25. Beyond Reasonable Doubt

Words almost certainly spoken by Socrates
(Google Images)

It hasn’t been very easy, I admit, to find a sequel to Plato’s dialogue the Theaetetus: more than two thousand five hundred years old, still valid in all its complexity, steadily studied, bringing solidity to all of Western philosophy – sufficient reasons to regard it as awe-inspiring.

Those of you who have accompanied Peter Adamson in his plea for profound thinking must have already learnt a bit more about how knowledge relates to true belief. Needless to say, the very mention of there being true belief implies the possibility of false belief always beguiling Man into jumping to statements. But let’s stick to the line of argument in the Theaetetus, and consider this for a moment: in order for someone to say they know something, they have to assume that there is a truth independent of any perceiver. It goes without saying that that someone may be you, and may be me.

Wikipedia Images

We are by now floating deep in the nebula of relativism, and the conclusion is crystal clear: without a general account of false belief, there is hardly the case that we would be able to grasp knowledge by invoking some middle ground. As Peter Adamson concludes, knowledge must have something to do with true belief; in the example he gives about the case of the jury, he tackles a facet which is by all standards important: jurors are people like you or me; while in court listening to both parties, they come under the influence of the lawyers’ performance. Now, what lawyers can (or, rather, usually) do is use the oratorical art of persuasion in order to convince the jury of a person’s guilt or, for that matter, innocence. Through the lawyers’ skilful management of language, the jury comes to have a true belief – but not knowledge – originating in the discourse performed by the two professionals. Now, come to think of it: if verdicts depended only on what the defense and the prosecution lawyers say, then a person’s fate would be the result of his or her lawyer’s mastery in using oratory.

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I’ll keep Professor Adamson’s tentative statement in mind: “Maybe knowledge is true belief plus something else as well... something the jurors are lacking, but which you would have if you were, say, an eye-witness at the murder scene and know that the accused man is innocent.”

And so it goes that it is evidence which helps us – you, me, or a jury – to tell how close we can get to knowledge, a topic ranking high among topical subjects wherever there is a judicial system willing to seek the truth about a person’s innocence. What better entry could I add but one about a classic?