is made up of

T + H + E + A + E + T + E + T + U + S?

The answer isn’t obviously yes. Think of a computer spell-check. It may know how to spell “Theaetetus,” and may even be able to correct us; but does it understand that this is a name, what a name is, how the parts (letters) link to larger parts (syllables) to the whole (the word) etc. etc.?

Possibility 3: Logos is the ability to distinguish the thing one knows from all other things

What most people would say: that it’s a matter of being able to identify some distinguishing mark by which the thing one has been asked about differs from everything else. [208c5]

What is the problem here? Let’s read from 209d1.

To know X is to have true belief about X, plus the ability to identify a mark (M) by which it X differs from everything else. But here’s the fatal question: do we have true belief about M, or knowledge of M? If we have true belief about M, then:

knowledge of X = true belief about X + true belief about M

But, Socrates says, if it we only have true belief of M, then we have this already. In other words, we already have the true belief that X is the thing it is and is not something else.

This, after all, is inherent to having a true belief about X. Socrates says this is like “telling us to ‘get hold of in addition’ what we already have.”

On the other hand, if we have knowledge of M, then:

knowledge of X = true belief about X + knowledge of M

So we’re defining knowledge in terms of knowledge, and this is circular. (At this point, everyone gives up, and goes off to do something else…)

What have we learned? (Discussion)

We’re going to finish the Theaetetus today! It’s been quite a long and not always easy journey. So let’s return to the questions we asked at the beginning of the class.

  1. What do we know now that we didn’t know at the beginning of this journey?
  2. What questions about knowledge do we now have that we didn’t have at the beginning of the journey?

Homework

For your homework this week, have a look at Reading 5, which is from the Zhuangzi, an early Chinese philosophical compilation. Respond on Canvas to the following question:

This section is about what is sometimes called skill-knowledge, or what is sometimes called knowing how (instead of knowing that). Cook Ding is so skillful that he can chop up an ox without blunting his knife. What skills do you have, and what does the story of Cook Ding tell us about human skill?

Supplementary readings

Just in case you want to dive deeper into Plato, here are some extra resources!

Some extra resources

Next Class 7 - Wax tablets and bird houses.