Elgin offers an influential and far-reaching challenge to veritism. She takes scientific understanding to be non-factive and maintains that there are epistemically useful falsehoods that figure ineliminably in scientific understanding and whose falsehood is no epistemic defect. Veritism, she argues, cannot account for these facts. This paper argues that while Elgin rightly draws attention to several features of epistemic practices frequently neglected by veritists, veritists have numerous plausible ways of responding to her arguments. In particular, it is not clear that false propositional commitments figure ineliminably in understanding in the manner supposed by Elgin. Moreover, even if scientific understanding were non-factive and false propositional commitments did figure ineliminably in understanding, the veritist can account for this in several ways without thereby abandoning veritism.

In this paper, I clarify some central aspects of Stoic thought concerning identity, identification, and so-called peculiar qualities (qualities which were seemingly meant to ground an individual’s identity and enable identification). I offer a precise account of Stoic theses concerning the identity and discernibility of individuals and carefully examine the evidence concerning the function and nature of peculiar qualities. I argue that the leading proposal concerning the nature of peculiar qualities, put forward by Eric Lewis, faces a number of objections, and offer two constructive suggestions which turn upon reconsidering the nature and function(s) of peculiar qualities. Finally, I examine a simple but potent Academic argument against the view that identification requires detecting some attribute(s) unique to the relevant individual. Such an argument is, I argue, largely successful and may have encouraged later Stoics not to think that peculiar qualities enable identification.

In Plato's Euthydemus, Socrates claims that the possession of epistēmē (usually construed as knowledge or understanding) suffices for practical success. Several recent treatments suggest that we may make sense of this claim and render it plausible by drawing a distinction between so-called "outcome-success" and "internal-success" and supposing that epistēmē only guarantees internal-success. In this paper, I raise several objections to such treatments and suggest that the relevant cognitive state should be construed along less than purely intellectual lines: as a cognitive state constituted at least in part by ability. I argue that we may better explain Socrates' claims that epistēmē suffices for successful action by attending to the nature of abilities, what it is that we attempt to do when acting, and what successful action amounts to in the relevant contexts.These considerations suggest that, contrary to several recent treatments, the success in question is not always internal-success. | INTRODUCTIONWhat is the relation between knowledge and successful action? And what do we aim at in action and what makes for a successful action? This paper aims to make sense of the answers to these question put forward in Plato's Euthydemus where Socrates seems to claim that a certain sort of cognitive state is sufficient for some sort of practical success. My discussion is not, however, exclusively restricted to the Euthydemus, or indeed Plato (Aristotle and Ryle make prominent appearances). Neither is it exclusively historical as it is concerned at least in part with the nature of knowledge-how and abilities, the nature of practical success, and what precisely we attempt or aim at in action.Early on in the Euthydemus, Socrates offers an exhortation to a life of virtue and philosophy. Assuming that all people wish to do well (eu prattein, Euthydemus 278e3), Socrates wonders how we do well (279a1-2). In what follows, he considers the relation between good fortune, successful action, and various crafts (or kinds of know-how) and claims that flute players have good fortune (eutuchia) when it comes to success or doing well (eupragia) in flute music (279e1-2), and that something similar applies to knowing how to write (279e2-4) and various other kinds of knowledge. Socrates goes on to also claim that wisdom (sophia) does not require luck in order to succeed (280a6-b3) and that "knowledge (epistēmē) seems to provide men not only with good fortune (eutuchia) but also with success or doing well (eupragia) in every case of possession or action" (281b2-4).This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

In defending the view that justice is the advantage of the stronger, Thrasymachus puzzlingly claims that rulers never err and that any practitioner of a skill or expertise (τέχνη) is infallible. In what follows, Socrates offers a number of arguments directed against Thrasymachus’ views concerning the nature of skill, ruling, and justice. However, both Thrasymachus’ views and Socrates’ arguments against Thrasymachus’ views have frequently been misunderstood. In this paper, I clarify Thrasymachus’ views concerning the nature of skill and ability, reconstruct Socrates’ arguments against Thrasymachus’ views concerning skill and justice, and argue that Socrates’ arguments are better than often supposed.

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