Continuing their dialogue into whether or not perception is indeed knowledge. Socrates brings up the point of false perceptions of “dreams and diseases”(26) and the perceptions that arise in the interaction of the diseased or dreaming actor and the acted as “false perceptions’(27). Theaetetus, unable to come up with a counterpoint, is helped along by Socrates midwifery, to which he arrives at a commonly held belief “at this very moment whether we’re asleep and dreaming everything that we have in mind, or awake and having a waking discussion with each other” (27) this then applies this argument to “diseases and madness”(28) the only exception in the claim of time into which Socrates states that “the time were asleep is equal to the time were
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I’d like to focus on what, for me is equally if not more important of a question raised in this section, which is, how does knowledge come to be tested and the implications of testing. One of the overarching themes in Plato’s dialogues is this exploration into the methods and means of testing knowledge. With the birth or the upholding of an idea, in the case of the Meno, it illustrates that ideas need to be exercised and put to the test. Ideas and thinkers cannot remain passive. Theodorus is a perfect example of this passivity. Now rejoining the dialogue, he refuses to take part, saying that “I wouldn’t want him refuted by way of making my own admissions”(33) either out of friendship for Protagoras or more likely some trepidation of not wanting to “wrestle” with Socrates’s intellect. Theodorus sees this challenging of Protagrouses ideas, central to the idea of knowledge is perception, , as defamation of a friend rather than the shining light on falsehood or bringing rise to truth. Which I think is the problem Plato and Socrates are trying to address. Plato illustrates a several different ways of coming to these truths, one being Socrates recollection theory, two being the process of midwifery, and three illustrating this method of “dialectic”(43). Specifically in how these methods
I’d like to focus on what, for me is equally if not more important of a question raised in this section, which is, how does knowledge come to be tested and the implications of testing. One of the overarching themes in Plato’s dialogues is this exploration into the methods and means of testing knowledge. With the birth or the upholding of an idea, in the case of the Meno, it illustrates that ideas need to be exercised and put to the test. Ideas and thinkers cannot remain passive. Theodorus is a perfect example of this passivity. Now rejoining the dialogue, he refuses to take part, saying that “I wouldn’t want him refuted by way of making my own admissions”(33) either out of friendship for Protagoras or more likely some trepidation of not wanting to “wrestle” with Socrates’s intellect. Theodorus sees this challenging of Protagrouses ideas, central to the idea of knowledge is perception, , as defamation of a friend rather than the shining light on falsehood or bringing rise to truth. Which I think is the problem Plato and Socrates are trying to address. Plato illustrates a several different ways of coming to these truths, one being Socrates recollection theory, two being the process of midwifery, and three illustrating this method of “dialectic”(43). Specifically in how these methods