Knowledge, simplicity, and predication: essays on Plato's _Theaetetus_

Abstract

The end of the _Theaetetus_, including Socrates' "Dream" and his three proposals about _logos_, raises a variety of epistemological and metaphysical problems. These essays attempt to illuminate some of them. In the first essay, I discuss the three _logos_-proposals and argue that Socrates' discussion here is, in a certain sense, epistemological and not metaphysical. In the second essay, I argue that the Platonic notion of uniformity (which appears in the Dream) has not been properly appreciated, and I offer a candidate interpretation. In the third essay, I argue that the distinction between being and becoming in the Dream, and elsewhere in Plato, should be understood as a difference in kinds of predication.