Katja Maria Vogt, Columbia University

Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

Introduction

The kind of skepticism that interests me in this book is not the skepticism that asks
whether or not I know that this is my hand, or that you are not a zombie. Instead, it is
part of an approach to epistemology that thinks of questions about knowledge, belief,
and truth as being immediately tied to normative and evaluative questions. Much of
the inspiration for this kind of skepticism derives from Socrates, or rather, the
Socrates of Platos dialogues. In a famous line of the Apology, Socrates says that the
unexamined life is not worth living for a human being (38a5-6). Ancient skepticism
inherits this spirit. It is centrally about stepping back from belief-formation and
counteracting ones tendencies to be quick to judge. Closely related, it is concerned
with the ways in which one can fail to understand ones own thoughts, and fail to
examine thoughts because one likes or dislikes them, or because one prefers to hold a
view as opposed to holding no view. These psychological phenomena are taken to
differ importantly from processes of rationally guided belief-formation, where a
cognizer is inclined to accept a thought after careful consideration of whether it is
true.

The plan for this book is to think through a range of theories that share intuitions
relevant to this kind of normative epistemology. A short way to describe the project is
thus to say that I am interested in the Socratic side of ancient epistemology.
Somewhat more specifically, I shall discuss Platos engagement with central Socratic
ideas about an examined life, as well as versions of what I call Socratic epistemology,

Katja Maria Vogt, Columbia University

Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

found in ancient skeptical philosophies and in Stoic epistemology. 1

The Socratic side of Plato and to some extent, even of Aristotle has historically
faced major obstacles.2 With the onset of monotheistic preoccupations, such things as
essences, souls, contemplation, and so on, received much appreciation in the history
of thought. Such things as hypothetical investigation, questions left open, a mindset
that considers several explanations possible, fared considerably worse. And yet, this
Socratic side of ancient epistemology is a rather robust movement. Some of it even
survives in Augustine, though most of it was cast aside as soon as theological
premises came to frame philosophical questions. More than that, the Socratic side of
ancient epistemology is closely related to many of our concerns and questions today.
Philosophers in the Socratic tradition focus on the nature of belief, the value of truth,
the role of concepts in thought, as well as the normative side of knowledge, belief,
and ignorance. The ambition of this book, then, is to show that the theories discussed
within the Socratic tradition contain sophisticated proposals on precisely these

1 A minimal

historical orientation would begin with the initial successors of Plato (429-347 BCE), who
focused on Platonic theories: Speusippus (347-339), Xenocrates (339-314), and Polemon (314- 269).
The founder of Stoicism, Zeno (334-262) studied and philosophized in the Academy for a long time,
perhaps as early as under Xenocrates leadership, but certainly during Polemons time as head of the
school. Arcesilaus (316/5-241/0) belonged to the next generation. All in all, the first doctrinal phase,
later an inspiration for many thinkers, extended over roughly a period of 80 years. After that,
Hellenistic philosophy, and that is, Socratically inspired philosophy, gains for a while the upper hand.
(Cf. John Dillon, The Heirs of Plato. A Study of the Old Academy (347-274BC) (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003); Francesca Alesse, La Stoa e la traditione Socratica, (Naples: Bibliopolis
2000)). On the Socratic side of Academic skepticism, cf. John M. Cooper, Arcesilaus: Socratic and
Sceptic, in V. Karasmanis (ed.), Year of Socrates 2001Proceedings (Athens: European Cultural
Center of Delphi, 2004), 81-103. Reprinted in Cooper, Knowledge, Nature, and the Good: Essays on
Ancient Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
2

I am not pursuing the question of how to reconstruct Socratic as opposed to Platonic philosophy. My
approach to Socrates in this book is closer to Paul Vander Waerdts seminal collection of papers, The
Socratic Movement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994).

Katja Maria Vogt, Columbia University

Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

questions.3

Socratic commitment to investigation is well-recognized as a feature of certain

Platonic dialogues.4 And yet, many think of Plato as the proponent of a set of
doctrines. Plato presumably put forward the Theory of Recollection, the Theory of the
Forms, as well as ideas about body and soul that associate the body with perception
and hold it in low esteem, while associating the soul with knowledge, Forms, and
other lofty affairs. This conception of what Plato said is partly already present in
Aristotle, who sometimes writes as if Plato formulated one precise version of, say, the
Theory of Recollection.5 Moreover, it is greatly promoted through Neoplatonism,
which develops intuitions relevant to the presumed Platonic doctrines. Early modern
and modern thinkers who engage with Plato often fail to distinguish between Plato,
the ancient Greek philosopher, and the ideas that the tradition considers Platonic.

3 After

so many centuries of interpretation and adaptation of Plato, it would be naive to think that one
can do justice to all arguments that have been raised from different sides. Im self-consciously doing
what I assume many in the Academy and elsewhere did they did philosophy with Plato: that is, I
take it, they considered Platos dialogues extremely helpful starting points for thinking about
philosophical questions that interested them; in the course of doing so, they came up with views about
what Plato said, could have said, how his arguments could be developed further, and so on.
4

Insofar as the sophists also stand for an attitude of calling into question peoples views relevant to the
leading of their lives, they belong to the group of philosophers that interest me in this book. Cf. Rachel
Barney, The Sophistic Movement, in Marie Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin, A Companion to
Ancient Philosophy, Malden MA: Blackwell, 2006, 77-100, 79; and Richard Bett, Is there a Sophistic
Ethics? Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002): 235-262. Socrates shares a number of characteristics with the
sophists. Indeed, with respect to calling into question the gods of the city, he probably is guilty as
charged. Cf. Myles Burnyeat, The Impiety of Socrates, Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997): 1-12.
5 As

I see it, even Aristotle looks different if read with the skeptical tradition in mind. Aristotles
references to learning-as-recollection might appear to be ascriptions of doctrine to Plato. Read through
the Socratic-skeptical lens, however, Aristotle might do what he likes to do, namely invoke and to some
extent sharpen theories formulated by predecessors, thereby setting out a range of theoretical options
for his consideration. Aristotle is not doing history of philosophy.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

A Socratically-inspired reader will be inclined to push back. She will argue that,
though the dialogues differ in many important and interesting ways from each other,
and though Plato formulates a number of theories for his and the readers
consideration, he remains committed to ongoing investigation.6 Platos dialogues are
not treatises in disguise.7 It is far more compelling to assume that Plato has
philosophical reasons for writing dialogues, reasons that relate to Socratic caution:
one should not claim or imply that one has knowledge if in fact one does not. In some
of the early dialogues, confident and sometimes quite conceited interlocutors are
shown to lack the expertise they claim to have. In observing their failure, one should
not assume that they are on display for the amusement of readers safe from such
embarrassment. Arguably, it would be pointless to write these dialogues if one thought
that only others would fail in the relevant ways, while oneself was obviously in a
different situation. Instead, if one takes seriously how difficult the questions under
discussion are, and how deeply the views one is likely to have on them are interwoven
with ones upbringing, culture, and way of life, it should be clear that anyone might
fail.8 Socratic caution involves a deliberate attempt to come up with counterarguments

Cf. Michael Frede, who argues that, even in a dialogue like the Sophist, the form of the dialogue
captures a distinctively Socratic intuition the idea that to hold forth on something presupposes a
privileged position of authority. The only person entitled to do this is one who has sorted things out in
such a way that there is no confusion whatever connected in any way whatever with the question at
issue. Frede takes it that Plato does not think of himself as inhabiting such a position. Accordingly,
even his more positive dialogues retain the spirit of not setting oneself up as the one who
knows. (The Literary Form of the Sophist, in Ch. Gill and M. M. McCabe (eds.), Form and
Argument in Late Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 135-152, p.140.)
7

I am borrowing the phrase treatises in disguise from Michael Frede, who makes a similar point in
Platos Arguments and the Dialogue Form, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy sup. vol. (1992):
201-219, 219.
8

This is a point Frede makes in (1992), 214-7.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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to views one might otherwise be inclined to hold.9

Notably, not setting oneself up as an expert is entirely compatible with having certain
ideas about the way things could be explained; with viewing certain proposals as
worthy of repeated investigation; with thinking that one has formulated a theory that
is likely to get some central points right; or with assuming that one has thought
carefully through some proposals and found them to be lacking. As a result, the
impression naturally arises that Plato, say, is rather strongly inclined to think that
there are Forms perhaps even that he would not give up on this view though he
might be aware of major difficulties in spelling it out. And yet, another impression
arises too, namely that Plato is acutely aware of such difficulties, difficulties that,
though at times bracketed off, might motivate extended discussions in another
dialogue.10 That is, even where Plato appears most dogmatic say, talking about the
Forms he is not laying out a theory.11 In writing dialogues that return to a set of
inter-related questions he keeps tackling questions left open, or questions that arise

[Add reference: cf. AL, forthcoming]

10

To take one example: in Rp. V, a book that is considered part of the more doctrinal middle period,
Plato says that ignorance is concerned with what is not (477a10-b1). This claim remains unaccounted
for. As I see it, this doesnt mean that Plato is unaware of its difficulty; rather, he is bracketing it for the
time being, as something that deserves separate discussion. Much of the Sophist is concerned with
asking what is not-being? and the relationship of not-being and false belief. Such features of the
dialogues suggest that, even where Plato appears most doctrinal, he is aware of questions left open.
11

Ironically, I think that Plato is most dogmatic in his theology, though this is not a topic that today
counts as a major part of his theorizing. Plato argues rather consistently and with much fervor against
the multitude of morally unconcerned Greek divinities, and for the theological claim that god is good.
It is easy for us to find Euthyphro, enthusiast for traditional religion, a pompous person with confused
views. And yet, as Burnyeat (1997) points out, it is Platos commitment to a different theology a
theology where divinity is good and single-minded that motivates some of the moves he is often
criticized for, such as censorship of poetry in the Republic, or the Laws view that those who cannot be
cured from impiety, violating our piety, are to suffer the death penalty (10.909a).

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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when a certain topic is looked at from another angle.

Plato thus has much to offer for later philosophers with skeptical inclinations.12 It is
likely that those leading figures in the Academy who became the first skeptics and
those who formulated Stoic philosophy read Plato with a focus on these ideas.13
Notably, the Stoics firmly belong into the group of the skeptically inclined.14 One
need not end up embracing skepticism in order to appreciate the force of skeptical
concerns, and the Stoics emphasis on epistemic caution is second to none. They think
a state of mind is attainable where one would indeed only assent as and when one
should. But this state of mind is rather hard to achieve.

As far as we know, early skeptics and Stoics thought their way through a given

12

Julia Annas argues that, to show that Plato is a skeptic one would have to show that he never puts
forward doctrines, which she takes to be an implausible position. (Plato the Skeptic, in Paul A.
Vander Waerdt (ed.), The Socratic Movement, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, 309-340, 334.)
As we say, it is not clear why this should be implausible. Annas also interprets her question is Plato
a skeptic? as the question of whether Arcesilaus puts forward a reading of Plato that can convince us
today. However, it is unlikely that anyone today will recognize the philosophy of any philosopher in the
Platonic tradition as, entirely, her take on Plato. By finding doctrines in Plato, I assume that Annas does
not take herself to be committed to endorse the philosophy of any particular doctrinal Platonist from
antiquity. At an earlier point in her paper, Annas applies a range of criteria when asking whether Plato
might be read as a skeptic, criteria such as whether Socrates always argues ad hominem; whether Plato
always argues for two sides of an issue; and so on. It is a widely accepted method today to read the
dialogues individually and find different arguments, methods, etc., in them. Accordingly, any such
criterion is bound to produce a negative answer.
13

Of course, this is compatible with the Stoics taking Plato to stand for particular theories, such as the
Theory of Forms. For an influential account of how the Stoics might have engaged with what they saw
as Socratic ethical views in Platos dialogues, cf. Gisela Striker, Platos Socrates and the Stoics, in
Paul Vander Waerdt (ed.), The Socratic Movement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 241-271.
14

Cf. Michael Frede, The sceptics two kinds of assent and the question of the possibility of
knowledge, in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), 255-78; and his Stoics and Sceptics on clear and distinct
impressions, in Myles Burnyeat (ed.), The Sceptical Tradition, (Berkeley, New York, London:
University of California Press, 1983), 6594.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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Platonic dialogue or sections thereof, in order to see whether a given theoretical route
might work, or whether one would have to modify it to make sense of a given
intuition.15 Perhaps they did pretty much what we do today, when, say, in a seminar
on the Theaetetus, we ask such questions as what is compelling about the Cold Wind
Example? As a group of interlocutors, these philosophers took different perspectives.
Some of them pushed the open-mindedness in Plato further, cultivating methods of
argument that keep one from assent to any given claim.16 These are the Academic
skeptics. Others thought it important to insist that knowledge, though hard to achieve,
is possible. In conversation with the skeptics, these philosophers the early Stoics
tried to formulate ever more sophisticated criteria, criteria that would make sure that a
given truth-claim indeed qualified as knowledge. Yet others, such as the early
Pyrrhonian Aenesidemus, leave the Academy, aiming to formulate a version of
skepticism that draws not only on Socratic commitment to investigation, but also on
Pre-Socratic discussions about appearances. The following chapters take their content
and their method from the debates between these groups of philosophers. They are a
series of attempts to think through, and then to re-think, a set of Socratic intuitions.
The upshot is of a skeptical nature: I shall leave open which, if any, of the various

15 As

David Sedley argues, it is likely that these ancient thinkers had favorite dialogues ones they saw
as expressing ideas about knowledge that they themselves considered central and then read other
dialogues from that point of view. Three ancient interpretations of the Theaetetus, in Ch. Gill and
M.M. McCabe (eds.), Form and Argument in Late Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
79-104, p. 86.
16

In engaging with Plato and Platos Socrates, ancient readers might have attempted a distinction
between the historical Socrates and Platos Socrates. In thinking in terms of Platos Socrates, one
recognizes that, though the Socrates of some dialogues might be closer to the historical Socrates than
the Socrates of other dialogues, the dialogues are at every point Platos philosophical work. This point
is made, for example, by Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of
a Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Kahn aims to revive a version of the
so-called unitarian reading of Plato, a view that I do not share, but that I shall not address.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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approaches wins. 17

In other words, I shall discuss epistemological questions that are particularly salient
for those ancient philosophers who devote themselves to ongoing investigation. What
is their attitude towards belief? Do they take themselves to attain truths? How do they
see the distinction between belief and knowledge? What kind of thought is involved
in investigation? And so on. The central intuition is that the kind of truth-claim we
ordinarily make is prone to be deficient: it is too quick, too strongly attached to what
we would like to be the case, too much subject to a desire to be right, too changeable,
and so on. This kind of truth-claim is called doxa.

Doxa, then, is a deficient cognitive attitude. This idea is to be found in Plato, but also
in ancient skepticism and in Stoic epistemology, both of which pick up on the
proposals in Plato that interest me here. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 engage immediately with
the Apology, Ion, and Philebus, discussing Socratic views on ignorance; with the
Republic on belief and investigation; and with the Theaetetus on the distinction
between true and false beliefs. Chapter 4 stays with the Theaetetus, aiming to explain
how skeptical responses to conflicting appearances improve upon metaphysical
responses. Chapter 5 addresses the question whether Pyrrhonian investigation is
genuine investigation, and that is, whether it is adequately responsive to the value of
truth. Chapter 6 discusses what I take to be the greatest threat to Pyrrhonian

17

I do not mean to imply that there is a consistent Socrates character throughout the dialogues; on the
contrary, the skeptical bent of my interpretation means that I do not imply that there is one Socratic
epistemology. Instead, I am interested in epistemological discussions that develop, in different ways,
some core Socratic intuitions.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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skepticism: the objection that, without forming beliefs the skeptic cannot even think.
In siding with the skeptical project, I take it that I need a response on the skeptics
behalf to this potentially fatal objection.18 Chapter 7 returns to the question of whether
beliefs are adequately characterized as true of false. The Stoics take the bleakest view
of doxa: it is such a lowly state that it does not even merit evaluation as true. In my
Concluding Remarks, I return to the starting-point of this book, restating why the
lines of thought that motivate skepticism as conceived of by ancient thinkers
deserve to be taken seriously today.

Many of the ideas about belief that are the topic of this book are hidden and easily
overlooked, because the Greek term for belief, doxa, is often translated as opinion.
This translation, though tempting because it captures the derogative sense of doxa, is
misleading. It suggests that there is a broader category, belief, of which opinions are a
sub-class. Other sub-classes, presumably, would not share the deficiencies of mere
opinion. But there is no such broader category. In the range of theories I refer to as
Socratic epistemology, there is no terminological noun for belief other than doxa.19
18

I am not discussing Academic skepticism separately, though many discussions throughout the book
touch on issues relevant to Academic skepticism. This choice reflects my assessment that the questions
crucial to my project how a skeptic can think and investigate are more explicitly the subject of
Pyrrhonian philosophy. Throughout the book, I am speaking of the skeptics when I refer to different
kinds of ancient skeptics, or when I discuss exclusively Pyrrhonian skepticism, dropping Pyrrhonian
after first introducing the topic of a given chapter. Otherwise Im speaking of Academic and Pyrrhonian
skeptics.
19

It is partly due to Platos discussion of belief in Republic V, arguably the best known ancient text on
these matters, that doxa is the core terminological notion. Plato distinguishes between two kinds of
belief, beliefs about material objects, and beliefs about the images and reflections of these objects.
Plato might have coined three terms: doxa, pistis and eikasia. But the latter are treated as kinds of doxa,
and Republic Vs epistemological discussion is generally concerned with doxa. Pistis is sometimes
translated as faith, a translation that is utterly misleading. Plato has nothing of a religious nature in
mind. Further, the English belief, if used outside of epistemology, often refers to religious beliefs.
Doxa does not share this over-tone.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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There are related attitudes where no truth-claim is made, such as hypotheses,

suppositions, or assumptions. But doxa is the technical term for belief.20 Doxai (the
plural of doxa) are not in every way like beliefs in todays sense. Instead, they are
truth-claims or acceptances of content that fall short of knowledge.21

This shortcoming that doxai fall short of knowledge is the most general reason for
the derogative sense of the notion. It marks a difference between Socratic and
contemporary ideas about belief. According to the former, belief and knowledge are
two kinds of attitudes that involve a truth-claim. The truth-claim of belief, however, is
inferior and in various ways (depending on the particular theory under consideration)
different from the truth-claim of knowledge. The attitude of knowledge thus does not
involve the attitude of belief, or rather, it does not involve belief in the sense in which
today it is standardly assumed that a cognizer who knows that p also believes that p.
The relevant ideas are not wholly foreign to contemporary epistemology. And yet,
even epistemologists who explore the idea that one should only assert something if
one knows it, tend to phrase this as the norm that one should not believe without
knowing.22 That is, they assume that knowing involves holding a belief. Contrary to
20

In the simile of the Line in Rp. VI, Plato refers to a sub-class of doxa as pistis; these are, in the
Republic, beliefs about matters in the domain of shadows and reflections (the most image-like sphere of
reality). Still, pistis is a kind of doxa, and shares the general characteristics of doxa.
21

The idea that knowledge is better than true belief is of course not absent from contemporary
discussions. For critical discussion, cf. Ernest Sosa, Value Matters in Epistemology, Journal of
Philosophy 107.4 (2010): 167-90. However, the idea that knowledge is better than true belief is
different from the idea that beliefs are generally deficient by falling short of knowledge.
22

Timothy Williamson writes about the relevant ideas: It is plausible, nevertheless, that occurrently
believing p stands to asserting p as the inner stands to the outer. If so, the knowledge rule for assertion
corresponds to the norm that one should believe p only if one knows p. Given that norm, it is not
reasonable to believe p when one knows that one does not know p. (Knowledge and its Limits,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 25556).

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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this assumption, Socratic epistemology explores the idea that, in coming to know
something, knowledge that p transforms and replaces belief that p.

For the reminder of this Introduction, I shall sketch some of the relevant intuitions
about doxa, in the hopes of making comprehensible the proposal that doxa is
inherently deficient. To begin with, it is helpful to recall the closeness of the Greek
doxa with notions of seeming, appearance, and reputation. The verb dokein means to
appear, and doxa thus often denotes something in the domain of appearances. Doxa
can refer to appearances in a non-philosophical sense: ones reputation among other
people. For example, Socrates says in the Euthyphro that shame comes with fearing
the reputation doxa of badness (12b9-c1). Similarly, the well-known discussion in
Republic I, on whether it is enough to appear just or whether one should be just, is
phrased in terms of doxa. To have the doxa of justice is to have a reputation for
justice. Later on in the Republic, doxa is discussed in epistemological and
metaphysical terms: as a cognitive attitude that has its own kind of object.23 If the
Republic is read in Greek rather than translation, Book I is strikingly continuous with
the metaphysics of the middle books: doxa is associated with the domain of
appearance and perception, and contrasted with the domain of being.24

23 As

Sedley points out, the idea that doxa and epistm each have their own kind of objects is
mentioned in as early a dialogue as the Charmides (168a3-9), where the object of knowledge is a
mathma, a field of learning or a discipline. D. Sedley, The Midwife of Platonism. Text and Subtext in
Platos Theaetetus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 178.
24

The metaphysical dimension of doxas inferiority does not survive in Hellenistic epistemology.
Skeptics and Stoics do not adopt it the skeptics, because they do not adopt any theories, and the
Stoics, because they basically disagree with Platonic metaphysics. Where Plato thinks that doxa is
inferior insofar as it deals with the world of becoming, the Stoics consider doxa as a state that, itself, is
in change: the person with mere doxa is the person who is likely to change her mind.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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Consider the following range of formulations. Someone might say dokei moi that p;
it seems to me that p. In some cases (though perhaps not all cases), this cognizer
might be said to have engaged in the cognitive activity that the verb doxazein picks
out: to form a belief, make a judgment, or perhaps, to think of something in a certain
way, with thinking envisaged as inner assertoric speech.25 And now she might be said
to have a doxa. Does this final formulation still carry the implication of seeming or
mere appearance? The answer must be it depends: the word is used differently in
different contexts, and philosophers theorize doxa in different ways. For current
purposes it is important that, notwithstanding these differences, the ancient
philosophers have the connotations of seeming-ness and appearance in mind, even if
only in the back of their minds, when they discuss doxa.26

Indeed, doxa can be seen in such a negative light that it clearly falls into the domain
of ignorance. In some sense, todays philosophers might share the intuition that,
where one does not have knowledge, one is ignorant. The early Greek association of
doxa and ignorance runs deeper. For example, in Parmenides poem there are but two
25

This is an conception of thought famously developed in Platos Theaetetus 189e, and of great
influence in ancient epistemology. Thinking is speech which the mind itself goes through with itself
about whatever its considering. () when the mind is thinking, its simply carrying on a discussion,
asking itself questions and answering them, and making assertions and denials. And when it has come
to a decision, either slowly or in a sudden rush, and its no longer divided, but says one single thing, we
call this its doxa. So what I call doxazein is speaking (legein) and what I call doxa is speech (logos);
but speech spoken, not aloud to someone else, but silently to oneself.
26

When I speak of ancient philosophers here, I mean to include the majority of philosophers between,
say, Parmenides, and the Stoics. The history of skepticism is rather disjoint: Sextus Empiricus, an
important figure, writes much later than his predecessors, and we know little about his context. Im
including him, but as an outlier. I also mean to include Aristotle, though not much will be said in this
book about Aristotle. Some core ideas doxa dealing with the domain of what can be otherwise and
doxa as a weak state in akrasia are discussed in Chapter 3.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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spheres: the sphere of knowledge on the one hand, and the sphere of belief-orignorance on the other. Indeed, in early Platonic dialogues it appears that there are
only these two conditions: knowledge or ignorance.27 The badness of doxa is thus, at
least in some ways and in some contexts, the badness of ignorance.

In the Meno, and more explicitly in the Republic, Plato begins to work with a tripartite
distinction between ignorance, doxa, and knowledge. Though it is still true that some
of doxas deficiency lies in the fact that it falls short of knowledge, more needs to be
said. In particular, doxa needs to be looked at more closely because, if one wants to
achieve knowledge, one must start somewhere. And where else to start than from
ideas one already has? If one were to endorse ones ideas as truth-claims, one would
hold doxai. If, on the other hand, one were to hypothesize them, one could use them in
investigation without tainting ones state of mind with an inferior kind of cognitive
attitude. Before one begins to investigate, however, one is likely to hold beliefs.
Acquisition of knowledge, then, would seem to involve that one moves from having
beliefs states to be gotten rid of to having knowledge.

In order to see more clearly the idea that knowledge replaces belief, recall a wellknown passage from the Meno. Socrates teaches a young slave, who had no previous
training, some geometry; eventually the boy arrives at the right answer to a
geometrical problem. As Socrates puts it, the slave boy now formulated a correct
belief. For the belief to become a piece of knowledge, he would have to repeat this

27

I am not here going into the question of how to think about knowledge in early Platonic dialogues,
questions about techn, etc.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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and similar exercises. Eventually, the belief would settle down in his mind. It would
become a piece of knowledge. That is, contrary to the long-standing idea that
something must be added to true belief for it to become knowledge say, a
justification this line of thought suggests that, once the true belief has become stable
(which might involve that the relevant reasoning is in place), a piece of knowledge
replaces what was earlier a true belief.28 This stable attitude, so the proposal goes, is
genuinely different. And that is, it is not the case that one attitude changed a property,
becoming stable. Through stabilization, a new attitude knowledge is generated.

The passage in the Meno is short, and its interpretation is controversial. For present
purposes, it suffices that the passage can be interpreted in this fashion. It is possible to
read the text as suggesting that the formerly-held belief comes to be replaced by a
piece of knowledge. This idea is central to the tradition of Socratic epistemology:
belief is an inherently deficient attitude. In moving from belief to knowledge, one
does not add something to an attitude that one otherwise keeps in place no, one
comes to have a different attitude altogether.

The traditional, Neoplatonically inspired story about Plato focuses elsewhere in the
Meno. Plato, it is argued, holds the Theory of Recollection. Investigation and learning
are possible, it is said, because knowledge is latently present in the soul. The soul
28

Cf. David Sedley, who argues that the Meno does not compel us to consider knowledge a species of
doxa: doxa becoming epistm could mean being replaced by a child becomes an adult, but an
adult is not a species of a child. Sedley points out, in my view rightly, that the Cave image of the
Republic describes just this kind of progression from doxa to epistm (1996, p. 93). For objections to
this line of argument, cf. Gail Fine, Knowledge and True Belief in the Meno, Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy 27 (2004): 41-81. Few commentators pursue the idea that belief is weak and
knowledge firm. For brief discussion, cf. Gail Fine Nozicks Socrates, Phronesis (1996): 233-244.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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saw all things prior to its birth in a human body. The slave boy can formulate the
correct answer because knowledge is already present in his soul. Learning is
recollecting: it can be hard to access latent knowledge, because it is buried under false
conceptions, which first need to be cleared away. This is a forceful story, and it merits
being re-told. Notably, however and this is what any skeptical or Stoic reader would
emphasize it is not presented as a theory, supported by arguments. It is something
priests and priestesses say. Presumably, if people who are close to divinity put
forward an idea, we should take it seriously. But it is one thing to take it seriously, and
another thing for it to be literally true.29 Like the Republics similes, reference to the
views of priests is a cousin of hypothetical investigation: a certain view can be
considered, and yet it is not claimed that it can be accounted for and presented as
knowledge.

In the Meno, three solutions to the puzzle of how investigation is possible are on offer.
First, recollection: it is possible to investigate a matter because we know and do not
know it at the same time when we begin to investigate; we know it latently, but not
overtly (81a-d). Second comes a distinctively Socratic idea, namely that, even though
we do not know whether recollection is true, we should continue to investigate,
because otherwise we would become lazy people (81d-e). Third, and after the
geometry example (81e-85b), comes the proposal that we need a distinction between
29

David Sedley and Alex Long divide the text up such that only 81a-c are attributed to priests and
priestesses, and 81c-e appears as epistemological doctrine put forward in Socrates own voice (Plato.
Meno and Phaedo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, xvii). From the perspective of the
skeptic reading I put forward, there is no such transition; 81c-e continues to talk about Hades, the soul,
and so forth. Indeed, Sedley and Long immediately go on to admit that the only conclusion Socrates
will absolutely insist on is that one should seek because, to give up on it based on the Meno Problem
is to be lazy.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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true belief and knowledge. It is possible to investigate because the dichotomy of either
knowing or not knowing something, which was a premise of the Meno Problem, is
compatible with a tripartite distinction between ignorance, belief, and knowledge. It is
possible to have beliefs about things that one does not know.

In fairness to those interpreters who focus on Recollection rather than this last move,
it must be admitted that the threefold distinction between ignorance, doxa, and
knowledge, is not explicitly argued for. Instead, doxa sneaks in via the route I
sketched above through formulations that employ the verb dokein. In a famous line,
Socrates formulates a principle for question and answer: say what you think. You,
Socrates says to the slave boy, should respond by saying what seems to you (soi
dokoun) (83d4). He goes on to tell Meno that he will only want to hear the boys
doxai (84d3) and eventually states that the boy formulated no doxa that was not his
own (85b12). The doxai he came up with were in him (c4). The person who is
ignorant still has correct doxai (c6-7). For current purposes, we can break off here.
The point has been made that, though someone is ignorant of something, she is not
entirely ignorant in such a way as to have no views on the matter. And that was the
initial assumption in the Meno Problem, that one either is ignorant in such a way as to
have no starting-point for thinking about something, or one already has knowledge.
The problem, it turns out, was formulated in a misleading way. The ignorant person
has something at her disposal that allows her to start thinking about things.

A deflationary reading of the Meno focuses on this: investigation is possible because

we have beliefs about the things that we do not know. As unendorsed hypotheses,

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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these attitudes are respectable starting-points for investigation. This is how skeptics,
who want to investigate without doxai, are likely to read the Meno. 30 Right after
discussion of the Meno Problem, Socrates introduces a so-called hypothetical method.
And that is, he introduces something of enormous interest to skeptics: an attitude that
falls short of truth-claims and that nevertheless allows an investigator to engage with
her thoughts and the thoughts of others.

And yet, one may want to defend Recollection. Recollection aims to capture, apart
from explaining how investigation is possible, the following phenomenon: a learner
might, in a certain sense, already have available to herself the content that she is in the
process of learning.31 As part of the deflationary reading, this phenomenon gets reexplained, without reference to an earlier life of the mind. As Hellenistic philosophers
suggest, a reasoner has content available through the concepts that were acquired
early on in this life. The having of these concepts, called pre-conceptions, actually
makes her a reasoner. Hellenistic readers of the Meno are likely to point out that
Socrates asks first of all whether the slave-boy knows Greek. As a knower of Greek,
the slave boy has some kind of understanding of what Socrates says when he says
lets draw a square. In the terms of Hellenistic philosophers, he has a preconception
some preliminary idea of what squares are. Preconceptions need to be made explicit
in investigation, and they need to be developed further. Still, there is a sense in which

30

This suggestion was first made by Gisela Striker, Sceptical Strategies, in M. Schofield, M.
Burnyeat, and J. Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1980), 5483. Reprinted in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and
Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 92115, 112.
31

This point has greatly interested modern readers, who compare it to talk about a priori knowledge.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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coming to understand something involves realizing that the answer fits the
preconception one already had. A knowledge-belief distinction on the one hand, and
the theory of preconceptions on the other, thus aim to address the questions that the
Meno raises.

Doxa, so far, appears as a lowly cognitive attitude related to ignorance, mere

appearance, and so forth. It can be utilized in investigation only by being turned into a
different attitude: hypothesis. Otherwise it is such that the Socratically inspired
thinker aims to stay away from it. This though it is a mere sketch that would need
much filling in is a set of ideas that skeptically inclined Hellenistic philosophers
engage with. Against them, one might argue that they neglect the difference between
true and false beliefs. They evaluate all doxa as deficient. Doing so, do they not miss
out on something important, namely that true belief is better than false belief? This
idea is expressed in the Symposium (202a): what is unreasoned cannot count as
knowledge, and what hits the truth cannot be ignorance. Hence, true belief might be
its own category, situated between knowledge and ignorance.

One might push even further. Why should a true belief not count as the best kind of
judgment, and thus as knowledge?32 Part II of the Theaetetus explores precisely this,
that knowledge is true belief. In my view, Plato takes this proposal rather seriously. If
truth is what we are after, then true belief should qualify as knowledge. If, on the
32

These questions are rarely discussed in Plato scholarship. An interesting exception if Robert Nozick,
Socratic Puzzles, Phronesis (1995): 143-155. Nozick recognizes the problem, and thinks through the
following potential solution: someone who forms a true belief might not have the truth, because
beliefs lack stability. Beliefs do not stick. The cognizer is likely to change her mind again. This is
remarkably close to the Stoic proposal.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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other hand, this proposal fails, and knowledge is not well-explained as true belief,
then it seems that truth is not all we seek. And this suggests that, perhaps, doxai are
not to be divided into good (namely true) doxai and bad (namely false) false ones.

Consider more generally the question of how doxa relates to the truth. According to
standard theories in contemporary epistemology, belief-formation aims at the truth. As
others have noted, this claim could mean several things. 33 Taken descriptively, it
might mean that, for a cognizer to believe something is for her to hold it to be true. In
this interpretation, the claim provides something like a definition of the attitude we
today call belief, or alternatively, the attitude we call judgment. Judgment, here, is a
term for a truth-claim, or for the acceptance of something (content, an impression, a
proposition, a thought, etc., depending on the specifics of a given theory) as true.34
The term describes a mental act without thereby evaluating it in any way, or
characterizing it further in ways that would lend themselves to normative concerns.

Arguably, it is an achievement of Platos Theaetetus to first discuss these matters.

Every truth-claim has the same structure: some content is accepted as true. This
applies, no matter whether the resulting attitude is a piece of knowledge, or whether it

33

Cf. Pascal Engel, Truth and the Aim of Belief, in D. Gillies (ed.), Laws and Models in Science
(London: Kings College, 2005), 77-79. In an influential paper, Bernard Williams says the dictum
means that (i) beliefs are accessible as true and false; (ii) to believe that p is to believe that p is true;
(iii) to say I believe that p is a claim that p is true. Deciding to Believe, in Problems of the Self:
Philosophical Papers 1956-72 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 136-7.
34

Notably, acceptance as true is here meant to be full acceptance; that is, the partial acceptance
involved in, say, assumptions, does not fall into the same class. For a different notion of acceptance as
true, cf. Nishi Shah and David Velleman, Doxastic Deliberation, The Philosophical Review Vol 114,
n. 4 (2005): 497-534. Shah and Velleman refer to believing that p, assuming that p, and imagining that
p as accepting that p.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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has the lesser status of ignorance or belief. Insofar as the Theaetetus takes seriously
the option that doxa might simply be judgment, rather than a deficient kind of truthclaim, it discusses ideas that are close to todays notion of belief.35 This idea from the
Theaetetus is an ancestor of the framework of Stoic philosophy of mind, according to
which every cognitive activity involves acceptance of (rejection of, or suspension of
judgment with respect to) a given impression. The normative question of how these
acceptances fare, and whether they qualify as knowledge, is considered a separate
question, one that is turned to after the basic structure of cognitive operations has
been described.

In Plato, the notion of belief-as-truth-claim competes with the Socratic intuition that
beliefs are a particular kind of truth-claim, namely deficient truth-claims. This
competing conception immediately includes a normative perspective. Arguably, it is
the nature of belief that, when we form a belief, we aim to accept as true what really is
true.36 A cognizer might fail, and accept something as true that is not true. Moreover,
and this is a point of particular relevance for Socratic epistemology, cognizers can fail
to properly aim at the truth in forming beliefs.37 They might jump to conclusions, or
in some other way accept something as true without having considered it carefully.
35

Levett, Burnyeat, and McDowell translate doxa in the Theaetetus as judgment, thus capturing this
point (The Theaetetus of Plato. Introduction and revision of M. J. Levetts translation by Myles F.
Burnyeat (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990); Theaetetus. Translated with notes by John McDowell (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973).
36

Cf. for example David Velleman, On the Aim of Belief, in Velleman, The Possibility of Practical
Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 244-81.
37

For an explicitly normative formulation of this idea, cf. Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 15: A mental relation to a content p is the judgement that p
only if the thinker aims to make this the case: that he stands in that relation to p only if it is the case
that p.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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The proposal is not that cognizers can decide to believe or believe at will.38 In a
suggestive formulation, one could say that, though cognizers cannot believe at will,
they often believe as they please. Not adhering as closely as they should to norms of
belief-formation, they may accept as true a nasty story about someone they do not
like, or a positive one about their friend, without pausing to consider whether their
interlocutor just repeats gossip.39 In cases like these, cognizers fail to aim at the truth
because they do not make enough of an effort to distinguish between what seems true
and what they would like to be true.

According to this proposal, beliefs aim to represent the world as it is, even if
believers fail to aim at the truth.40 This distinction is important. In recent
discussions, the idea that beliefs aim at the truth has been ridiculed, as if it implied
that we think of beliefs as little archers, aiming to hit a target.41 With a view to how
strange an idea this seems to be, it has been suggested that the dictum must be about
cognizers, not about beliefs: cognizers aim, or should aim, at the truth in forming
beliefs. This move is too quick. One can think of beliefs as having their own kind of

38

For some recent discussions of this issue, cf. Jeff Kasser and Nishi Shah, The Metaethics of Belief:
An Expressivist Reading of The Will to Believe, Social Epistemology Vol 20, n. 1 (2006): 1-17.
Nishi Shah, How Truth Governs Belief, The Philosophical Review Vol 112, n.4 (2003): 447-482;
Shah and Velleman (2005).
39

Philosophers interested in friendship have recently started to explore these epistemological questions.
They proceed on the above observation: we are rather strongly inclined to believe positive stories about
our friends. Cf. Sarah Stroud, Epistemic Partiality in Friendship, Ethics 116 (2006): 498-524.
40 Accordingly,

this kind of perspective disputes an idea that Williams formulates at the beginning of
his discussion, that a cognizer who realizes that her belief is false gives up on her belief (Williams
(1974), 137); often, cognizers divert there attention, or do something else that makes it possible for
them not to give up on views that are perhaps just momentarily recognized as false.
41

Cf. Ralph Wedgwood, The Aim of Belief, Philosophical Perspectives 16 (2002): 267-297.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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directionality without imagining them as mini-agents. Beliefs, then, are the kind of
attitude that aims to represent the world as it is. A cognizer might fail in aiming for the
truth, accepting, for example, a view that feels good to her, and yet by thus forming a
belief have an attitude that aims at the truth. One might say that precisely this is the
problem: cognizers who fail to aim at the truth still end up with truth-claims.

The interlocutors who populate early Socratic dialogues exemplify how far things can
come apart. They make unmitigated truth-claims; and they fall awfully short from
adhering to norms of belief-formation. Somewhat polemically, one might say that
their beliefs represent things as they would like them to be. First of all, their beliefs
represent them, the speakers, as smart and authoritative. Second, their beliefs
represent other matters in ways that fit this self-image. Third, their belief-formation
avoids intellectual work: they prefer to accept something as true if this acceptance
does not call for the revision of other beliefs. Fourth, they are inclined to accept as
true what in one way or another feels good. Fifth, they tend not to be aware of the fact
that they might not be acquainted with relevant concepts, thus buying into ideas that
they hardly comprehend. Sixth, they display a propensity for belief-formation as
opposed to abstention from belief-formation.

Consider an example, the priest Euthyphro, Socrates interlocutor in the dialogue

Euthyphro. Euthyphro is presented as someone who sees himself (and is seen by the
city) as an expert in matters of piety and justice. As a consequence, he is brazenly
confident in his own legal judgment, though it concerns a complicated case a case
that could either be intentional murder or mere negligence (2a-5d). The thought that

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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he might misjudge the facts does not cross his mind; instead, he compares himself to
Zeus (6a). When Socrates calls his views into question, and he no longer knows how
to defend them, he leaves (15d-e). Clearly, he is not going to revise any of his
judgments in the light of arguments. In the course of the conversation, Euthyphro
accepts a number of premises without having given them due consideration. In
particular, he accepts ideas that sound good to him, for example, ideas that vaguely fit
his notion that the gods are amazing and incomprehensible (6b-c). Throughout the
conversation, Euthyphro never says I dont know or I dont understand, even
when Socrates formulates ideas that are obviously beyond him, and that involve semitechnical vocabulary. For example, in a famous passage, Socrates asks Euthyphro
whether everything that is pious has the same idea (5d, 6d-e) and is pious through the
same eidos (6d), using the Greek terms that eventually become central to Platos
thought about the Forms.42 Euthyphro quickly says yes. A more careful interlocutor
would have said that she neither knows how to understand the locution through in
Socrates proposal, nor what idea and eidos, both words with wide-ranging nontechnical uses, precisely mean here. Euthyphro is unaware of such issues, and he
prefers to take a stance.

Euthyphro is exemplary in displaying tendencies of the mind that Socrates battles

against. A willingness to gloss over what one does not comprehend; an inclination to
accept as true what one is in no position to judge; inflated confidence in ones
judgment, nourished by self-aggrandizing claims; and a preference for ideas that feel
42

Given the difficulties of establishing a precise relative chronology, as well as the difficulties of
saying anything specific about the development of Platos thought about Forms, it is best to abstain
from precise claims about the role of this passage.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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lovely (the gods are amazing!) as opposed to less pleasurable, but more realistic
ideas (I have no idea what the gods are). In sum, the Socratic proposal is that it is
not a fact about human faculties that in forming beliefs cognizers aim at representing
the world as it is. Instead, they often aim at feel-good beliefs and at seeing themselves
in a positive light.43 Aiming at the truth, accordingly, is a hard task. It is difficult to
comply with the fundamental norm of belief-formation, namely, to aim to form beliefs
that represent the world as it is. Depending on how this norm is interpreted, adhering
to it might imply that one holds back from forming beliefs pretty much all the time.
Alternatively, adherence to this norm might imply that one takes seriously criteria of
truth criteria that are taken to indicate that a given thought indeed represents things
as they are. One way or another, it is clear that, as compared to widespread habits of
belief-formation, the Socratic perspective is likely to call for less judgment, sloweddown judgment, and more cautious judgment.

Against this Socratic perspective, one could argue that it is often better to form a
belief as opposed to not forming a belief. This kind of objection can be raised from

43

In the language of contemporary discussions, the behavior of Socrates interlocutors could be

described as data that are to be explained, data that are relevantly similar to the findings of some
recent empirical research. For example, studies about moral dumbfounding look at the ways in which
people who find themselves unable to support their moral views in the face of critical argument
nevertheless hold on to their views. Cf. Haidt, Murphy, Bjorklund, (2000) Moral Dumbfounding:
when intuitions find no reasons (2000) Unpublished, available online (as of November 2010): http://
faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/manuscripts/ haidt.bjorklund.working-paper.when%20intuition
%20finds%20no%20reason.pub603.doc.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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several perspectives.44 For example, one might think that, in many situations, one is
better off holding a belief, even if the risk that it might be false cannot be ruled out.45
Moreover, certain situations might call on agents to take a stand, so that abstaining out
of cautiousness involves a moral failure. Relatedly, one might think there is some
virtue in holding on to an intuition, even if one cannot find proof. Presumably, this
tension is made vivid in Platos Phaedo, where it seems that Socrates is unwilling to
give up on his view that the soul is immortal, even though it remains unclear whether
any of the arguments to that effect is conclusive. 46 Similar points are raised within the
ancient Socratic tradition, in particular, against the Pyrrhonian skeptics, who are
perceived as arguing for extreme epistemic norms, favoring the avoidance of deficient
judgment over any other epistemic aim. These objections fuel a famous anti-skeptical
argument, the so-called Apraxia Charge. The charge comes in a number of versions,
including one according to which the skeptics cannot survive, one according to which
they cannot act in any robust sense of action, and one according to which they
cannot adhere to any kind of ethical values. 47 As I hope to show throughout the book,

44

The pragmatist tradition engages with similar issues. Peirce argues that doubt, understood as a state
in which one neither believes a given proposition nor its negation, is unpleasant; it motivates
investigation; belief generates relief. In a sense, Socratic epistemology agrees, though these phenomena
receive a different evaluation. Being comfortable with less than (full) belief might be an acquired taste,
but one that one should acquire. Peirce diagnosis hangs partly on a presumed relationship between
belief and action; cf. Richard Holton, Partial Belief, Partial Intention, forthcoming Mind; and Eric
Schwitzgebel, Acting Contrary to Our Professed Beliefs or The Gulf Between Occurrent Judgments
and Dispositional Belief, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2010): 531-553.
45

For a position of this sort, cf. Ernest Sosa, Value Matters in Epistemology, Journal of Philosophy
107.4 (2010), 167-90.
46

Cf. Raphael Woolf, Misology and Truth, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient
Philosophy, eds. John J. Cleary and Gary M. Gurtler, vol. 23 (2007): 1-16.
47

Cf. Vogt, Scepticism and Action, in R. Bett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek
Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 165-180; Richard Bett, Scepticism and
Ethics, in Bett, The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, 181-94.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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the intuitions on the side of Socratic caution are strong. This does not mean that critics
who point to the role of belief in action, or to the moral importance of taking a stance,
refer to issues of little significance. On the contrary, much of the argument that
Socratically inspired epistemologists must provide is that more or less distant relatives
of belief hypotheses, seemings, assumptions, and the like can fulfill the functions
that are greatly relevant. Notably, the skeptics and Stoics do not speak loosely of
belief, as if assumptions or suppositions were kinds of belief. It is important to them
to draw a distinction between the attitude of belief on the one hand, and attitudes that
involve some distancing or open-mindedness. 48

The Pyrrhonian skeptics the skeptics to whom I shall refer as skeptics, because their
philosophy is central to this book develop sophisticated methods of staying away
from beliefs. In particular, they employ so-called modes of arguments when they
investigate philosophical questions. Contemporary scholars have complained that
someone who employs such modes, thereby regularly arriving at suspension of
judgment, cannot seriously call herself an investigator (skeptikos), as the skeptics
do. The skeptics, they argue, aim at suspension of judgment, not at truth. This charge
was not raised among the contemporary critics of the skeptics, who were otherwise
vocal and imaginative critics of skeptical philosophy, able to detect many potential
weaknesses. As I suspect, it was not raised because prominent interlocutors of the
ancient skeptics shared with them Socratic premises about a life devoted to
48

This intuition is not wholly foreign to contemporary epistemology. For example, Bas C. van Fraasen
argues that belief involves a certain degree of commitment (he invokes a passage in Augustine that
employs Stoic vocabulary of assent, but that, via Augustines preoccupations, leads toward voluntarist
intuitions, and thus away from Socratic epistemology). Belief and the Will, Journal of Philosophy 81
(1984): 235-256.

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Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato

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investigation. The value of truth has two sides: it is valuable to attain truths, and
valuable to avoid the acceptance of falsehoods. The value of truth can thus be
responded to in several ways, depending on how one construes the relationship
between these two aims. If one shares the Socratic intuition that it is paramount to
avoid the acceptance of falsehoods, and that it is preferable to make no truth-claims as
opposed to false ones, then skeptical investigation might be the most convincing
response.