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Knowledge, Perception and Memory: Theaetetus 166 B

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. J. Rowe
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
M. Welbourne
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
C. J. F. Williams
Affiliation:
University of Bristol

Extract

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4:.Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression is an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather (say) our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς (Y) quite distinct from X (or, more exactly, from our earlier perception of X: Protagoras must thoroughly subjectivize the matter) and very different from that (perhaps along Humean lines of vividness and the like)’. (Relevant passages from Hume are given by Campbell in his note ad loc.) McDowel

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

1 Cornford, F.M., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), p.69.Google Scholar

2 E.N.Lee, ‘ “ Hoist with his own petard ”: ironic and comic elements in Plato's critique of Protagoras (Tht.161–171),’ in Exegesis and Argument, ed.Lee and others (Assen, 1973), p.235.

3 The Theaetetus of Plato, with a revised text and English notes, by Campbell, L. (Oxford 1883).Google Scholar

4 Plato, Theaetetus, translated with notes by McDowell, J. (Oxford, 1973).Google Scholar

5 Runciman, W. G., Plato's Later Epistemology (Cambridge, 1962), p.14.Google Scholar

6 R.Kühner - B.Gerth, Aüsfuhrliche Grammatik dergriechischen Sprache 11 (Hanover/Leipzie 1904), pp.198 ff.

7 Kühner-Gerth 11, p.201 n.3; add to the examples given e.g.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1120b 15, 112 a 5.