Plato's account of dispositional knowledge

What is it about?

Disposition is a modal explanation for phenomena. In general it accounts for present properties or states of beings that produce specific effects in counterfactual circumstances. One application of dispositional explanation is to knowledge. Dispositional knowledge accounts for characteristics present in someone who performs “knowledge” actions in specific circumstances. In Antiquity the most influential model of dispositions is Aristotle’s concept of potentiality. Aristotle applied it to knowledge by stating that it is a capacity that is sometimes exercised and sometimes not. Plato’s Theateteus is a dialogue on knowledge. In general the dialogue is focused on knowledge of items , considered today a case of knowledge by acquaintance. Occasionally it discusses propositional knowledge, knowledge about some state of affairs. Only once the Theateteus deals with dispositional knowledge, in a passage that came to be known as the aviary (195c5-200d4) . There, as I show, a complex model of dispositional knowledge is gradually unfolded. I demonstrate that this model differs greatly from Aristotle’s potentiality.

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Photo by Indra Utama on Unsplash

Photo by Indra Utama on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This chapter intends to explain knowledge according to the aviary model proposed in Plato’s Theaetetus (195c5-200d4), calling attention to the risk of employing some Aristotelian assumptions in its reading. In section 1, I claim that the argument is committed to provide an account on both conceptual mistakes (or false beliefs) and dispositional knowledge. In section 2, I show that the argument develops along three different cases: (i) the coat model introduces the distinction between having knowledge and using it, intermediated by the power of choice; (ii) the aviary model adds a variety of objects of knowledge as well as the power of ceasing to use them; (iii) the arithmetic model introduces an art of choosing among the objects of knowledge. This leads us to the description of dispositional knowledge as learning from oneself, i.e., as specification of items from previously known kinds. I show that this is incompatible with Aristotle’s notion of potential knowledge for three basic reasons: (i) it involves a power of selection of the right items, which would correspond to an Aristotelian rational power and not to the activation of a potential knowledge; (ii) it involves individuation of items learnt in general and not simply the update of a latent item of memory; (iii) it involves inquiry and learning, and not simply knowing. In section 3, I turn to the reason Socrates gives to dismiss the model: that the knowledge of an item cannot be the explanation of a mistake concerning this item (199d2). I offer three arguments against its cogency, emphasizing that mistakes should be explained as a failure in knowing how to select an item, instead of not having the knowledge of it. In section 4, I respond to the objection that the model leads to a regress regarding truth-makers. I argue that Socrates’s midwifery turns the dialogue into a performative argument against the objection, for that cross-examination provided the truth-makers.

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