TRUTH AND OPINION

“THE DIVIDING LINES OF KNOWLEDGE”

METAPHOR OF THE DIVIDED LINE
process of discovering true knowledge

FOUR STAGES OF
DEVELOPMENT
each stage there is a parallel between the
kind of object presented to our minds and
the kind of thought this object makes
possible
 “x and y” – the line that links
• the line is a continuous one
• the line passes through the lowest forms of reality to
the highest, there is a parallel progression from the
lowest degree of truth to the highest.
• The line is divided into two unequal parts.

≠E
visible world QU intelligible world
AL
Each of these parts is then
subdivided in the same
symbolizes the lower degree of reality
proportion as the whole line,
and truth found in the visible world as
producing four parts, each one
compared with the greater reality and
representing a clearer and more
truth in the intelligible world.
certain type of thought than the
one below.
The objects presented to us at each level
are not four different kinds of real objects;
rather, they represent four different ways of
looking at the same object.

Recalling the Allegory of the Cave…

we can think of this line as beginning in the dark and
shadowy world at x and moving up to the bright light at
y. Going from x to y represents a continuous process of
our intellectual enlightenment.
IMAGINING
• most superficial form of mental activity
• can found in the lowest
Imagining
the activity of penetrating beyond the
mere appearances of things to their
deeper reality.
.
S“Imagining”, for Plato
V the sense experience of appearances
wherein we take these appearances as
true reality
For instance,
SHADOW

• imagining the lowest form of knowing is that at this stage we

do not know that it is a shadow or an image that it has
confronted.
• If a person knew that it was a shadow, she would not be in the
state of imagining or illusion. The prisoners in the cave were
trapped in the deepest ignorance cause they were unaware that
they were seeing shadows.
IMAGINING = ARTISTS
• The artist presents images that are at least two
steps removed from true reality.
The three levels of reality here are, then,

(2) the embodiment of this Form in Catriona,

(1) the Form of Humanness,

(3) the image of BonBon as represented on canvas.
Plato's criticism of art is that produces images that, in turn,
stimulate illusory ideas in the observer.

For the most part we know that an artist puts on canvas his or her
own way of seeing a subject.

Therefore, artistic images do shape thoughts, and if people restrict

their understanding of things to these images with all their
distortions and exaggerations, they will certainly lack an
understanding of things as they really are.
IMAGINING = POETRY AND RHETORIC
• most serious sources of illusion
• Words have the power of creating images in our
minds, and the poet and rhetorician have great
skill in using words to create such images.
• Plato was particularly critical of the Sophists,
whose influence came from this very skill in the
use of words. They could make either side of an
argument seem as good as the other.
BELIEF
• next stage after imagining is belief
• Plato should use the word believing instead of
knowing to describe the state of mind induced
by seeing actual objects.
• seeing constitutes only believing, because visible
objects depend on their context for many of their
characteristics.
• There is a degree of certainty that seeing gives
us, but this is not absolute certainty.
FOR EXAMPLE:
It may seem a certainty that all bodies have weight because we
see them fall.

this testimony of our vision must also

be adjusted to the fact of the
weightlessness of bodies in space at
certain altitudes.
“Believing even if it is
based on seeing,
is still in the stage of
opinion.”
The state of mind produced by visible objects is
clearly on a level higher than imagining, because it
is based upon a higher form of reality. But although
actual things possess greater reality than do their
shadows,
they do not by themselves give us all the
knowledge that we want to have about them.
Experience under particular
circumstances.
THEREFORE
Knowledge about them is limited to
these particular circumstances.
THUS, we are unsatisfied with this kind of
knowledge, knowing that its certainty
could very well be shaken if the
circumstances were altered. True
scientists, therefore, do not confine their
understanding to these particular cases,
but instead look for principles behind the
behavior of things.
Thinking



When we move from believing to thinking, we move from the visible world to
the intelligible world and from the realm of opinion to the realm of knowledge.
THINKING
•particular characteristic of the scientist.
Scientists deal with visible things
but not simply with their vision of them.

For the scientist visible things are

symbols of a reality that can
be thought but not seen.
THINKING = MATHEMATICIAN
Mathematicians engage in the act of "abstraction," of drawing
out from the visible thing what that thing symbolizes.

When mathematicians see the diagram of a triangle, they

think about triangularity or triangle-in-itself.

= THEY DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE VISIBLE

AND THE INTELLIGIBLE TRIANGLE.
 By using visible symbols,
science provides a bridge from
the visible to the intelligible
world.
Our minds know that two plus two equal four no
matter two of what. Our minds also know that the
angles of an equilateral triangle are all equal,
regardless of the size of the triangle.

Thinking, therefore, represents the ability of our minds

to abstract from a visible object that property which is
the same in all objects in that class even though each
such actual object will have other variable properties
We can, in short, think the Form
"Human ness" whether we observe
small, large, dark, light, young, or
old persons.
THUS, Thinking or reasoning from
hypotheses gives us knowledge of the
truth, but it bears this limitation:
IT ISOLATES SOME TRUTHS FROM
OTHERS, THEREBY LEAVING OUR
MINDS STILL TO ASK WHY A CERTAIN
TRUTH IS TRUE.
We are never satisfied as long as we must still ask for a
fuller explanation of things.

PERFECT INTELLIGENCE
perfect knowledge would require that we grasp the
relation of everything to everything else—that we see
the unity of the whole of reality.
With perfect intelligence we are completely released
from the realm of sensible objects = FORMS
• We grasp these pure Forms
without any interference from
even the symbolic character of
visible objects.
• no longer use hypotheses

INTELLIGIBLE OBJECTS
such as "Triangle" and "Human,"

abstracted from the actual objects.

We approach this highest level of knowledge to the extent that we are
able to move beyond the restrictions of hypotheses toward the unity of
all Forms.
It is through our intellectual capacity of dialectic that we move
toward its highest goal, which involves the ability to see at once
the relation of all divisions of knowledge to each other.

THEREFORE:
Perfect intelligence means the unified view of
reality; and for Plato this implies the unity of
knowledge.
 CONCLUSION

these four states of mind

1. intelligence for the highest
2. thinking for the second
3. belief for the third and;
4. last imagining
These you may arrange as the terms in a proportion, assigning to each a degree
of clearness and certainty; corresponding to the measure in which their objects
possess truth and reality. The highest degree of reality, he argued, consists of the
Forms, as compared with shadows, reflections, and even the visible objects.
 THEORY OF
RECOLLECTION AND
KNOWLEDGE OF FORMS
 In Phaedo, Socrates introduces the
Theory of Recollection as his second
argument for the immortality of
the soul.
SOUL
•Necessarily existed before birth
•It has a life span separate from
that of the body.
 SOCRATES’ DEFINITION OF RECOLLECTION
when a man sees or hears or in some other
way perceives one thing and not only knows
that thing but also thinks of another thing of
which the knowledge is not the same but
different, are we not right to say that he
recollects the second thing that comes into his
mind?
In this definition, recollection is a process
in which the subject S perceives and
knows a thing X, and thinks of another
thing Y, which is different from X.

X= PERCEPTIBLES , SENSIBLE PARTICULARS

Y= INTELLIGIBLE , FORMS
In Phaedo, Forms are described as
“the reality of all other things that
which each of them essentially is,”
including the Equal itself, the Just,
the Beautiful.
THREE SPECIFIC CONDITIONS:
First, Y is different from X and the
knowledge of Y is different from
the knowledge of X.
THREE SPECIFIC CONDITIONS:
Second, S must have known Y
prior to his perception of X.
THREE SPECIFIC CONDITIONS:

Third, the perception of X

makes S think of Y.
Crucial condition, which is not directly entailed by
the definition:
S has forgotten Y prior to his perception of X. (apply this condition to the
second one)

Second, S has known yet has forgotten Y prior to his perception of X.

Given that S has lost Y prior to his perception of X and recollects Y
after the perception of X, we can reasonably infer that recollecting Y
necessarily involves perceiving of X. It is definitely from X that we
recollect Y and Y “cannot come into our mind in any other way.”
From that, we can rewrite the
third condition: Third, Y is
recollected only through the
perception of X.
 These conditions can then be summarized as
follows
S recollects Forms if, and only if, the following conditions are
satisfied:
• Forms are different from sensible particulars and the knowledge of
Forms is different from the knowledge of sensible particulars.
• S has known and forgotten Forms prior to his perception of
sensible particulars.
• Forms are recollected only through the perception of sensible
particulars.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSIBLE
PARTICULARS AND FORMS

EQUALS AND THE EQUAL ITSELF

The equals, such as equal stones and
sticks, appear equal to one perceiver and
unequal to another, or appear equal in
some situations and unequal in others.
The Equal itself, however, never appears
unequal; it appears equal to all intellectors
in all circumstances
INFERENCE
•The equals sometimes, while remaining the
same, appear unequal.
•The Equal itself never appears unequal.
•The equals and the Equal itself are not the
same.
TWO TYPES OF RECOLLECTION IN THE
THEORY OF RECOLLECTION
•recollection by things that are similar
•and recollection by things that are
dissimilar.
RECOLLECTION BY THINGS THAT ARE SIMILAR

• sensible particulars not only resemble Forms but also

are deficient in their resemblance to Forms.

For instance, when we see two sticks that are equal, we

simultaneously see that they are “not equal in the same
sense as what is Equal itself” and that there is “some
deficiency in their being such as the Equal.”
In order to recollect the Equal itself, we must know the
equals and realize their deficiency in being like the
Equal itself that we once had known.

This becomes another essential step of recollection:

upon perceiving equal sticks, one realizes that they
strive to be like the Equal but fall short of it.
Socrates infers that we must have known
the Equal itself prior to our initial perception
of the equal objects. Since we start
perceiving these objects as soon as we are
born, we must have acquired the knowledge
of the Equal itself either before or at the
moment of birth.
Since we, as newborn infants, are incapable of
giving an account of such knowledge, we do not
possess the knowledge at the moment of our birth.
Because we do not possess the knowledge at the
moment, and because it is impossible to lose and
acquire the knowledge at the same time, we
cannot acquire the knowledge at the moment of
birth, which means that we must have acquired the
knowledge prior to birth.
 For birth is the moment the body
comes to life, the body could not
have existed before birth, and it is
necessarily the soul that has existed
and acquired the knowledge.
The Theory of Recollection directs that we
acquire the knowledge before birth, lose it at
birth, and recollect it after birth through our
perception of sense particulars. It is from this
process of recollection that Socrates
concludes that the soul has existed prior to
any physical incarnation, hence proving the
first step of its immortality.
THEAETETUS
PLATO
INTRODUCTION
The Theaetetus, 369 BC
• arguably Plato’s greatest work on epistemology.
• has much to say about the nature of knowledge
elsewhere.
• Theaetetus offers a set-piece discussion of the
“WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?”
question.
Theaetetus is dominated by question-and-answer.

CHARACTERS
SOCRATES- main questioner
THEAETETUS- a brilliant young mathematician
THEODORUS- Theaetetus’ tutor; who is
rather less young (and rather less brilliant).
The Theaetetus reviews three definitions of
knowledge in turn.

1. “Knowledge is Perception”
2. “Knowledge is True Judgement”
3. “Knowledge is True Judgement With an
Account”
“What is knowledge?,”- SOCRATES
Theaetetus responds by giving a list of examples
of knowledge, namely geometry, astronomy,
harmonics, and arithmetic, as well as the crafts or
skills (technai) of cobbling and so on.
THREE COMPLAINTS OF SOCRATES
AGAINST THIS RESPONSE:
1. What he is interested in is the one thing common to all the
various examples of knowledge, not a multiplicity of different
kinds of knowledge.
2. Theaetetus’ response is circular, because even if one knows that,
say, cobbling is “knowledge of how to make shoes,” one cannot
know what cobbling is, unless one knows what knowledge is; 
3. The youth’s answer is needlessly long-winded, a short formula is
all that is required
Theaetetus response to Socrates’
definitional requirements:
the geometrical equivalents of what are
now called “surds” could be grouped in
one class and given a single name
(“powers”) by dint of their common
characteristic of irrationality or
incommensurability.
he tries to apply the same method to
the question about knowledge,
however, Theaetetus does not know
how to proceed.
Socrates, like an intellectual midwife,
undertakes to assist him in giving birth to
his ideas and in judging whether or not
they are legitimate children.
Socrates has the ability to determine
who is mentally pregnant, by knowing
how to use “medicine” and “incantations”
to induce mental labor.
agricultural analogy: 
just as the farmer not only tends and harvests the
fruits of the earth, but also knows which kind of
earth is best for planting various kinds of seed, so
the midwife’s art should include a knowledge of
both “sowing” and “harvesting.” 
By combining the technê of the midwife
with that of the farmer, Socrates
provides in the Theaetetus the most
celebrated analogy for his own
philosophical practice.
The Theaetetus reviews three definitions of
knowledge in turn.

1. “Knowledge is Perception”
2. “Knowledge is True Judgement”
3. “Knowledge is True Judgement With an
Account”
“Knowledge is
Perception”
Socrates immediately converts it into
Protagoras’ homo  mensura doctrine.
“Man is the measure of all things, of the things
that are that [or how] they are, of the things
that are not that [or how] they are not.” 
Socrates effects the complete identity
between knowledge and perception by
bringing together two theses: (a) the
interpretation of Protagoras’ doctrine as
meaning “how things appear to an
individual is how they are for that
individual” 
(e.g., “if the wind
appears cold to
Christian, then it
is cold for him”);
SOCRATES ATTACKS TO
PROTAGOREANISM
if people are each
 First, Socrates asks how,
a measure of their own truth,
some, among whom is Protagoras
himself, can be wiser than
others.. 
The Sophists’ imagined answer evinces a new
conceptualization of wisdom: the wisdom of a teacher
like Protagoras has nothing to do with truth, instead it
lies in the fact that he can better the way things appear
to other people, just as the expert doctor makes the
patient feel well by making his food taste sweet rather
than bitter, the farmer restores health to sickly plants
by making them feel better, and the educator “changes
a worse state into a better state” by means of words 
Second critique of Protagoras is the famous self-
refutation argument.
It is essentially a two-pronged argument: the first part
revolves around false beliefs, while the second part,
which builds on the findings of the first, threatens the
validity of the man-as-measure doctrine. 
The former can be sketched as follows: (1)
many people believe that there are false
beliefs; therefore, (2) if all beliefs are true,
there are [per (1)] false beliefs; (3) if not all
beliefs are true, there are false beliefs; (4)
therefore, either way, there are false beliefs 
The existence of false beliefs is inconsistent
with the homo-mensura doctrine, and hence,
if there are false beliefs, Protagoras’ “truth” is
false.  But since the homo mensura doctrine
proclaims that all beliefs are true, if there are
false beliefs, then the doctrine is manifestly
untenable. 
The latter part of Socrates’ second critique is much bolder—
being called by Socrates “the most subtle argument”

if you believe something to be the case

but thousands disagree with you about it,
that thing is true for you but false for the
thousands. 
If not even he believed that man is
the measure, and the many did
not either (as indeed they do not),
this “truth” that he wrote about is
true for no one. 
Socrates adds his “most subtle” point:
Protagoras agrees, regarding his own view, that the opinion of
those who think he is wrong is true, since he agrees that
everybody believes things that are so.

On the basis of this, he would have to agree that his own view
is false. On the other hand, the others do not agree that they
are wrong, and Protagoras is bound to agree, on the basis of
his own doctrine, that their belief is true. 
Socrates states, inevitably undermines the
validity of the Protagorean thesis:
if Protagoras’ opponents think that their
disbelief in the homo-mensura doctrine is true
and Protagoras himself must grant the veracity
of that belief, then the truth of the Protagorean
theory is disputed by everyone, including
Protagoras himself.
third argument against broad Protagoreanism
Socrates exposes the flawed nature of Protagoras’
definition of expertise… as skill that points out what is
beneficial, by contrasting sensible properties—such as
hot, which may indeed be immune to interpersonal
correction—and values, like the good and the
beneficial, whose essence is independent from
individual appearances.
The reason for this, Socrates argues,
is that the content of value-
judgments is properly assessed by
reference to how things will turn out
in the future.
Experts are thus people who have the
capacity to foresee the future effects of
present causes. One may be an infallible
judge of whether one is hot now, but only
the expert physician is able accurately to
tell today whether one will be feverish
tomorrow. 
Thus the predictive powers of expertise
cast the last blow on the moral and
epistemological dimensions of
Protagorean Relativism.
In order to attack narrow Protagoreanism,
which fully identifies knowledge with
perception, Socrates proposes to investigate
the doctrine’s Heraclitean underpinnings.
The question he now poses is: how radical does the Flux to
which the Heracliteans are committed to must be in order for
the definition of knowledge as perception to emerge as
coherent and plausible? 

His answer is that the nature of Flux that sanctions

Theaetetus’ account must be very radical, indeed too radical
for the definition itself to be either expressible or defensible. 
THE SECRET DOCTRINE postulated
two kinds of motion: the parents of the
perceptual event undergo qualitative
change, while its twin offspring
undergoes locomotive change. 
To the question whether the Heracliteans
will grant that everything undergoes both
kinds of change, Socrates replies in the
affirmative because, were that not the
case, both change and stability would be
observed in the Heraclitean world of Flux.
 If then everything is characterized by all kinds of change
at all times, what can we say about anything? 

“NOTHING” 
because the referents of our discourse would be constantly shifting,
and thus we would be deprived of the ability to formulate any words
at all about anything.
Consequently, Theaetetus’ identification
of knowledge with perception is deeply
problematic because no single act can
properly be called “perception” rather
than “non perception,” and
the definiendum is left with no definiens.
faultiness of Theaetetus’ definition
of knowledge as perception
Socrates makes the point that perhaps the most
basic thought one can have about two perceptible
things, say a color and a sound, is that they both
“are.”

This kind of thought goes beyond the capacity of

any one sense: sight cannot assess the “being” of
sound, nor can hearing assess that of color. 
Socrates includes “same,” “different,”
“one,” and “two,” but also values, such
as “fair” and “foul.” All of these are
ascertained by the soul through its own
resources, with no recourse to the
senses.
Theaetetus adds that the soul
“seems to be making a
calculation within itself of past
and present in relation to future” 
This remark ties in with Socrates’ earlier
attribution to expertise of the ability to predict the
future outcome of present occurrences. But it also
transcends that assertion in the sense that now a
single unified entity, the soul, is given cognitive
supremacy, in some cases with the assistance of
the senses whereas in other cases the soul “itself
by itself.” 
Perception is thus shown to be an
inadequate candidate for knowledge, and
the discussion needs to foreground the
activity of the soul when “it is busying itself
over the things-which-are”. The name of
that activity is judging, and it is to this that
the second part of the conversation now
turns.
Knowledge as TRUE JUDGMENT

• as the definiens of knowledge
• as the soul’s internal reasoning function,
• which leads Theaetetus to the formulation of the
identification of knowledge with true judgment.
FALSE JUDGMENT 
• (a) false judgment as “mistaking one thing for another” (188a–c);
• (b) false judgment as “thinking what is not” (188c–189b);
• (c) false judgment as “other-judgment” (189b–191a);
• (d) false judgment as the inappropriate linkage of a perception to a
memory – the mind as a wax tablet (191a–196c); and
• (e) potential and actual knowledge – the mind as an aviary (196d–
200c).
“MISTAKING ONE THING FOR ANOTHER”
one cannot judge falsely that one person
is another person, whether one knows
one of them, or both of them, or neither
one nor the other. 
“THINKING WHAT IS NOT”
rests on an analogy between sense-perception and
judgment: if one hears or feels something, there must be
something which one hears or feels. Likewise, if one
judges something, there must be something that one
judges. Hence, one cannot judge “what is not,” for one’s
judgment would in that case have no object, one would
judge nothing, and so would make no judgment at all.
This then cannot be a proper account of false judgment. 
The interlocutors’ failure prompts a third attempt at
solving the problem: perhaps, Socrates suggests,
false judgment occurs “when a man, in place of one
of the things that are, has substituted in his thought
another of the things that are and asserts that it is. In
this way, he is always judging something which is,
but judges one thing in place of another; and having
missed the thing which was the object of his
consideration, he might fairly be called one who
judges falsely”
False judgment then is not concerned with what-is-not,
but with interchanging one of the things-which-are with
some other of the things-which-are, for example
beautiful with ugly, just with unjust, odd with even, and
cow with horse. 
• The absurdity of this substitution is reinforced by
Socrates’ definition of judgment as the final stage of the
mind’s conversing with itself. How is it possible, then, for
one to conclude one’s silent, internal dialogue with the
preposterous equation of two mutually exclusive
attributes, and actually to say to oneself, “an odd number
is even,” or “oddness is evenness”?
JUDGMENT AS THE INAPPROPRIATE LINKAGE
OF A PERCEPTION TO A MEMORY
false judgment invokes the mental acts of remembering
and forgetting and the ways in which they are implicated
in perceptual events. Imagine the mind as a wax block,
Socrates asks Theaetetus, on which we stamp what we
perceive or conceive. Whatever is impressed upon the
wax we remember and know, so long as the image
remains in the wax; whatever is obliterated or cannot be
impressed, we forget and do not know
false judgment consists in matching the perception to
the wrong imprint, e.g., seeing at a distance two men,
both of whom we know, we may, in fitting the
perceptions to the memory imprints, transpose them; or
we may match the sight of a man we know to the
memory imprint of another man we know, when we only
perceive one of them. 
Theaetetus accepts this model enthusiastically but
Socrates dismisses it because it leaves open the
possibility of confusing unperceived concepts, such as
numbers. One may wrongly think that 7+5 = 11, and
since 7+5 = 12, this amounts to thinking that 12 is 11.
Thus arithmetical errors call for the positing of a more
comprehensive theoretical account of false judgment.
potential and actual knowledge – the mind as an
aviary
• is meant to address this particular kind of error.
• potentiality and actuality becomes the conceptual
foundation of this model
Socrates invites us to think of the mind as an aviary full
of birds of all sorts.

The owner possesses them, in the sense that he has

the ability to enter the aviary and catch them, but does
not have them, unless he literally has them in his
hands. 
The birds are pieces of knowledge, to hand them over
to someone else is to teach, to stock the aviary is to
learn, to catch a particular bird is to remember a thing
once learned and thus potentially known. 
The possibility of false judgment emerges when one
enters the aviary in order to catch, say, a pigeon but
instead catches, say, a ring-dove. 
Theaetetus repeats his definition of knowledge as true
judgment but Socrates rejects it by means of the following
argument: suppose, he says, the members of a jury are “justly
persuaded of some matter, which only an eye-witness could
know and which cannot otherwise be known; suppose they
come to their decision upon hearsay, forming a true judgment.
Hence, they have decided the case without knowledge, but,
granted they did their job well, they were correctly persuaded”
This argument shows that forming a true opinion about
something by means of persuasion is different from
knowing it by an appeal to the only method by means of
which it can be known—in this case by seeing it—and
thus knowledge and true judgment cannot be the same.
Knowledge as True Judgment with Logos

Theaetetus remembers having heard that knowledge is

true judgment accompanied by Logos (account)
Dream Theory
the world is composed of complexes and their elements.
Complexes have Logos, while elements have none, but can only be
named. It is not even possible to say of an element that “it is” or “it
is not,” because adding Being or non-Being to it would be
tantamount to making it a complex.
Elements cannot be accounted for or known, but are perceptible.
Complexes, on the contrary, can be known because one can have
a true belief about them and give an account of them, which is
“essentially a complex of names”
to pinpoint the first problematic feature of the theory,
Socrates uses the example of letters and syllables:

the Logos of the syllable “so” – the first syllable of

Socrates’ name – is “s and o”; but one cannot give a
similar Logos of the syllable’s elements, namely of “s”
and “o,” since they are mere noises.
In that case, Socrates wonders, how can a complex of
unknowable elements be itself knowable?
• For if the complex is simply the sum of its elements,
then the knowledge of it is predicated on knowledge of
its elements, which is impossible; if, on the other hand,
the complex is a “single form” produced out of the
collocation of its elements, it will still be an indefinable
simple. The only reasonable thing to say then is that the
elements are much more clearly known than the
complexes.
 THE LOGOS
First, giving an account of something is “making one’s thought
apparent vocally by means of words and verbal expressions”.

The problem with this definition is that Logos becomes “a thing

that everyone is able to do more or less readily,” unless one is
deaf or dumb, so that anyone with a true opinion would have
knowledge as well.
Secondly, to give an account of a thing is to enumerate all its
elements.

Hesiod said that a wagon contains a hundred timbers. If asked what

a wagon is, the average person will most probably say, “wheels,
axle, body, rails, yoke.” But that would be ridiculous, Socrates says,
because it would be the same as giving the syllables of a name to
someone’s asking for an account of it. The ability to do that does not
preclude the possibility that a person identifies now correctly and
now incorrectly the elements of the same syllable in different
contexts.
Finally, giving an account is defined as “being able to tell some
mark by which the object you are asked about differs from all
other things”

But here again, the definition of knowledge as true judgment

with Logos is not immune to criticism. For if someone, who is
asked to tell what distinguishes Theaetetus, a man of whom he
has a correct judgment, from all other things, were to say that he
is a man, and has a nose, mouth, eyes, and so on, his account
would not help to distinguish Theaetetus from all other men.
But if he had not already in his mind
the means of differentiating Theaetetus
from everyone else, he could not judge
correctly who Theaetetus was and
could not recognize him the next time
he saw him.
So to add Logos in this sense to true judgment
is meaningless, because Logos is already part
of true judgment, and so cannot itself be a
guarantee of knowledge. To say that Logos is
knowledge of the difference does not solve the
problem, since the definition of knowledge as
“true judgment plus knowledge of the difference”
begs the question of what knowledge is.
The definition of knowledge as “true judgment
plus Logos” cannot be sustained on any of the three
interpretations of the term Logos. Theaetetus has
nothing else to say, and the dialogue ends
inconclusively. Its achievement, according to Socrates,
has been to rid Theaetetus of several false beliefs so
that “if ever in the future [he] should attempt to conceive
or should succeed in conceiving other theories, they will
be better ones as the result of this enquiry”
Thank you!