No abstract

Plato and Aristotle give different answers to the question ‘What are the substances (ousiai)?’. One way Aristotle defends his answer is by arguing that his candidate substances – particulars such as Socrates or Callias – better satisfy the criteria for substance than do Plato's candidates – eternal, unchanging, nonsensible universals called ‘Forms’. This defense goes along with another. For Aristotle disagrees with Plato, not only about the candidates, but also about the criteria, for substance: one reason Plato fastens on to the wrong candidates is that he focuses on some of the wrong criteria.Aristotle mounts his defense in different ways in the Categories and Metaphysics. In both works he defends the priority of particulars. In the Cat., however, their nature is left unanalysed; and their priority is defended largely by appeal to unPlatonic criteria. In the Met., by contrast, Aristotle analyzes particulars into compound, form, and matter. Socrates, for example, may be viewed as a compound of his form (his soul) and his matter (his body); or he may be viewed as his form or soul. Further, Aristotle now invokes additional, Platonic criteria for substance; and this leads him to argue that it is Socrates as form that counts as primary substance; the primary substances are individual forms.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review.http://www.jstor.org KNOWLEDGE AND LOGOS IN THE THEAETETUS'Gail J. Fine I At least as early as the Meno, Plato is aware that true belief, although necessary for knowledge, is not sufficient. In addition, he claims, true belief must be "fastened with an explanatory account (aitias logismos)" (98a). Plato's claim has often been linked to modern accounts of knowledge, according to which S knows that p if and only if p is true, S believes that p, and S has adequate justification or grounds for believing that p.2 In the end I believe this linkage is correct, but it is as well to issue a caveat at the outset. In the modern account, the definiendum concerns one's knowledge that a particular proposition is true. Plato tends instead to speak of knowing things (virtue, knowledge, Theaetetus, and the sun are among the examples he gives of things one may know or fail to know). But this difference should not be pressed too far. First, the account that certifies that one knows a particular thing will itself be a proposition: one knows a thing through or by knowing certain propositions to be true of it. Knowledge of things, for Plato, is description-dependent, not description-independent. Second, 'The original stimulus for this paper was M. F. Burnyeat's rich and exciting paper, "The Simple and the Complex in the Theaetetus" (read at the Princeton Conference on Plato's Philosophy of Language, 1970). Unfortunately, this paper is still unpublished, although some parts of it appear in his "The Material and Sources of Plato's Dream," Phronesis 15 (1970), pp. 101 -122. I acknowledge particular points of agreement and disagreement along the way. Some of the terminology I use later (KL, AL, AK, WP) is derived from his paper. I also wish to thank Carl Ginet, Terence Irwin, and Nicholas Sturgeon for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Parts of the paper (especially sections V-VII) were read at the APA Eastern Division meetings, Washington, D.C., December 1977; I thank Alexander Nehamas for his comments on that occasion. 2 See, for example, R. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), pp. 5-7; D. M. Armstrong, Belief Truth, and Knowledge (Cambridge, 1973), p. 137 (where Meno 97-8 is miscited as 87-8). N. P. White, Plato on Knowledge and Reality (Indianapolis, 1976), p. 176f., issues a caveat like the first one I mention; unlike me, however, he takes this difference to show that comparisons between Plato's account and the modern one are therefore "misleading". See alsoJ. McDowell, Plato: Theaetetus (Oxford, 1973), p. 232. 366 KNOWLEDGE AND LOGO...

No abstract

No abstract