Day 2
January-10-11
8:30 AM
Plato wrote his philosophy as a dialogue because he was a play writer - showed that philosophy was a
"disinterested pursuit of the truth" rather than an argument
Plato comes to the conclusion that knowledge can't be described - he does, however, offer an analysis of
knowledge and lists the parts of knowledge
Subject knows proposition - S knows P
Plato proposes three conditions for S to know P
- S believes P
- P is true
- P is justified
Theaetatus thinks that knowledge is true belief - Socrates suggests that this is not sufficient, as a lawyer
can easily convince a jury of someone's innocence - do they truly know the person is innocent?
Knowledge must be held for the right reasons and non-accidental - true belief isn't quite enough
Belief is a propositional attitude where you assert some kind of proposition
Knowledge is something you possess
Proposition: Some statement that can be true or false
Realist (Platonist) theory of truth: To avoid delving into the issue of truth, we use this theory of truth:
Some proposition P is true if it states what is the case, and P is false if it does not state what is the case
For P to be justified, you have to provide an account of your true belief by:
- Verbal expression of knowledge, when you simply tell someone that something is true, isn't a true
account, because what you're saying may not be true or you may not truly know what you're
saying (not justified, accidental, etc.)
- Enumerating the parts of something - you could simply memorize the parts without understanding
them, such as looking at letters in a language you don't know
- Essentialist account: stating explicitly how an item is distinct from all other things - its
distinguishing characteristics - however, this is often difficult or even impossible, such as when
trying to describe a chair
 An essentialist account would have to include everything, but by being that broad you would
include other things
PHIL 1301 Page 1