Plato on True Belief and Knowledge

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

I can't put my hands on a quote from the Dialogs, but I think about it this way (perhaps more Buddhist than Platonic but I am sure there are parallels). One of the hallmarks of sagacity or the philosophic temperament is disinterestedness - absence of self-interest. Ordinary people are driven by passions, likes and dislikes. So their every act and perception is coloured by 'what I want' or 'what I believe'. In the absence of the passions, the sage is much more able to discern what is truly the case by not acting from self-interest. Consider the last speech of Socrates - I think this was a good example. He was looking at the whole situation from the viewpoint of the State, not from his own viewpoint, and was able to be completely unaffected by his own imminent demise.

This sense of detachment from self is, I am sure, a prerequisite for what the traditional cultures understood as the higher knowledge. This is very much at odds with our own culture which puts so much emphasis on the self and individual perogative.

Have you any examples of what is supposed to be higher knowledge as contrasted with lower? knowledge, or just plain knowledge? I expect that the difference is supposed to be not in the degree of knowledge (as it would seem) but rather in what is supposed to be known. My reading of Plato is that he holds that the objects of knowledge have to be of a certain kind, and that other things we think we know, we do not really know. So the difference is not in the kind of knowledge (higher or lower) but in what is an object of knowledge, and what is not an object of knowledge.

[jeeprs]

I think the source for this understanding is The Parmenides. There is a great deal in it, about how that which is real cannot pass away, and that which is always changing cannot be said to truly exist, and therefore can't be said to be an object of true knowledge. But I don't have it on hand, perhaps someone with a copy might be able to find some supporting quotes. (I do recall that when I studied it at University, I found it very difficult to fathom.)

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by jeeprs

I think the source for this understanding is The Parmenides. There is a great deal in it, about how that which is real cannot pass away, and that which is always changing cannot be said to truly exist, and therefore can't be said to be an object of true knowledge. But I don't have it on hand, perhaps someone with a copy might be able to find some supporting quotes. (I do recall that when I studied it at University, I found it very difficult to fathom.)

Yes, you are right. But in Republic, especially. But that is what I was saying. It is what is known that is higher or lower. Not the knowing. Only the Forms are objects of knowledge. Whether, for instance, Quito is capital of Ecuador is, for Plato, opinion. For it is not, as you said, "permanent". Plato seems to have taken this from Parmenides. (But, it is true that Plato also maintains that knowledge itself has to be absolutely certain to be in tandem with what must be the object of knowledge. What we know and what we believe cannot be the same things).

[jeeprs]

This distinction had enormous consequences in philosophy and metaphysics, of course, and arguably became the source of the primary dualism in Western philosophy between 'the ideal' (celestial, unchanging, perfect, incorruptible) and 'the material' (transitory, sorrowful, corrupt, etc.). However I think it is nevertheless good to appreciate the source of this distinction and look at it again, through modern eyes.