RIP Seminar, Wednesday 6 December

Matt Duncombe (University of Nottingham)

Thinking of an object: Transparency and Demarcation in Plato

Under what conditions do I think of an object? Many scholars hold that Plato, in some places or everywhere, assumes the ‘transparency view’: an agent, S, thinks of an object, X, only if S represents all and only features of X. However, this view faces some serious difficulties. First, transparency is an extremely strong and implausible principle to attribute to Plato, because it collapses the distinction between thinking of an object and omniscience about it. Second, transparency seems unmotivated. It’s hard to see why Plato would endorse such a view of cognition. Third, it’s difficult to see how cognitive advance is possible on this view. Not only does knowledge seem to be an ‘all or nothing’ affair, but so do sub-epistemic states, like judgement. But Plato often assume that we can advance from judgement to knowledge. He’s not entitled to assume this, if he endorses transparency. I argue here that Plato is not, in general, committed to the implausible transparency principle. In fact, Plato assumes only Demarcation: S thinks of X only if S can distinguish X from other relevant objects. Demarcation better explains the moves in the passages where Transparency seems to be in play.