SPEA · Socrates and Plato on Epistemic Authority

Socrates and Plato on Epistemic Authority

The project investigated the systematic interrelations between the problems related to authority, disagreement, and expertise in relation to justification, belief, and knowledge in Plato’s early (Socratic) and middle dialogues. Socrates and Plato are usually seen as proponents of epistemic autonomy, as assuming that knowledge can never be acquired by means of relying on authority. The project showed that the Socratic position regarding our knowledge and belief acquisition from other people is much more nuanced than it is usually taken to be. More specifically, the project showed the following: (i) Socrates and Plato distinguish clearly between two different ways that a non-expert can approach an expert. On the one hand, a non-expert can try to learn from the expert, where learning means acquiring the expertise that the expert has. On the other hand, a non-expert can defer to an expert, whereby the non-expert surrenders her judgment to the expert’s authority. (ii) Socrates and Plato take episteme (knowledge, understanding) to involve elements of (what we would call) know-how or understanding that is not transmissible by means of relying on authority, they assume that episteme cannot be achieved by deference alone. (iii) When it comes to the he moral domain, Socrates heavily prioritizes becoming and expert (i.e. learning from experts) to deferring to the expert. One ought to be virtuous and being virtuous is identical (for Socrates) with possessing moral expertise. Thus, Socrates believes that one’s overriding goal ought to be acquiring virtue expertise. (iv) Socratic elenctic question-answer method should be understood as a method of learning, i.e. of acquiring the expertise that the interlocutor professes to have. (v) The requirement to defer to an expert and the requirement to acquire expertise put apparently conflicting normative constraints on an agent. In order to acquire expertise one has to, at least sometimes, think independently and question the authority of the teacher. On the other hand, the non-expert is under the obligation to defer (i.e. surrender her judgment) to the expert. The question becomes: is Plato’s epistemology is internally consistent? One of the major results of the project was to show that it is. The requirement to defer should be understood as a contrary-to-duty requirement. One ought to defer when one cannot fulfill the more basic obligation to acquire the expertise. This conception of the obligation to defer as a contrary-to-duty requirement remains surprisingly consistent in Plato’s career from the Republic to the Laws. (vi) Plato’s notion of deference is novel in Greek context. For example, the Attic orators’ notion of deference is non-authoritarian, i.e. it is evidentialist. Thus, when Plato claims that one should trust the expert opinion over one’ own, he is making a substantial new claim.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз