Socrates Knowledge Vs True Opinion Analysis

Meno asks Socrates why knowledge is prized far more than true opinion. To answer this, Socrates tells Meno that true opinion becomes knowledge through thought and recollection of what is true. Thus, true opinion is an unjustified belief while knowledge is a justified belief. So knowledge, in being justified, is more valuable than opinion. But what makes knowledge justified and what is justification? Socrates claims that true opinion becomes knowledge when one provides a reason for why the opinion is true. In other words, true opinion becomes knowledge when one justifies it. Through several thought experiments I will attempt to show that Socrates is right in declaring that knowledge is more valuable than true opinion. I will start with the …show more content…
In other words what if we confused opinion with knowledge. One example of this is in the past when the church claimed that the Earth was the center of the universe. This geocentric theory was accepted as knowledge because an authority had justified it. Galileo knew that this geocentric model was not true and thus to him, this knowledge was false. However to the general population, Galileo’s theory was heresy and was simply an unjustified belief even though it was in fact true. To the people at the time, the church’s geocentric theory was considered knowledge while Galileo’s theory was merely opinion. Even though he had true opinion, the people did not know it was true and Galileo was punished for his opinions. So what is more valuable in this case, true opinion or knowledge? In this scenario, the knowledge is false and needs to be challenged in order for truth to be found. We also must consider what valuable means. If being valuable simply means furthering our understanding of truth, then true opinion is more valuable than knowledge in this case. With this scenario in mind, we must revise our hypothesis. In order for knowledge to be more valuable than true opinion, knowledge must be an absolute truth. However, there are few things we can call an absolute truth as evidenced in the geocentric theory that prevailed long ago; what people considered truth was actually false. Thus if the fact considered knowledge by everyone is actually