There is a question as to what usefulness it does for a person to hold true beliefs particularly knowledge; this leads to the question of regarding the value of knowledge, as in what is the greater worth of possessing truths in regards to knowledge? The theory of knowledge appears in a number of Plato’s dialogues; utilizing Socrates as his representative, he undertakes the question of what it implies to know something (Plato 13).
Socrates declares the reality of the Protagorean principle within a limited number of cases; firstly, Socrates associates true opinion with the famed Daedalus sculpture; according to Socrate, a man with the sculpture is only capable of enjoying it till something else takes it away unless he ties it to make sure that it stays in his possession (Plato 29). For this reason, the untied sculpture is not that fabulous considering its unreliable fleeting feature. Therefore, according to Socrate, true opinion possesses a comparable unreliable fleeting feature considering that man does not have the capability of hanging on to true opinion perpetually with the excuse of their beliefs, thus making it knowledge (Plato 37). Secondly, this aspect of true opinion, not tied up and capable of fleeing, turns out to be realistic in many more relevant scenarios, as well. For instance, the uninformed voter who constantly watches an ongoing debate having a true opinion on an approach about a current issue (Plato 40). The articulacy of the opposing speaker, outwardly impressive facts, or misinformation is capable of swaying this person into the direction of a wrong belief. According to Plato (52), there will be no difference to the voter whether their original view was true or false since they were uncertain or justified of their views thereby becoming effortlessly convinced from it.
Although an adverbial formulation portrays the appropriate way of approaching this matter, supporters of credit accounts fail in approaching it in that manner since they get committed to recognizing the value of knowledge within something, which is incapable of reducing the value of truth. This happens to be one of the alleged lessons of the reliabilist critique’s solution concerning the value problem (Plato 66). Apparently, if the characteristic that changes true belief to knowledge turns out to be acceptable only because of its favourability to truth, then there is no explanation as to why knowing happens to be better compared to just truly believing. The credit method, together with the value problem gets characterized through an unwarranted Synchronic Presumption, based on the value question getting conceived as a question concerning comparative values of just true belief and knowledge at a glance in time (Plato 75). Accordingly, people tend on concentrating on what is of value in one or the other time’s cognitive understanding of the directions to Larissa, instead of what epistemic transformations may happen as one treks along the road, coming into contact with other people on the way, bypassing or not bypassing countless landmarks a person had imagined, and so on (Plato 79).
According to Plato (88), the Synchronic Presumption is successful in confining the philosophical attention into the present; the consequence of this turns out that the value of knowledge becomes truth-independent. This presumption leads to a conflation of two particularly distinctive necessities of truth-independence, with one being narrow and the other one broad (Plato 92). The narrow necessity stipulates that the value of knowledge has to be autonomous of the value that its fundamentally true belief already possesses in virtue of being true. On the other hand, the broad necessity stipulates that the value of knowledge has to be autonomous from the value of truth always. This Synchronic Presumption is helpful in constructing the value problem to fit certain styles of solution (Plato 99).
Therefore, knowledge happens to be more valuable compared to true opinion since it is "shackled". In Plato’s text, Socrates uses the metaphor of "shackled" in signifying awareness of basis or proof for the belief (Plato 102):
Socrates: “If you own an original Daedalus, unshackled, it’s not worth all that much like a slave who keeps running away—because it doesn’t stay put. But if you’ve got one that’s shackled, it’s immensely valuable. Because they’re quite lovely pieces of work. What am I getting at? My point is, it’s the same with true opinions. True opinions, as long as they stay put, are a fine thing and do us a whole lot of good. Only, they tend not to stay put for very long. They’re always scampering away from a person’s soul. So they’re not very valuable until you shackle them by figuring out what makes them true And then, once they’re shackled they turn into knowledge and become stable and fixed. So that’s why knowledge is a more valuable thing than correct opinion, and that’s how knowledge differs from a correct opinion: by a shackle” (Plato 99)
Here, Plato (103) indicates that the value of knowledge is only capable of revealing itself once we discard the synchronic conception of the matter for a diachronic one. It is essential for us to conceive of epistemic themes as placed within time thereby revealing the significant difference: sheer true beliefs happen to be typically more exposed to getting lost within the face of deceiving counter-evidence. In this context, when we reassess the road to Larissa, supposing only what Socrates correctly assumes in the comment above, and then knowledge naturally entails arriving at one’s true belief based on some fitting evidence or reasoning (Plato 108). The additional value of knowing the route as compared to only having a true perception is that, as time passes by, there is a high possibility of a person coming up against counter-evidence (talking to a passer-by who asserts it is the other route while you see a signpost, which pranksters have spin to point the wrong direction). However, if you happen to have some idea of the evidence concerning your belief since you have knowledge, then you have a high chance of weighting the new evidence (Plato 116). Therefore, you are more unlikely to forsake your true belief for a forged one due to the misleading evidence; apparently, having a true belief in the context of knowledge diminishes the class of counter-evidence that misleads a person.
Although we want to own truths since we require them in serving all distinctive purposes, considered diachronically, this necessitates that we value owning them in a way that happens to be conducive to preserving them as time passes by in the face of deceiving counter-evidence (Plato 120). At this moment, one can immediately imagine distinctive epistemically undesirable methods of doing this, that is through sheer dogmatism will make one cling to one’s beliefs, involving true ones, in front of any counter-evidence, comprising of deceiving counter-evidence. Nonetheless, considering the diachronic view, it is obvious that dogmatism is epistemically undesirable since it is a wholly dysfunctional strategy in the end (Plato 125). According to Plato’s prompt, the value of knowledge inhabits in a tendency of surviving the test of time due to some rational advantage rather than sheer longevity. Consequently, it is necessary to coin a though of resilience as being the tendency of surviving deceiving counter-evidence due to the subject’s being within a position of weighting it against affirmative evidence getting possessed (Plato 131).
Plato (139) contends that resilience terms are a typical trait of knowledge that is not necessarily a condition. This comes from the minimal assumption, which suggests that knowers have an appropriate grasp on reasons favouring their belief, and though this is not necessarily for knowledge, nonetheless, it is a central, unique characteristic. Clearly, Socrates has these traits in mind since he contends that only true views are not extremely valuable till they get shackled by discerning what makes them true (Plato 144). After shackling them, they become knowledge thereby becoming not only stable, but also fixed. In most cases, Socrates’ remarks get interpreted as promoting a tripartite scrutiny of knowledge as warranted true belief; however, there is no actual devotion to any such thing taken as significantly distinct from the majority of alternative, modern investigations. Historically, it is more plausible seeing contemporary analyses as disparities, of a theoretically intricate, as well as highly inter-reactive kind, on the wide generalization practised by Socrates, to the realization that knowing things naturally entails believing them sincerely for a reason (Plato 149).
Work Cited:
Plato. Meno. Athens: Arc Manor LLC, 2009.
