Metaphysics and Epistemology

A Guided Anthology

Stephen Hetherington

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118542583, 9781118542507
• eBook ISBN: 9781118660461
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology presents a comprehensive introductory overview of key themes, thinkers, and texts in metaphysics and epistemology.

• Presents a wide-ranging collection of carefully excerpted readings on metaphysics and epistemology
• Blends classic and contemporary works to reveal the historical development and present directions in the fields of metaphysics and epistemology
• Provides succinct, insightful commentary to introduce the essence of each selection at the beginning of chapters which also serve to inter-link the selected writings

Part I

The Philosophical Image

1

Life and the Search for Philosophical Knowledge

Plato, Republic

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Systematic Western philosophy began in Greece, most influentially with the engagingly profound dialogues written by Plato (c.428–c.348 BC). They are ­centered upon his teacher Socrates (469–399 BC) being constructively puzzled by … well, almost anything about which others within his hearing claim not to be puzzled. When Socrates wanders around Athens, he meets many people who are eager to share with him their confidently held views as to what is ethically right, what is religiously proper, what is natural, what is socially just, what is beauty, what is knowledge, what is real, etc. Socrates listens – before asking for more details, requesting help in understanding, suggesting alternative formulations and ideas. Time and again, he enters into other people’s thoughts, earnestly wondering, ­seeking clarity on one point after another as he professes slowness of wit and paucity of comprehension. (He was inquiring with what philosophers now call the Socratic method of inquiry used by many teachers: questions guiding gently and adaptively, sometimes professing a lack of understanding even when the questioner understands better than the audience does.)

What happens as a result of Socrates’ questioning? Subtle thinking occurs; new possibilities emerge; and Socrates’ companions tend to acquire feelings of ­uncertainty and frustration. Thanks to Plato’s writing, we are privileged to be able to immerse ourselves in this fascinating process, this way of improving our powers of reflection. That Socratic form of thinking has contributed powerfully to the subsequent centuries of philosophy.

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But philosophy has also been influenced by some of Socrates’ themes. We see this in our extract from the Republic, one of Plato’s most famous dialogues. Two themes are especially important in this reading. (1) Philosophy seeks knowledge. (2) Not just any knowledge, though; it should be knowledge of a reality worth knowing, indeed a reality deeply worth knowing. With philosophy spurring on our hearts and minds, we should strive to know the true nature of goodness (“the Good,” Socrates names it). We should settle for nothing less than that ultimate prize. And we should hold in mind that what seems good and ultimately valuable might not be. We must learn the difference between settling for an appearance of something ultimately good (e.g. something really only ­transiently or superficially valuable) and finding something that really is fundamentally good.

Plato brings alive that human mission with what has become one of philosophy’s lasting images – a picture of how we are if we do not succeed in knowing true goodness. This is Plato’s celebrated image of the cave. It is a metaphor for how too many of us do, yet how none of us should, live our lives – by being trapped within a cave of shadows and human lighting, settling for mere appearances of ultimate value. Even when not held back by poverty and oppression, people might be trapped in the way envisioned by Socrates – constricted by their lack of philosophical imagination about, and genuine insight into, their real underlying natures and achievements. Can we escape this? Suitable knowledge is needed. Philosophy is the means.

Book V

[…]

[Socrates:] “Then affirm this or deny it: when we say a man is a desirer of something, will we assert that he desires all of that form, or one part of it and not another?”

“All,” he [Glaucon] said.

“Won’t we also then assert that the philosopher is a desirer of wisdom, not of one part and not another, but of all of it?”

“True.”

“We’ll deny, therefore, that the one who’s finicky about his learning, especially when he’s young and doesn’t yet have an account of what’s useful and not, is a lover of learning or a philosopher, just as we say that the man who’s finicky about his food isn’t hungry, doesn’t desire food, and isn’t a lover of food but a bad eater.”

“And we’ll be right in denying it.”

“But the one who is willing to taste every kind of learning with gusto, and who approaches learning with delight, and is insatiable, we shall justly assert to be a philosopher, won’t we?”

And Glaucon said, “Then you’ll have many strange ones. For all the lovers of sights are in my opinion what they are because they enjoy learning; and the lovers of hearing would be some of the strangest to include among philosophers, those who would never be willing to go voluntarily to a discussion and such occupations but who – just as though they had hired out their ears for ­hearing – run around to every chorus at the Dionysia, missing none in the cities or the villages. Will we say that all these men and other learners of such things and the petty arts are philosophers?”

“Not at all,” I said, “but they are like philosophers.”

“Who do you say are the true ones?” he said.

“The lovers of the sight of the truth,” I said.

“And that’s right,” he said. “But how do you mean it?”

[…]

“Well, now,” I said, “this is how I separate them out. On one side I put those of whom you were just speaking, the lovers of sights, the lovers of arts, and the practical men; on the other, those whom the argument concerns, whom alone one could rightly call philosophers.”

“How do you mean?” he said.

“The lovers of hearing and the lovers of sights, on the one hand,” I said, “surely delight in fair sounds and colors and shapes and all that craft makes from such things, but their thought is unable to see and delight in the nature of the fair itself.”

“That,” he said, “is certainly so.”

“Wouldn’t, on the other hand, those who are able to approach the fair itself and see it by itself be rare?”

“Indeed they would.”

“Is the man who holds that there are fair things but doesn’t hold that there is beauty itself and who, if someone leads him to the knowledge of it, isn’t able to follow – is he, in your opinion, living in a dream or is he awake? Consider it. Doesn’t dreaming, whether one is asleep or awake, consist in believing a likeness of something to be not a likeness, but rather the thing itself to which it is like?”

“I, at least,” he said, “would say that a man who does that dreams.”

“And what about the man who, contrary to this, believes that there is something fair itself and is able to catch sight both of it and of what participates in it, and doesn’t believe that what participates is it itself, nor that it itself is what participates – is he, in your opinion, living in a dream or is he awake?”

“He’s quite awake,” he said.

“Wouldn’t we be right in saying that this man’s thought, because he knows, is knowledge, while the other’s is opinion because he opines?”

“Most certainly.”

[…]

“Since knowledge depended on what is and ignorance necessarily on what is not, mustn’t we also seek something between ignorance and knowledge that depends on that which is in between, if there is in fact any such thing?”

“Most certainly.”

“Do we say opinion is something?”

“Of course.”

“A power different from knowledge or the same?”

“Different.”

“Then opinion is dependent on one thing and knowledge on another, each according to its own power.”

“That’s so.”

“Doesn’t knowledge naturally depend on what is, to know of what is that it is and how it is? However, in my opinion, it’s necessary to make this distinction first.”

“What distinction?”

“We will assert that powers are a certain class of beings by means of which we are capable of what we are capable, and also everything else is capable of whatever it is capable. For example, I say sight and hearing are powers, if perchance you understand the form of which I wish to speak.”

“I do understand,” he said.

“Now listen to how they look to me. In a power I see no color or shape or anything of the sort such as I see in many other things to which I look when I distinguish one thing from another for myself. With a power I look only to this – on what it depends and what it accomplishes; and it is on this basis that I come to call each of the powers a power; and that which depends on the same thing and accomplishes the same thing, I call the same power, and that which depends on something else and accomplishes something else, I call a different power. What about you? What do you do?”

“The same,” he said.

“Now, you best of men, come back here to knowledge again. Do you say it’s some kind of power, or in what class do you put it?”

“In this one,” he said, “as the most vigorous of all powers.”

“And what about opinion? Is it among the powers, or shall we refer it to some other form?”

“Not at all,” he said. “For that by which we are capable of opining is nothing other than opinion.”

“But just a little while ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion are not the same.”

“How,” he said, “could any intelligent man count that which doesn’t make mistakes the same as that which does?”

“Fine,” I said, “and we plainly agree that opinion is different from knowledge.”

“Yes, it is different.”

“Since each is capable of something different, are they, therefore, naturally dependent on different things?”

“Necessarily.”

“Knowledge is presumably dependent on what is, to know of what is that it is and how it is?”

“Yes.”

“While opinion, we say, opines.”

“Yes.”

“The same thing that knowledge knows? And will the knowable and the opinable be the same? Or is that impossible?”

“On the basis of what’s been agreed to, it’s impossible,” he said. “If different powers are naturally dependent on different things and both are powers – opinion and knowledge – and each is, as we say, different, then on this basis it’s not admissible that the knowable and the opinable be the same.”

“If what is, is knowable, then wouldn’t something other than that which is be opinable?”

“Yes, it would be something other.”

“Then does it opine what is not? Or is it also impossible to opine what is not? Think about it. Doesn’t the man who opines refer his opinion to something? Or is it possible to opine, but to opine nothing?”

“No, it’s impossible.”

“The man who opines, opines some one thing?”

“Yes.”

“But further, that which is not could not with any correctness be addressed as some one thing but rather nothing at all.”

“Certainly.”

“To that which is not, we were compelled to assign ignorance, and to that which is, knowledge.”

“Right,” he said.

“Opinion, therefore, opines neither that which is nor that which is not.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Opinion, therefore, would be neither ignorance nor knowledge?”

“It doesn’t seem so.”

“Is it, then, beyond these, surpassing either knowledge in clarity or ignorance in obscurity?”

“No, it is neither.”

“Does opinion,” I said, “look darker than knowledge to you and brighter than ignorance?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“And does it lie within the limits set by these two?”

“Yes.”

“Opinion, therefore, would be between the two.”

“That’s entirely certain.”

“Weren’t we saying before that if something should come to light as what is and what is not at the same time, it lies between that which purely and simply is and that which in every way is not, and that neither knowledge nor ignorance will depend on it, but that which in its turn comes to light between ignorance and knowledge?”

“Right.”

“And now it is just that which we call opinion that has come to light between them.”

“Yes, that is what has come to light.”

“Hence, as it seems, it would remain for us to find what participates in both – in to be and not to be – and could not correctly be addressed as either purely and simply, so that, if it comes to light, we can justly address it as the opinable, thus assigning the extremes to the extremes and that which is in between to that which is in between. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Now, with this taken for granted, let him tell me, I shall say, and let him answer – that good man who doesn’t believe that there is anything fair in itself and an idea of the beautiful itself, which always stays the same in all respects, but does hold that there are many fair things, this lover of sights who can in no way endure it if anyone asserts the fair is one and the just is one and so on with the rest. ‘Now, of these many fair things, you best of men,’ we’ll say, ‘is there any that won’t also look ugly? And of the just, any that won’t look unjust? And of the holy, any that won’t look unholy?’ ”

“No,” he said, “but it’s necessary that they look somehow both fair and ugly, and so it is with all the others you ask about.”

“And what about the many doubles? Do they look any less half than double?”

“No.”

“And, then, the things that we would assert to be big and little, light and heavy – will they be addressed by these names any more than by the opposites of these names?”

“No,” he said, “each will always have something of both.”

“Then is each of the several manys what one asserts it to be any more than it is not what one asserts it to be?”

“They are like the ambiguous jokes at feasts,” he said, “and the children’s riddle about the eunuch, about his hitting the bat – with what and on what he struck it. For the manys are also ambiguous, and it’s not possible to think of them fixedly as either being or not being, or as both or neither.”

“Can you do anything with them?” I said. “Or could you find a finer place to put them than between being and not to be? For presumably nothing darker than not-being will come to light so that something could not be more than it; and nothing brighter than being will come to light so that something could be more than it.”

“Very true,” he said.

“Then we have found, as it seems, that the many beliefs of the many about what’s fair and about the other things roll around somewhere between not-being and being purely and simply.”

“Yes, we have found that.”

“And we agreed beforehand that, if any such thing should come to light, it must be called ­opinable but not knowable, the wanderer between, seized by the power between.”

“Yes, we did agree.”

“And, as for those who look at many fair things but don’t see the fair itself and aren’t even able to follow another who leads them to it, and many just things but not justice itself, and so on with all the rest, we’ll assert that they opine all these things but know nothing of what they opine.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“And what about those who look at each thing itself – at the things that are always the same in all respects? Won’t we say that they know and don’t opine?”

“That too is necessary.”

“Won’t we assert that these men delight in and love that on which knowledge depends, and the others that on which opi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Source Acknowledgments
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Philosophical Image
• Part II: Philosophical Images of Being
• Part III: Epistemology Philosophical Images of Knowing