Right, he does not have a scientific theory, that is, one that has stood the test of time.

In his own words:

I present an argument for panpsychism: the thesis that everything is conscious, or at least that fundamental physical entities are conscious

.

If there were no laws of nature in reality to describe, then the descriptions of physics (call them "the laws of physics") would be fictions. — Dfpolis

Surely you know that some physicists hold that the laws are the descriptions of the behavior of matter.

In other words, when you say "physical" do you mean to include intentional realities such as knowing, willing, hoping, etc.? As "physical" is used in the context of physics, intentional realities are excluded. — Dfpolis

When I say physical I mean that consciousness is not given to or added on to beings that are conscious. They are physical beings that have developed the capacities of knowing, willing, hoping, etc.

So, to say that a purely "physical" system can preform intentional operations, you have to redefine "physical." — Dfpolis

I have but you rejected it. The theory is that matter is self-organizing. At higher levels of organization capacities that were not present at lower levels emerge.

Chalmers doesn't endorse any particular theory of consciousness. — frank

If you mean he declares it true then you are right, but he does endorse it in the sense of give support to it.

From his article The Puzzle of Conscious Experience:

Toward this end, I propose that conscious experience be considered a fundamental feature, irreducible to anything more basic.

And from the paper cited above:

For present purposes, the relevant sorts of mental states are conscious experiences. I will
understand panpsychism as the thesis that some fundamental physical entities are conscious: that
is, that there is something it is like to be a quark or a photon or a member of some other
fundamental physical type.(1)

In this article I will present an argument for panpsychism. Like most philosophical
arguments, this argument is not entirely conclusive, but I think it gives reason to take the view
seriously. Speaking for myself, I am by no means confident that panpsychism is true, but I am
also not confident that it is not true. This article presents what I take to be perhaps the best
reason for believing panpsychism. A companion article, “The Combination Problem for
Panpsychism”, presents what I take to be the best reason for disbelieving panpsychism.

It is organized by laws of nature — Dfpolis

Are you claiming that those laws are not simply descriptive? That matter is somehow made to conform to laws that exist prior to and independent of it?

... knowing what matter can become is insufficient to say what it will or does become. — Dfpolis

I agree, but it does not become whatever it becomes haphazardly and randomly. The insufficiency is on our part. That does not mean that we will never know. No doubt AI will help make up for our deficiencies.

Finally, even if we could predict which atoms of the primordial soup will come to compose my brain, that does not reduce consciousness to a physical basis — Dfpolis

Neither does it rule out the possibility that the physical system has the capability for consciousness. It does not mean that something is missing and must be added on.

See his paper Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism

...a return to Aristotelian concepts of the mind. — Banno

The intelligible order, the order of Mind, intelligible to the mind of man.

One question that guides my admittedly ignorant thoughts on these matters is what is to be accepted as basic. Chalmers accepts consciousness as fundamental and universal.

It strikes me as "consciousness of the gaps". Perhaps inspired by a misunderstanding of the London Underground's message "mind the gaps".

It seems as if you are a platonist. Is that fair? — Ludwig V

No. I make a distinction between Plato and Platonism. By Plato I mean the dialogues. As I think you pointed out, Plato never speaks in the dialogues.In the Seventh Letter he says:

There is no treatise (suggramma) by me on these subjects, nor will there ever be. (341c)

I feel I want to ask you where you are going with this? — Ludwig V

I'm not going anywhere. I can't find my car. I thought I knew where it was but I was wrong!

Seriously, I'm just trying to put some things together from the dialogues around the question of the difference between knowledge and opinion or belief.

One thing I was trying to make clear is that the centrality of the question of the good is not about claims such as this is the best possible world. In the Phaedo Socrates "second sailing" (99d) is a shift from Anaxagoras' claim that Mind orders all things, to the way Socrates mind orders or make sense of things. A second sailing is when the ship cannot move because the wind fails and one must take to the oars. it is in line with this that the good comes into play. Concerns for knowledge is not separate from concerns for the knower.

But I have taken the ship off course.

On page 6 you ask:

Does the Hard Problem reflect a failure of the reductive paradigm?

and answer in the affirmative:

Reductionism assumes that to know the parts is, implicitly, to know the whole, but Aristotle showed in Topics IV, 13 that the whole is not the sum of its parts, for building materials are not a house.

How well do we know the parts? Although a heap of building materials is not self organizing, matter might be. If so then to have sufficient knowledge of the parts is know the ways in which they can form higher orders of organization, including organisms that are conscious.

While I agree with the importance of understanding things as natural wholes, this leaves open the question of how do these wholes come to be? It is one thing to argue that there has always been something, it is quite another to argue that there has always been wholes such as human beings.

Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. Explanations of why "you can't get there from here" are common and occur before it becomes clear how to get there from here.

Ok, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that. — Banno

Perhaps that in philosophy there are fashion trends.

Again, this thread was simply to reinforce the point that the forums are not representative of present philosophical thought. — Banno

Okay, but I'm not sure what we might conclude from that.

We could do the survey on this forum again later, if you like. — Banno

I am referring to larger historical time frame, but we need not go back too far. To Bradley and McTaggart, for example.

folk seem to feel the need to address themselves to me, personally, — Banno

It is, admittedly, a bit unusual to address a potted plant.

As to

only 2% in the PhilPapers survey — Banno

Hard to avoid the ruts. I suspect the survey results differ over time.

Descartes did not prove he existed. He found something he concluded could not be doubted, that is, that he existed. He could not doubt it because he would have to exist in order to doubt. It does not follow that there is anything else that is indubitable.

But his real concern was to establish the foundations of knowledge, not to eliminate doubts that he did not have.

The idea that nature or God confers rights is untenable. Only men confer rights. — NOS4A2

Another option is to regard certain rights as inherent. No one confers on us the right to not be murdered or enslaved.

But rights are not boundary markers separating us off. We are bound together in the recognition and protection of our rights.

That it is something we cannot talk about is one of its properties — Isaac

That we cannot talk about something independent of us is not a property of that thing as it is independent of us. That is not a statement about the world, it is a statement about us.

That sounds an awful lot like someone talking about the way things are that is independent of us. — Isaac

If I understand you correctly you are claiming that by denying that we can talk about the way things are independent of us I am talking about the way things are independent of us?

that it differs from the way we experience things. — Isaac

No, I am saying that we experience it in accord with how we are. That is not to say that it is some way independent of us, but simply that we cannot experience in some way other than the way we experience it.

That's a surprisingly comprehensive description of something you apparently can't say anything meaningful about. — Isaac

In that case, you can congratulate yourself for your surprisingly comprehensive description. It is yours not mine.

I struggle with the words 'as it is'? — Tom Storm

Part of the problem is that a dog having four legs, for example, is independent of us. That is just the way it is. But I think we go too far if we draw the conclusion that there is a way things are that is independent of us that we can know or talk about in a meaningful way.

A follow up to my last post.

Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good. — Stanley Rosen

For Plato philosophical inquiry is not value free. We do not seek to know for the sake of knowledge. We seek to know because it is good to know. The examined life is the life in pursuit of the good life. The pursuit of the good life is guided by the inquiry into the good itself.

It is Socrates interest in the human good that guides his inquiry into the good as the cause of what is.

You are making my point.

The underlying assumption is that things are and are known in light of the good, and to know something is to know why it is best that it be as it is.

The problem is, we lack knowledge of the good. We remain in the world of opinion. In the cave. Socratic skepticism is zetetic.

As opposed to what? — Isaac

As opposed to claims about how things are independent of us.

Things are for us as observed or conceived or experimented on by us.

... why is it important to review now rejected concepts? — Hanover

Rejected? This may be an accurate reflection of your opinion but does not reflect what is going on in political think tanks and academic research.

What does it mean to be in accord with or contrary to nature? What this meant for the ancients, and for the philosophers of Liberalism, and contemporary thinkers is not the same.

I voted "Other" because it left room to explain why "The question is too unclear to answer".

Is there an external world? Yes.
Do we experience it as it is? No.
Is our knowledge of it an accurate representation of it? We try.

I took the following formula and made a first attempt at extending it:

cookery is flattery disguised as medicine (465b)

A knack is flattery disguised as techne.

Sophistry is flattery disguised as philosophy.

Rhetoric is flattery disguised as logos.

Opinion is flattery disguised as knowledge.

Pleasure is flattery disguised as good.

Socrates then puts it "like a geometer". (465b):

as self-adornment is to gymnastic, so is sophistry to legislation; and as cookery is to medicine, so is rhetoric to justice. (465c)

opinion : knowledge :: pleasure : good

It is in light of the good that the difference between opinion and knowledge can be seen.

But what I collect from the passage I quote is that you think that the difference between knowledge and true belief is that one has the skill to establish the truth that is at stake. — Ludwig V

I think so, but that is not the whole of it. There are two senses of establish The first is to determine that something is true, the other is to demonstrate that it is true. The first is a form of learning or coming to know, the second is the ability to provide and defend an account of what one knows. One wrinkle here is that A, who does not know, may be convinced by B, who also does not know, but is able to persuade A that he does.

The rejection of the claim that knowledge is perception can obscure the role of seeing in knowledge. Note that in a passage quoted about Socrates says:

... matters which one can know only by having seen them and in no other way, (201b)

There is also the case of knowledge via noesis, what the mind sees. There is the well known example of working on a math problem and not making much progress until "now I see!".

When Socrates says:

Well, it is just this that I am in doubt about and cannot fully grasp by my own efforts—what knowledge really is. (145 e)

I think he is expressing a genuine type of skepticism. We do know what knowledge is but in trying to say exactly what it is and is not, it alludes us.

... what Plato says in the Gorgias about episteme. — Ludwig V

What does he say?

Perhaps he didn't believe that his argument does refute Plato's version. — Ludwig V

What is Plato's version? Gettier may have an opinion on this, but is noncommittal. He does not know if his opinion, whatever it might be, is a true opinion:

Plato seems to be considering some such definition at Theaetetus 20 I, and perhaps accepting one at Meno 98.

Emphasis added.

The case cited from Theaetetus does not argue in favor of some version of JTB. It states that the judges:

... have judged without knowledge

This is not a version of JTB.

The passage from Meno also makes the distinction between knowledge and true opinion. Socrates says:

... yet that there is a difference between right opinion and knowledge is not at all a conjecture with me but something I would particularly assert that I knew: there are not many things of which I would say that, but this one, at any rate, I will include among those that I know.

Socrates claims that he knows they are not the same.

He goes on to say:

So that right opinion will be no whit inferior to knowledge in worth or usefulness as regards our actions ...

The assertion is that knowledge and true opinion are not the same, but there is no difference when it comes to actions based on one or the other. Theaetetus agrees but has already forgotten what he had just agreed with, that true opinions, are like the statues of Daedalus, do not stay put. So too, the man who acts on true opinion may not stay put either. Fleeing when his conviction fails.

For me, that's a dilemma. My problem is I haven't been able to develop a third alternative. — Ludwig V

If we let go of the false belief that knowledge is JTB the dilemma is dissolved. In both the Theaetetus and Meno mathematics plays a key role. Socrates KNOWS how to solve the geometric problem in the Meno, he does not just have an opinion, true or false, about how to solve it.

What one knows and what one believes are not the same, but one can believe he knows.

23:

The need to represent the absolute as subject has helped itself to such propositions as “God is the eternal,” or “God is the moral order of the world,” or “God is love,” etc.

Does Hegel intend for us to draw a connection between “God is love”, “The life of God and divine cognition ... as a game love plays with itself” (19),and the goal of philosophy as moving “nearer to the goal where it can lay aside the title of love of knowing and be actual knowing (5)?

In such propositions, the true is directly posited as subject, but it is not presented as the movement of reflection taking-an-inward-turn.

That is, such propositions only reflect the negative movement, the movement away from itself, its otherness, which has not yet reached the moment of the movement when reflection turns back to itself. So, what’s love got to do with it? Love is the desire for unity. In religious terms it is the unity of man and God. In philosophical terms the unity of man and knowledge. In knowledge the desire for unity with God is overcome, for the movement has returned back to the self from the otherness of God.

One proposition of that sort begins with the word “God.” On its own, this is a meaningless sound, a mere name. It is only the predicate that says what the name is and is its fulfillment and its meaning. The empty beginning becomes actual knowledge only at the end of the proposition. To that extent, one cannot simply pass over in silence the reason why one cannot speak solely of the eternal, the moral order of the world, etc., or, as the ancients did, of pure concepts, of being, of the one, etc., or, of what the meaning is, without appending the meaningless sound as well.

Instead of saying: “God is the eternal” or “God is the moral order”, etc., why can’t we just say the eternal or the moral order without appending the meaningless sound God? The answer is provided in the next sentence:

However, the use of this word only indicates that it is neither a being nor an essence nor a universal per se which is posited; what is posited is what is reflected into itself, a subject.

We should keep in mind that Hegel says the subject is self-positing (18).In other words, the positing of God is the self-positing of the subject. But:

... at the same time, this is something only anticipated. The subject is accepted as a fixed point on which the predicates are attached for their support through a movement belonging to what it is that can be said to know this subject and which itself is also not to be viewed as belonging to the point itself, but it is solely through this movement that the content would be portrayed as the subject.

The positing of God is at that moment the positing of something fixed and unchanging, something wholly and completely other. But:

... not only is the former anticipation that the absolute is subject not the actuality of this concept, but it even makes that actuality impossible, for it posits the concept as a point wholly at rest, whereas the concept is self-movement.

The problem is that the subject, God, is thought of as being at rest and unchanging. As the theologians have argued, God is perfect and thus unchanging, for change implies imperfection.

Some years back there was a reading group on the preface to the Phenomenology. We went paragraph by paragraph. Here are a couple of my posts relating to love and the divine. It consists of quotes from the text followed by comments.

I am dividing in two separate posts to make it easier to read.

19. The life of God and divine cognition might thus be expressed as a game love plays with itself.

“Thus” indicates that the life of God and divine cognition follow from what has been said. God and the divine are not separate from but within the circle. A game love plays with itself, the game of uniting two as one, but to play the game one must first become two, dividing and uniting itself with itself. Divine life and divine cognition are being and knowing.

Hegel immediately adds that this idea must be thought with due seriousness, that it was won through the suffering, the patience, and the labor of the negative. The reference is to the life and death of Christ and the themes of suffering and sacrifice, death of the body and life of the spirit. Whatever Hegel’s own beliefs were on such matters, they are an important part of the history of spirit, if not in terms of actual events then in terms of the shaping of consciousness.

Precisely because the form is as essential to the essence as the essence is to itself, the essence must not be grasped and expressed as mere essence, which is to say, as immediate substance or as the pure self-intuition of the divine. Rather, it must likewise be grasped as form in the entire richness of the developed form, and only thereby is it grasped and expressed as the actual.

What does the pure self-intuition of the divine mean? First, this intuition is the subject’s intuition. As immediate substance it takes the divine to be other than itself. To be grasped and expressed as form requires that it be articulated both as self-forming and formed, as both the development of form and the entire richness of the developed form. It is only from this stage of its development, when it has become actual, that it can know itself.

This is summed up in #20:

20: The true is the whole. However, the whole is only the essence completing itself through its own development. This much must be said of the absolute: It is essentially a result, and only at the end is it what it is in truth.

He goes on to express this:

The beginning, the principle, or, the absolute as it is at first, or, as it is immediately expressed, is only the universal. But just as my saying “all animals” can hardly count as an expression of zoology, it is likewise obvious that the words, “absolute,” “divine,” “eternal,” and so on, do not express what is contained in them; – and it is only such words which in fact express intuition as the immediate.

Zoology is not adequately expressed by the universal “all animals”, for in the universal the particular is negated or not expressed. All animals tells us nothing about any particular animal. In the same way, “absolute,” “divine,” “eternal,” tell us nothing about the particulars within the universal.

Whatever is more than such a word, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a becoming-other which must be redeemed, or, it is a mediation.

Hegel goes on to explain mediation:

21: ... mediation is nothing but self-moving self-equality, or, it is a reflective turn into itself, the moment of the I existing-for-itself, pure negativity, or, simple coming-to-be.

The transition from a word to a proposition is mediation for it must be thought and expressed. So too the absolute, the divine, eternal, must be mediated, that is, thought and expressed, given shape and content. But they are mediated by, the I. Existing-for-itself, the I is other than the subject or object of thought. At the same time it negates this otherness by making it one’s own by the understanding. What is thought, the universal, comes to be the subject matter, which is to say, the subject’s matter.

The I, or, coming-to-be, this mediating, is, on account of its simplicity, immediacy in the very process of coming-to-be and is the immediate itself. – Hence, reason is misunderstood if reflection is excluded from the truth and is not taken to be a positive moment of the absolute.

Reason is not unmediated intuition. It is not the understanding. It is positive in that it reflects on what is taken up in the understanding as immediacy without reflection on the process of unity. It is, in other words, reflection on a central problem of philosophy at least since it was first expressed by Parmenides: thinking and being are the same.

The movement in consciousness is from the immediacy of objects in consciousness, to their difference or negativity as objects of rather than from consciousness, to the immediacy of objects of consciousness, their sameness or positivity as objects from consciousness.

Reflection is what makes truth into the result, but it is likewise what sublates the opposition between the result and its coming-to-be. This is so because this coming-to-be is just as simple and hence not different from the form of the true, which itself proves itself to be simple in its result. Coming-to-be is instead this very return into simplicity.

Hegel expresses the same idea in yet another way, this time making explicit that it is not just something that occurs in the consciousness of the individual:

However much the embryo is indeed in itself a person, it is still not a person for itself; the embryo is a person for itself only as a culturally formed and educated rationality which has made itself into what it is in itself.

It is not the capacity for rationality but the culturally formed and educated rationality that allows the person to become for herself what she is in herself. While the importance of culture was recognized by the Greeks, it was to a large degree atemporal. The importance of history as self-moving and self-development was not a factor. The truth was regarded as unchanging. Today both views are represented and defended.

They just play. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is much more to it than that.

Somewhere Nietzsche reverses Matthews:

Seek and you shall find

along the lines of:

You see what you want see.

Isn't that the same for the artists? — Moliere

Yes, I think so. This is clearly seen in the case of jazz. The innovators made the rules that those who came after them learned and followed. But the innovators did not make the rules in the sense of first making them and then playing according to them. They played and those who studied them codified them.

I'm nowhere near the foundations. I just do my lab job — Moliere

My wife is a PhD biochemist, but has no interest in such discussions. She is interested in how things actually work, in finding answers. My son, on the other hand, is in the lab and enjoys these kinds of discussion.

I'm curious what you count as non-reductive science. — Moliere

Systems science. Morphology. Zoology. Environmental sciences.

reduction is the downward motion towards particulars, and holism is the upward motion towards universals. — Moliere

Not exactly. The study of animals is the study of particulars. A horse or a dog is a particular thing. It is not a matter of universals but of organisms.

If you can check out Gettier's original article, you can decide for yourself about my complaint. — Ludwig V

I have read it. It is actually Gettier himself who drags Plato in. He says in a footnote:

1. Plato seems to be considering some such definition at Theaetetus 20 I, and perhaps accepting one at Meno 98.

The passage from Theaetetus is like the Gettier cases in that the the distinction between knowledge and true opinion is maintained:

Then when judges are justly persuaded about matters which one can know only by having seen them and in no other way, in such a case, judging of them from hearsay, having acquired a true opinion of them,they have judged without knowledge, though they are rightly persuaded, if the judgement they have passed is correct. (201b-3)

But the questions of knowledge that Plato raises far exceed the narrower cases that Gettier addresses. In addition, for Plato the issue is not "are you justified for believing" in the sense of having some reason, however insufficient for believing, but "can you defend the belief" in such a way so as to demonstrate its truth.

... the use so often made of Plato in discussing JTB. — Ludwig V

My contention is that it is the misuse of Plato, based on a misunderstanding of the dialogue.

what is the spectrum between reductionism and holism? Are these two methods, or what? — Moliere

The spectrum is the subatomic to the cosmological, but much in biology focuses between the molecular or cellular on one end to the living organism and its environment on the other. Many methods.

... it's the discontinuities which make me feel doubt, at least in my rationalist story. — Moliere

Well, we should not mistake an incomplete story for sufficient one.

Just as the artists had to follow certain rules, so do the scientists. — Moliere

Rather than follow the rules cutting edge science establishes them.

,I am surprised. How do you make sense of the multiplicity while retaining reductionism as you've laid it out so far? — Moliere

I'm sitting in the peanut gallery. I take a pragmatic view. Reductionism in science has been and continues to be successful. That seems to be where most of the attention goes, but not all of it. Some scientists are more interested in larger scale views. If's not a question of one or the other but of what works.

In a way this almost relates to the OP, because I'm making the argument from success of the sciences -- but saying biology is very successful, and so a candidate for reduction. — Moliere

I'm not sure what you mean by a candidate for reduction. Much of biology is already reductive - genetics, DNA, genomes, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, But systems science is non-reductive, it is dynamic and integrative.

Why would he use this as the model of an account if it is not helpful?
— Fooloso4

That is the puzzle. — Ludwig V

The reason, I think, he introduces it is not to provide a model of an account but to address "certain persons". Empedocles, for example, claimed there were four elements. Leucippus and his student Democritus, who proposed an atomic theory.

But I don't see that justifies citing the dialogue and then ignoring it. — Ludwig V

Are you referring to anyone specific? Do you think that this is what I am doing, despite my many references to the dialogue including Stephanus numbers?

In general I agree that we need to pay attention to the dialogue, but I am not sure what you mean when you say that the Theaetetus is of no help. Does this mean that it does not address JTB because you think it gives only one example of logos, a bad one, or that since the dialogue does not answer the question of what knowledge is it is of no help? I have already addressed the former. As to the latter, it is helpful to the extent that it says what knowledge is not, that is, JTB.

I think it would help to take a step back. You claimed:

Plato's idea of an account in the Theaetetus is what we might call an analysis of whatever we are giving an account of in terms of its elements. — Ludwig V

What you are referring to is Socrates dream, which begins at 201d:

I used to imagine that I heard certain persons say that the primary elements of which we and all else are composed admit of no rational explanation ...

What he used to imagine he heard certain persons say does not stand as Plato's idea of an account. Socrates intentionally distances himself, and Plato distances even further. Why relate it in terms of a dream? Why say that it is something he imagined he heard? Who are these persons?

My point is precisely that the model of account is not helpful for the problem he is considering — Ludwig V

Why would he use this as the model of an account if it is not helpful? The question becomes more pressing if this is the only account given, and that he could have provided a different kind of account but didn't.

The point of all these questions is to question your assumption. If this is not intended to stand as the model of an account we should not dismiss it on the basis of that false assumption.

Socrates pursuit of knowledge of knowledge is part of his desire to be wise. Abstracted puzzles fail to catch what is at issue in the question of knowledge.
— Fooloso4

That is certainly an interesting question. But Plato seems to veer away from it when Socrates says
Well, it is just this that I am in doubt about and cannot fully grasp by my own efforts—what knowledge really is. — Ludwig V

He does not veer away, he is in pursuit of the question of the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge can lead to ignorance, more specifically ignorance of ignorance. Socrates human wisdom, his knowledge of ignorance, is in a limited sense knowledge of knowledge. It is knowledge of both what one knows and does not know.

I'm not sure what you mean by "abstracted puzzles". — Ludwig V

More specifically, extracting things from the dialogue, as if they were stand alone arguments.

So I agree with this notion of a double-reductionism, between wholes and parts. — Moliere

I did not mean a double reductionism. The opposite ends of the spectrum are not opposite ends of reductionism. Reductionism is one end and holism at the other end.

I think what gets me are the discontinuities, which I've been attempting to point out with my various examples of theories. — Moliere

The discontinuities may be a matter of our lack of knowledge.

I'd just say that scientific theories are frequently independent of one another developed by their own particular group of people studying that problem or companies working on a product. — Moliere

For a long time science became increasingly specialized, but there has more recently been an increase in multidisciplinary approaches.

I think I'm just very uncertain about there being only one way of putting it all: where others see unity, I see multiplicities upon multiplicities, and I see no reason to believe science will be finished. — Moliere

I agree.

We could re-interpret physics in terms of biology — Moliere

I don't know what that would look like since much or the focus of physics is not on living organisms. But here is where multidisciplinary approaches come into play.

The dialogue begins and ends with the question of reputation.

Socrates:
But what if he should praise the soul of one of us for virtue and wisdom? Is it not worth while for the one who hears to examine eagerly the one who is praised, and for that one to exhibit his qualities with eagerness?

Theaetetus
Certainly, Socrates.

Socrates
Then, my dear Theaetetus, this is just the time for you to exhibit your qualities and for me to examine them ... (145b)

Theaetetus quickly agree when Socrates asks him:

Then knowledge and wisdom are the same thing? (145e)

But Socrates has his doubts.

Well, it is just this that I am in doubt about and cannot fully grasp by my own efforts—what knowledge really is. (145 e)

It is significant that Theaetetus is a mathematician. They are skilled at providing proofs and demonstrations. The mathematician has demonstrated knowledge. It is not simply that he has a good reason the believe what he says, for example, about roots is true (147d). What justifies that he knows rather than believes is the ability to demonstrate that knowledge.

In some sense Theaetetus knows what it is to know, even though he is not able to say what it is that all forms of knowledge have in common. But Socrates' concern goes beyond giving a definition. In the exchange above, in asking Theaetetus to exhibit his qualities , he is looking to see not only if Theaetetus is virtuous and wise, but if one who possesses knowledge is virtuous and wise.

He addresses the same question in the Apology. The craftsmen have knowledge of their craft. This is not simply knowledge how but knowledge that. They know their materials. But they are not wise. It is then not only a question of what forms of knowledge have in common, but of how knowledge differs from ignorance, as well as how knowledge related to wisdom.

Socrates pursuit of knowledge of knowledge is part of his desire to be wise. Abstracted puzzles fail to catch what is at issue in the question of knowledge.

That means we're all being taken to watch the same movie, but we each return home with very different ideas of what the movie is about. — Agent Smith

That may be, but "meaning is use" means we must attend to how the word is being used. The etymology is helpful. The root 'leg -' means to collect or gather. When Heraclitus says:

Listen not to me but to the logos

this may be hard to understand, he is, after all, saying it. But if we think in terms of the root, he has gathered together in one place what he has heard from the logos itself. He is not speaking but allowing the logos to be heard.