Propositions or Objects? A Critique of Gail Fine on Knowledge and Belief in Republic V

Abstract

According to most contemporary epistemologies, the distinction between true belief and knowledge concerns, not objects, but propositions. What we know or believe are propositions about objects, not these themselves.' Knowing something is thus rendered completely disanalogous to seeing something. Whether or not I see something depends on the direct relation I have to the object and on the character of the object, i. e., whether or not it is something visible (as opposed, for example, to something only audible). Knowledge, on the other hand, does not depend on any sort of direct relation to the object, but instead on the justification or explanation of propositions; furthermore, presumably anything about which we can formulate meaningful propositions can in theory though not, of course, in fact be known. Many interpreters believe that Plato's conception of knowledge does not fit this model. Plato appears to take very seriously the analogy frequently found in his writings between knowing and seeing. A locus classicus is the argument at the end of Republic V that, in apparently concluding that one can know only intelligible forms and that nothing more than belief is possible with regard to sensible objects, appears to understand knowledge and belief as direct cognitive relations to and as restricted to certain kinds of objects. This common reading of the argument, however, has been challenged by Gail Fine in a couple of articles, the first appearing almost two decades ago.' Fine rejects the objects analysis that interprets the argument as correlating knowledge with certain kinds of objects. She defends instead a contents analysis that interprets the argument as correlating knowledge