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Plato: Theaetetus. by John McDowellReview by: Alan HollandMind, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 338 (Apr., 1976), pp. 295-297Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253127 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

Plato: Theaetetus. Translated with Notes by JOHN MCDOWELL.

Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, I973. Pp. 264. Cloth ?5.00, Paper /I.9o.

Like the volumes of the Clarendon Aristotle series John McDowell's Theaetetus, the first in the Clarendon Plato series, sets new standards both of translation and commentary. What is especially pleasing about the translation is the obvious determination to assign a clear meaning to Plato's Greek, for example in cases where a 'safe' rendering would produce only muffled ambiguity. Thus, to take a small but telling instance, 'dangling' participial clauses get clearly construed, as at I52c6 where 'as if it's knowledge' is just right. One point of translation which might be questioned is the decision to render doxazein as 'have in one's judge- ment' (i88a7-8 and elsewhere) on the grounds that Plato uses it not only with propositional constructions but also with a direct object. The decision is not obviously consistent with the stand (rightly) taken over the translation of aisthe'sis: 'Plato's account of what my translation makes him call 'perception' differs, no doubt, from the account we might give of what we call 'perception'; but that does not show that the translation is incorrect, rather than, perhaps, that Plato makes philosophical moves which we might not be inclined to make' (p. I I7).

Among the merits of what are modestly offered as 'Notes' rather than 'proper commentary' I would single out the consistent thoroughness with which the logic (or lack of logic) of Plato's argument is displayed. The discussion of the puzzle cases at I54b-I55d, of the defence of Protagoras's thesis at I58e6-I59ag, and of its refutation at i6gd-I7id, and of the objection to the dream theory at 202d-2o6c, are among more obvious examples. Difficulties in a favoured interpretation are squarely faced, as in the attempt to explain, what is seen to require explanation, how Plato comes to reject 'be' in favour of 'come to be' in talk of common or garden things (pp. I23-128). Generally speaking, the mechanics of the dialogue are made clearer than they have ever been made before, especially to the reader who is prepared to work harder than is perhaps customary in following up cross-references. And space is found for relating Plato's discussion to contemporary concerns including phenom- enalism and the truth conditions for knowledge, the logical form of simple statements, reference and identity. There is also a helpful com- parison of the theory of Socrates's dream with certain passages in Wittgen- stein's Tractatus.

McDowell rarely deserts the mean, but I shall churlishly detail what I consider to be occasions wlhen he does so: (i) McDowell's Plato is not, as Cornford's, masterminding the proceed- ings, and in the second half of the dialogue (from i87a onwards) Plato 'has in effect drawn up a list of philosophical difficulties' (p. 257). We are left more in the dark about the point of the first part. Not just more difficulties presumably, since concrete results are achieved. The question 'What is the point of the secret doctrine?' receives full consideration, in

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296 BOOK REVIEWS

relation to the fact that Protagoras is under discussion. Speculation on why he is under discussion would have been welcome, as would more curiosity as to the overall shape of the first part. (Professor Sayre's suggestion that we see it as exemplifying some method of hypothesis might have figured somewhere). On the other hand one or two of MVJcDowell's perplexities are not easy to share, for example over Plato's treatment of the preliminary objection to Protagoras's thesis (I57e-I6oe). To say that Plato is 'not necessarily comnmitted' to the details of his defence of the thesis is to say less than is warranted. There are two points here. The first is that Plato is committed to a Protagorean defence, and hence ought not to accept such alternative defences as that involving an appeal to the distinction between perceiving and dreaming that one perceives. The second is that Plato clearly does not regard this line of objection to the Protagorean position as fatal. Hence it doesn't matter whether sleeping hours really equate with waking hours since no ulti- mately satisfactory objection can be built on denying this. (2) Matters are rarely oversimplified, but a philosopher who is no classicist should be wary of accepting without question that the occurrence of the verb 'to be' in the Protagoras formula is elliptical, requiring a complement, as if this were a use of 'be' clearly identified by Plato as distinct, say, from an existential use (p. i i8). And a classicist who is no philosopher should be wary of accepting that Plato's problem about false judgemenits of identification is on the way to solution if one brings to bear the point that one and the same thing may be identified in many different ways. If the fact that one's judgement is about Theaetetus is different from the fact that one's judgement is about the person in the corner of the room, although these are one and the same person, by virtue of the different modes of identification involved, then we are on the way to making it impossible for a judgement of the form Oa to be the same judgement as one of the form bb. This would severely restrict the processes of agreement and contradiction. (3) Finally there are (again rare) occasions when attempts at clarification don't quite come off. (i) In connection with the interpretation of Protagoras's thesis an ambiguity in the verb 'appears' is noted (p. II9). It can be used, it is claimed, either in perceptual statements or in state- ments of what one is inclined to think. The trouble is that there are two ambiguities here, one between perceptual and non-perceptual predicates, the other between what appears objectively to be the case and what one is inclined to think is the case. Thus 'Each thing is, for any person, the way he perceives it as being'-offered as a possible interpretation of Protagoras's thesis-is still ambiguous. (ii) In the final refutation of the thesis that knowledge is perception Plato is detected making the obscure assumption of the 'unity of the act of thinking' (p. i86). Even if it were clear what this assumption involved, it remains odd that an argument to show that perceptual judgement involves more than the exercise of one sense should rest on the assumption that it cannot involve the exercise of two senses. (iii) In a promising elucidation of other-judging (pp. 203- 204), it is left unclear whether the original judgement, say, that Theaetetus is beautiful is being itself construed as the judgement that beautiful is

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BOOK REVIEWS 297

ugly, or whether it is merely thought to rest on or presuppose the latter judgement. (iv) I confess to a failure to appreciate the plausibility of the move, several times ascribed to Plato, from 'a is acquainted with X' to 'a knows all about X'.

UNIVERSITY OF LANCASTERI ALAN HOLLAND

Probability and fItme's Inductive Scepticism. By D. C. STOVE.

Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. I32. /3.

The assessment of the rationality of scientific inference, and the scientific einterprise as a whole, is an important contemporary issue. The plhilosophy of David Hume is rightly taken to be relevant to this debate. Professor Stove has succeeded in clarifying Hume's position and in determining the effective force of his arguments.

While inductive reasoning may not provide a guarantee of the truth or objectivity of general laws characteristic of scientific understanding, inductive inference may play an indispensable role in the generation of such laws. Hume advanced a highly sceptical assessment of such inference, and Stove plausibly interprets Hume as having claimed that all inductive inference is not merely unreliable, but intrinsically and uniformly unreason- able, even when '. . . entirely free from doubt and uncertainty' (Hurne, Treatise, i.3.XI, p. I2,z). Stove insists that Hume provided only one argument to sustain his sceptical attitude to induction, and that this particular argument applies only to predictive inductive inference, i.e. inferences from past experience of uniformities to prediction about another particular instance. It is clear, however, that Hume intended his sceptical critique to apply to the entire domain of induction. Stove's chosen task is to identify and assess this one argument for inductive scepticism.

As an indispensable preliminary, we are introduced to an elementary account of the theory of logical probability, adopting an account that is Carnapian in both character and notation. Stove affirms his commit- ment to what he calls 'the fundamental thesis of the theory of logical probability . . . that two arguments may be of unequal degrees of con- clusiveness, even though both are invalid' (p. 9).

Stove provides a detailed and extensive analysis of the structure and content of Hlume's argument for predictive inductive scepticism. The argumentt is formally valid, but not all its premises are either explicit or true. The crucial premises are: (i) All inductive arguments are invalid as thev stand, and are such that, in order to turn them into valid argu- ments, it is necessary to add the Resemblance T'hesis to their premises. (The Resemblance Thesis being that unobserved instances resemble observed ones.) (2) The Resemblance Thesis is a contingent proposition. (3) No contingent proposition can be validly inferred from necessarily true premises.

'These three premises in combination serve to establish an important thesis, which Stove calls 'Inductive Fallibilism', that 'All predictive

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