A report on Truth, Knowledge and Plato

An angel carrying the banner of "Truth", Roslin, Midlothian

Los portadores de la antorcha (The Torch-Bearers) – Sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington symbolizing the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next (Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain)

Walter Seymour Allward's Veritas (Truth) outside Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Diogenes Laertius is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy.

'"What is Truth?" by Nikolai Ge, depicting John 18:38 in which Pilate asks Christ "What is truth?"

The parable of the blind men and the elephant suggests that people tend to project their partial experiences as the whole truth

Through his mother, Plato was related to Solon.

The owl of Athena is a symbol of knowledge.

Plato in his academy, drawing after a painting by Swedish painter Carl Johan Wahlbom

A detail of Spinoza monument in Amsterdam.

The "windmill proof" of the Pythagorean theorem found in Euclid's Elements.

A Venn diagram illustrating the classical theory of knowledge.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri, with fragment of Plato's Republic

Bust excavated at the Villa of the Papyri, possibly of Dionysus, Plato or Poseidon.

The Death of Socrates (1787), by Jacques-Louis David

Plato's Allegory of the Cave by Jan Saenredam, according to Cornelis van Haarlem, 1604, Albertina, Vienna

Painting of a scene from Plato's Symposium (Anselm Feuerbach, 1873)

Volume 3, pp. 32–33, of the 1578 Stephanus edition of Plato, showing a passage of Timaeus with the Latin translation and notes of Jean de Serres

First page of the Euthyphro, from the Clarke Plato (Codex Oxoniensis Clarkianus 39), 895 AD. The text is Greek minuscule.

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right) a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand. Plato holds his Timaeus and gestures to the heavens.

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929).

Knowledge of facts, also referred to as propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification.

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The role that truth plays in constituting knowledge.

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It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

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In the dialogue Theaetetus by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, Socrates pondered the distinction between knowledge and true belief but rejected the JTB definition of knowledge.

- Knowledge

Just as individual tables, chairs, and cars refer to objects in this world, 'tableness', 'chairness', and 'carness', as well as e. g. justice, truth, and beauty refer to objects in another world.

- Plato

Many have interpreted Plato as stating — even having been the first to write — that knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future developments in epistemology.

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3 related topics with Alpha

René Descartes, who is often credited as the father of modern philosophy, was often preoccupied with epistemological questions in his work.

Epistemology

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Bertrand Russell famously brought attention to the distinction between propositional knowledge and knowledge by acquaintance.

An Euler diagram representing a version of the traditional definition of knowledge that is adapted to the Gettier problem. This problem gives us reason to think that not all justified true beliefs constitute knowledge.

The analytic–synthetic distinction was first proposed by Immanuel Kant.

David Hume, one of the most staunch defenders of empiricism.

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge.

1) The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification

Among the Ancient Greek philosophers, Plato distinguished between inquiry regarding what we know and inquiry regarding what exists, particularly in the Republic, the Theaetetus, and the Meno.

Reason

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Dan Sperber believes that reasoning in groups is more effective and promotes their evolutionary fitness.

Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth.

Within the human mind or soul (psyche), reason was described by Plato as being the natural monarch which should rule over the other parts, such as spiritedness (thumos) and the passions.

The first question is concerning whether we can be confident that reason can achieve knowledge of truth better than other ways of trying to achieve such knowledge.

A brain in a vat that believes it is walking

Reality

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Sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary.

A correspondence theory of knowledge about what exists claims that "true" knowledge of reality represents accurate correspondence of statements about and images of reality with the actual reality that the statements or images are attempting to represent.

Plato and Aristotle could be said to be early examples of comprehensive systems.

George Musser, "Virtual Reality: How close can physics bring us to a truly fundamental understanding of the world?", Scientific American, vol. 321, no. 3 (September 2019), pp. 30–35. "Physics is... the bedrock of the broader search for truth.... Yet [physicists] sometimes seem to be struck by a collective impostor syndrome.... Truth can be elusive even in the best-established theories. Quantum mechanics is as well tested a theory as can be, yet its interpretation remains inscrutable. [p. 30.] The deeper physicists dive into reality, the more reality seems to evaporate." [p. 34.]