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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 are splitting this work into two separate meetup sessions.

Session 1: Up to the end of the second definition ( through ~200d or so)

  • Covers: Introduction, the midwife metaphor, Knowledge = Perception (and its refutation via Protagoras/Heraclitus), and Knowledge = True Judgment (including puzzles about false belief, the Wax Tablet, and Aviary models).

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