Plato's Epistemology

<em>Plato's Epistemology: Being and Seeming</em> presents an original interpretation of one of the central topics in Plato's work: epistemology. Jessica Moss argues that Plato's epistemology is radically different from our own. <p/>Going against the grain of recent scholarship and drawing on ancient interpretations of Plato Jessica Moss argues that Plato is not best understood as studying what we now call knowledge and belief. Instead Moss proposes that the central players in his epistemology <em>epistÃÂamÃÂa</em> and <em>doxa</em> are each essentially to be understood as cognition of a certain kind of object. <em>EpistÃÂamÃÂa</em> is cognition of what Is - where this turns out to mean that it is a deep grasp of ultimate reality. <em>Doxa</em> is cognition of what seems - where this turns out to mean that it is atheoretical thought that mistakes images for reality. The book defends these characterizations by arguing that they explain important features of Plato's epistemology. In particular it shows that they underlie and make sense of a view which was long attributed to Plato but has recently been deemed outrageous that there is no <em>doxa</em> of Forms and no <em>epistÃÂamÃÂa</em> of perceptibles. Finally Moss contends that Plato's epistemology is so different from modern epistemology because it is motivated by his central ethical and metaphysical views. As the Cave allegory illustrates he holds that the goal of life is to be in contact with genuine Being and that the greatest obstacle to this goal is our tendency to rest content with appearances. Therefore when Plato turns to epistemological investigations the distinction he finds most salient is that between cognition of what Is and cognition of what seems.