The Symposium: Philosophy Community of Chicago

In Plato's Theaetetus, Socrates engages the brilliant young mathematician Theaetetus in an inquiry: What is knowledge (episteme)? Together they wrestle with perception, relativism (via Protagoras), the possibility of error, false belief, and the role of justification or "account" (logos). The discussion unfolds through three main definitions:

• Is knowledge simply perception?
• Is it true judgment (or true belief)?
• Is it true judgment with an account (what many see as an early version of "justified true belief")?

Socrates famously likens himself to a midwife of ideas—helping others give birth to thoughts while exposing their flaws. The dialogue is rich with puzzles about relativism, flux (Heraclitus), the nature of the mind, and why defining knowledge proves so elusive. It ends in aporia (impasse), but that very frustration sparks insight into the questions: How do we know what we know? Can we ever escape circularity or skepticism?
Please read (or listen to) as much as you can in advance. We split this work into two separate sessions, now focusing on part 2.

Session 2 187a to End

• Session 2: False Belief, Logos, and Unresolved Puzzlement; Reading: 187b–210d (Definitions 2 and 3 through the End)
  Focus: We transition to Knowledge as True Belief, wrestling with the paradox of how false belief is even possible (the wax tablet and aviary metaphors). Finally, we explore the third definition—Knowledge as True Belief with an Account (Logos)—and discuss why all three definitions ultimately end in aporia (puzzlement). This section features the fascinating Dream Theory (breaking things down into simple elements), critiques of that approach, and the dialogue’s famous ending in aporia (impasse). Why does defining knowledge prove so difficult? What does the lack of a final answer teach us? We’ll revisit the midwife role, reflect on circularity in knowledge, and connect the ideas to broader Platonic themes and epistemology.

Resources:

In 1784, Immanuel Kant answered the question "What is Enlightenment?" in a short, influential essay published by Berlinische Monatsschrift. Defining Enlightenment as "mankind's exit from its self-incurred immaturity," Kant advocated for "the freedom to make a public use of one’s reason in all
matters." He also offered what would become the motto of the Enlightenment — Sapere aude! — "Dare to know!"

Writing two centuries later, Michel Foucault evaluated the same question, albeit looking backward in time instead of forward. Foucault connects Kant's initial response with a subsequent "attitude of modernity", emphasizing a specific relationship to the present-day and "the constitution of self as an autonomous subject."

In this Meetup, we will discuss both essays as well as the central question. Links to the respective texts can be found below:

• No background information is necessary for this meetup.

Much of the reason I chose Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? for our last meeting was due to it being an exemplar of analytic philosophy. Much of the reason I choose Zhuangzi for this meeting is due to it being an examplar of a radically different approach to philosophy.

Many of the challenges involved are so different they could be considered opposite. Zhuangzi is rife with paradoxes and contradictions. It is written in an unfamiliar style. It comes from a culture endemic to ancient China - a foreign context in time and location. Difficulties arising due to translation from ancient Chinese are compounded by copious wordplay and metaphor.

Yet, Zhuangzi is too playful and lighthearted to prevent these difficulties from dissolving - if we free effortlessness and allow them to.

The passages are discrete and disorganized; there is no continuity from one to the next. Much like painting given a palette containing an unexpectedly large array of colors but unexpectedly little of each, we must make due with what we are given and compensate for the paucity of one color through creative use of the rest.

This lack of continuity - this discreteness - liberates us to traverse any permutation of the work’s passages. It also liberates an advantage often held captive when addressing a single work across many meetings – missing a meeting doesn't matter as much.

Capricious, facetious, and blithe, yet often derisive, vulgar, and irreverent, Zhuangzi addresses life’s heaviest burdens by prancing around and mocking them as well as our attempts at dealing with them.

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We will start discussing Zhuangzi during this meeting, and I will use Burton Watson's translation. Links to this translation are below.

In the second half (Parts V and VI) of Discourse on Method [1637] Descartes gives his views on natural philosophy and his criteria for advancing the investigation of nature.

In Part V, Descartes sketches how in an unpublished treatise (published posthumously as Le Monde) he had laid out his ideas regarding the laws of nature, the sun and stars, the moon as the cause of the tides, gravitation, light, and heat. To avoid theological controversy, Descartes frames his mechanistic laws of nature as applying to a theoretical "new world" created by God. This hypothetical world would be a deistic universe.

In Part VI, Descartes admits his hesitation about publishing his work. But since people have begun to hear of the work, he felt compelled to publish small parts of it so that people do not wonder why he doesn't publish. Descartes says scientific experimentation is time-consuming, hard to delegate – and essential. He asks readers to test the claims in Dioptrique, Météores, and Géométrie and send their feedback to his publisher, with a promise to publish the questions with his replies.