• InternetStranger
    144
    Is there any justification for the all-pervading text-book-view that alethes doxa, unconcealed expectation(/"reputation"), means anything like "true belief"?

    I don't say that the formulation "justified true belief" didn't occur, rather that not even anything approaching the idea it gives expression to occurred. An idea can be formulated with diverse styles, or dictions, as synonymous, or roughly synonymous phrases leading to the idea, as things "paraphrased". A translation can count as an interpretation, which, nonetheless, is as close as can be got, or at least connected to the original meaning. Here, the meaning or idea is simply not seen.

    There is nothing that in any way even appears to mean "justified true belief" in Plato, nor Aristotle. Yet, everywhere it is thoughtlessly insisted upon.

    Supposedly, when Socrates (in Theaetetus 201a) says that a jury could be made to hold the doxa that a certain act was just or unjust, this is supposed to mean that they were led to the belief, which, if it corresponded to what empirically happened, would be true.

    This example corresponds to the general theme in Plato of the need to instill the truth in someone through the art of speech. For example of a patient who must take a medicine, but must be changed, moved to change, their doxa (which is, as it were, they themselves). Moved does not quite mean "persuaded", it happens "by force".

    In fact, what is in question is the same as in the Meno. Namely, that having possession of a knowledge through the logos, rather than empirical knowledge, is insufficient, and so doesn't deserve to be called wisdom or knowledge, sophia or epistime which are the same according to the opening of the Theaetetus.

    I have a true word, no question that it is true. The directions to Larrisa, or the description of an action, e.g., a murder. There's is no question of belief at all. The question is, is this enough to deserve the name knowledge. No. Since we want also the corresponding empirical experience. This notion is eventually rejected as inadequate, since it still lacks a theoretical aspect.

    The whole thing corresponds to daily life, we all know bookish knowledge is insufficient, and that experience alone is insufficient. The nurse knows what pill to give, she sees it improve the patient, but she lacks understanding about it that the doctor has, the doctor may, in fact, have less practical experience with patients and giving pills.

    This question is involves much more than I put here.

    Inherent Difficulties:

    1. We have a large class of persons unable to believe their first impression about anything is wrong, say a line of text or some word of an authority, I call those sophomores.

    2. Those in some way dependent for their future on the textbook accounts, low ranking members of the professoriate, academic hang-ons and staff, most of all young people in the grips of the Universities, wholly dependent on it for their futures. Of course, worse than this are the professors who have a textbook to retail and depend on it for their living.

    3. People excessively impressed by authority or with their egos invested in some view they have on authority.

    4. Inability to treat philosophy as anything but puzzle solving, and retailing things memorized out of textbooks which are not understood philosophically.

    This list is not exhaustive.
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