Philosophy

Abstract

Sarah Broadie writes on ‘The Knowledge Unacknowledged in the Theaetetus’ for Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Her paper makes two main claims: first, that Plato in the Theaetetus rejects the ‘additive’ picture for knowledge, namely, that knowledge is true judgement with something else (e.g. an account); and second, that in the Theaetetus true judgement relies on prior knowledge, especially if that knowledge is arrived at methodically. Thus, true judgement is not necessary for knowledge and sometimes knowledge is necessary for true judgement. Broadie's argument, roughly, is that, in the Theaetetus, true judgement is already a high-level epistemic achievement. She has a number of pieces of evidence for this. The first is Theaetetus 189e4–190a6, where Socrates stresses that a judgement is an assertion that results from a soul having a silent, internal debate. Broadie infers from this that a judgement involves reasons even if those reasons are not good reasons; judgement, for Plato, is more than a mere doxastic attitude (95–6). This already looks unfriendly to the additive picture. Once I have a judgement I have reasons, and when I have a true judgement, I have good reasons. If I have good reasons then what I have is reliable and secure. So, what more could I add to upgrade this cognitive achievement to make it knowledge? Broadie goes on to explore the alternative to the additive picture given in the Sophist and the Statesman. There it turns out that there may be topics that simply cannot be captured by the additive picture: cases where there must be knowledge of an object in the absence of true judgements about that object. This is Broadie's knowledge unacknowledged.