The problem of knowledge as evaluated by Socrates and Theatetus seems to be something like this: if we agree that knowledge is perception or similar to perception ("Man is the measure of all things" -Protagoras), then we must dissect what's being perceived vs. the act occurring in the perceiver. So for example if I perceive a table, then we must understand the object that I am seeing, the table itself, and then, whatever achievement is happening in me that allows me to see the table (e.g. eyesight, vision, beholding, etc.).
So is the table zapping my eyes with an image of itself? How does it do that? And conversely, does my eyesight perform some operation of its own, e.g. processing the light beams bouncing off of the table and into the eyes' retinae?
Socrates seems to suppose that when we perceive something there is a rather passive act occurring in eyesight such that it receives whatever perceptual material that comes through. This is what he seems to mean when referring to the idea of "Becoming"; assuming that perception is caused by motion of some sort (because nothing would ever happen if reality was pure "being," i.e. static and motionless), then perception must happen whenever a "motion" is imparted to eyesight. Finally, because we don't have any control over how things appear to us (again because perception is caused by an external stimulus), this would seem to be why knowledge is in fact perception. Man is the measure of all things in that the world tells us how things are --- I see a table because the table conveys itself to me in some fashion. I "know" whatever it is I see.
Some questions left unanswered:
How do we account for what philosophers call "mind-independent realities"? For instance how do I know the table is really there in and of itself? Socrates claims that motions causing perception show the world to be in a state of flux as far as we are concerned, in which case I can't make arbitrary conclusions about how the "world" actually "is".
Secondly, how do we get all of this to jive with our everyday sensibility? We all "know" that if there is a table in the room we all see it; and likewise that if we leave the room the table will be there when we return. But if all my knowledge originates in perception then...
The question I wish to propose here is this: How do we comprehend the world beyond our scope of understanding and how can we justify what we cannot experience through our senses, given that our senses can even be relied upon if the conclusion has been made that not every man’s judgment is true?
ReplyDeleteThe central theme to this problem resides in whether, within this perpetual flux of the universe and this ongoing process of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’, that there can be any interchange between what may be termed the ‘mental’, ‘physical’, and ‘spiritual’ realms. We rely on our five senses to communicate with the physical world, yet as has been demonstrated previously the very condition of the observer can factor into one’s opinion of some external object, such as from the wine example in which “this pair, Socrates ill and the draft of wine, generates, presumably, different things (159e). Perception, and in effect judgment, is necessarily relative to the individual, meaning neither is an incorrect statement to assume the wine may be of one nature or the other, but, in pertinence to knowledge, the act of perceiving may not be essential to one’s ability of ‘knowing’. For not only may our memory, which is a recollection of knowledge normally tapped into without the aid of sense perception (164d), refute Protagoras’ claims, but also, in regards to making false judgments, “to ‘possess’ knowledge is one thing [but] to ‘have’ it is another” (199a). From what conclusions may be made about knowledge, one does in fact know what he has learned, but may, through this information, misinterpret what he knows and arrive at a false judgment. It would also appear “that knowledge is to found not in the experiences but in the process of reasoning about them” (186d). Furthermore, it is not enough to simply will such places as Heaven or Hell, being of the spiritual realm, to exist so as to account for the differences in people’s nature in the world, nor does it appear a compelling argument to state an individual must expect retribution for his wicked acts in the next world to satisfy the account of the other’s suffering, appearing in a realm suitable to his deeds (177a). There must be some connection, much as Socrates attempts to draw between perception and thought (195d), to be made in order to qualify and substantiate the knowledge of an existence beyond that of our present reality and understanding.